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Author Topic: The Over-Under Water Reactor  (Read 15632 times)

BloodBeard

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The Over-Under Water Reactor
« on: June 29, 2011, 12:28:13 am »


(I don't know if there's a name for it, i've searched and i've never seen anyone mention this design)

I created a beast, and though all my senses tell me I should destroy it before it destroys us I feel I must share it.

I made this for my fort Daggerdepths, but I knew id fail miserably trying to get a large, working water reactor built the first time so I made this on a throwaway fort. It took about 10 game years to design, construct and optimized, tearing down and rebuilding whole sections 4 times so that it would work right. Hence when you look at the screenshots, it looks like a Frankenstein construction and appears it could blow apart and kill everyone at any time.

I have a reserved spot in my fortress with limited space, so it was built the way it is out of necessity. It was actually a fun challenge to fit the most powerful reactor I could make into a pre-defined area and i'd recommend others to try. I bet it would be a great challenge thread actually. If you might be interested let me know here.

Screenshots:

Spoiler: Bottom level (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Second level (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Third level (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Top level (click to show/hide)

Over-Under sounds appropriate because the water flows over and under the waterwheels to generate power.

This particular reactor consists of 153 waterwheels split into 9 stacked reactors, 17 waterwheels each linked to each other, 5 on the top and 4 on the bottom. Originally there were 11 reactors with 15 wheels each, but water flow didnt agree with it. 17 pumpstacks are needed to move the water with 34 screwpumps total. These are all linked to the main reactor, totaling a 1951 power requirement just to get the thing running.

Originally I was going to keep them separate and instead let 2 perpetual v-reactors or another of my own design run the pumps so that I only needed to pull a lever to turn the main reactor on. But then I didnt really want a reactor constantly running, it would hit my FPS and eventually stop running due to evaporation. It turned out that 2 dwarves can get it running quite easily, so i'll stick to that method.

The highlighted area on the third level is what i'm really proud of. I was having trouble keeping the water level high enough to turn the waterwheels in a couple sections so I put those pillars there to funnel higher volumes of water between them. It's still not perfect, it could use some tweaking but I think if perfected it could open the door for much larger wide-flow reactors and eliminate the low-flow problems they run into.

Onto more numbers. The 153 waterwheels have the potential to output 15,300 units of power, but i've only been able to manage to average around 12,000 units. Sometimes if the flow is bad it will dip below 10,000, but other times when the flow is good...

Spoiler: Oh god (click to show/hide)

That's the highest power output i've witnessed. It might be able to go higher, not sure.

What's a little disconcerning is for several minutes after I first saw that it worked and was imagining all the dwarfy things I could do with this much power, Darth Vader music was playing in my head and I didn't even realize it. DF does awesome things to your brain. And Star Wars of course.

Some say perpetual motion machines are exploity, but with the amount of time and !!science!! that went into this, it probably would have been alot easier to draw power from a natural river XD.

Organum

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2011, 12:39:50 am »

How's your FPS holding up?
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If dwarves decided to live in trees like hippies, they'd still do it better than the elves.

BloodBeard

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2011, 12:42:00 am »

It's a small 2x2 embark with less then 20 dwarves, so no hit at all. I'll let you know when it's installed in my already massive fort.

Organum

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2011, 12:54:25 am »

I ask because one of the major concerns of (and partly, I'm sure, the reason behind) fanciful water/magma machines is FPS efficiency. This looks really cool, by the way, like a mixture of both fantasy and sci-fi thematic appropriateness. I can see something like this being constructed on the top of a tower, distributing power to all corners of the community while simultaneously bathing the sides of the tower with picturesque waterfalls...I may be imagining it a little more aesthetically brilliant than it really is. :| Still seems cool.
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If dwarves decided to live in trees like hippies, they'd still do it better than the elves.

BloodBeard

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2011, 01:20:09 am »

Lucky for me this will be sitting idle unless needed. And I will actually be calling upon it to power a magma pumpstack some 30 z-levels tall. I'm one of those people who cringe if they mine the wrong spot and have to construct over it, so it will be awesome to run a kind of extension cable of axles and gears all through my fort to where I need the power to be without digging direct routes to conserve power.

Thanks for the compliments.


I'm thinking that this could double as a dwarven washing machine. That would be one hell of a ride! I'm sure the 2 z-level drop into water wouldnt hurt, and as you can see in the screenshot of the bottom that there's a safe spot they'd be pushed into. Safe unless some dastardly dwarf decided to pull a lever and stop the pumps, letting the water pool at the bottom.  :-X

Conrad

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2011, 01:36:23 am »

Wow.

You make me want to need this.

It's settled, when I lose this fort, I'm redesigning an entire fort around dwarfputing and mechanics to defend and sustain every civilian.
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JoshBrickstien

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2011, 03:28:07 am »

15.300 Uristwatts! 15.300 Uristwatts! Great Scott! It's revolutionary!
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Edit: OH GOD, THE LEATHERS ARE MULTIPLYING WHENEVER I SLEEP.

The Dog Delusion

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2011, 03:36:11 am »

15.300 Uristwatts! 15.300 Uristwatts!

Indeed! I makes me sad that there's precious little that one can do with that much power right now :(
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kotekzot

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2011, 08:24:21 am »

I like the randomly variable output. Which part of your machinery powered by it will fail first?
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Dwarf Fortress: Where violent death is a renewable resource
Bro, your like... thinking like a square man... its like, the WHOLE lamprey is just like, one big NECK dude, you know? its like hahahaha! dude protect the trees though, seriously. *inhale*... anyways... you like, want this dead black bear, bro?

morgoththegreat

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2011, 10:30:26 am »

I like the randomly variable output. Which part of your machinery powered by it will fail first?

All the machinery will stop at exactly the same time.
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kotekzot

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2011, 10:33:57 am »

I like the randomly variable output. Which part of your machinery powered by it will fail first?

All the machinery will stop at exactly the same time.
That'll either be disappointing or patently hilarious.
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Dwarf Fortress: Where violent death is a renewable resource
Bro, your like... thinking like a square man... its like, the WHOLE lamprey is just like, one big NECK dude, you know? its like hahahaha! dude protect the trees though, seriously. *inhale*... anyways... you like, want this dead black bear, bro?

BloodBeard

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2011, 10:37:12 am »

I like the randomly variable output. Which part of your machinery powered by it will fail first?

Ha ha, yeah the exact output isnt exactly reliable, but any monstrosity that requires this much power would need to use over 9000 units to risk overloading it. Even then with the pumps turned off it will keep generating power for some time and will actually turn itself back on.

Ha ha! this awesome image just came into my head of dwarves frantically trying to shut it down by linking hundreds of screwpumps to it and screaming "Why won't it DIE!!!"

You gave me a great idea how this could be used for dwarfputing actually. If I could find out the precise number needed I could link this to a large power drainer and act as a sort of random number generator whenever it overloads. Though i'm sure a smaller version would probably be better at it.

Jurph

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2011, 10:55:36 am »

Your power level is OVER 9000.  Color me impressed.
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Dreambrother has my original hammer-shaped Great Hall.  Towerweak has taken the idea to the next level.

Triaxx2

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2011, 11:42:28 am »

In a truly dwarfy fortress, large pieces of nasty machinery should be powered by this and alternately turned on and off by pressure plates in busy areas.

Running waterfalls, magma traps and repeaters for standard spear traps. This is truly awesome, and should indeed be installed in a massive tower, using water falls to return the water to the reservoir at the bottom.
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Saiko Kila

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Re: The Over-Under Water Reactor
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2011, 01:30:16 pm »

While the idea is nice, for big reactors I prefer fully closed (not counting water intake/outlet) reactors, without need for any dwarf activity beside pulling a lever to stop or start it
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