v50 Steam/Premium information for editors
  • v50 information can now be added to pages in the main namespace. v0.47 information can still be found in the DF2014 namespace. See here for more details on the new versioning policy.
  • Use this page to report any issues related to the migration.
This notice may be cached—the current version can be found here.

Editing v0.31:Water wheel

Jump to navigation Jump to search

Warning: You are not logged in.
Your IP address will be recorded in this page's edit history.

You are editing a page for an older version of Dwarf Fortress ("Main" is the current version, not "v0.31"). Please make sure you intend to do this. If you are here by mistake, see the current page instead.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.

Latest revision Your text
Line 364: Line 364:
  
 
Construction of the mini reactor follows the same order as for the DWR, though the channel is slightly different and only one water wheel is needed.  If this is an addition to a full size reactor or set of reactors, all channels will need to be fairly full with water to start the reactor.
 
Construction of the mini reactor follows the same order as for the DWR, though the channel is slightly different and only one water wheel is needed.  If this is an addition to a full size reactor or set of reactors, all channels will need to be fairly full with water to start the reactor.
−
 
−
== Flowing Water ==
 
−
Waterwheels require water which is flowing, the game will consider water to be flowing under two circumstances, the first is when water spreads, that is, when deeper water flows to an adjacent tile where the water is shallower. This could be called "gradient flow" because it requires the water be flowing from deeper to shallower. Water which doesn't have a gradient - such as stretches of water which is 7/7 deep, is generally not regarded by the game to be flowing even if water is technically being delivered through those tiles.
 
−
 
−
The second kind of flow the game recognizes is when water flows off the map, either by going off the map edge or disappearing into an aquifer (water which enters an aquifer vanishes from the map, since an aquifer can never become full, even if it's only a single tile). This kind of flow propagates back from the map edge or aquifer sink and causes all or most of the connected water to gain the "Flowing" quality. Water which is flowing off the map counts as flowing even on stretches of 7/7 depth. This kind of flow is most readily observed in brooks, streams and rivers, however artificially constructed dwarf-made water channels function just as effectively, provided that they ultimately flow off the map.
 
−
A tile which has been marked as flowing off the map will retain this quality even if water movement is later blocked. This is most readily observed in that a dammed river will continue to power waterwheels, even though the water is no longer flowing off the map. This works equally well for dwarf-made water channels, the flowing quality is so persistent that it will remain even if the area is completely drained and refilled, although while the tiles contain less than 4/7 water they wont power waterwheels regardless.
 
−
 
−
=== Legitimate artificial rivers ===
 
−
If one wishes, one can build an underground river containing 7/7 water which powers water wheels, by allowing water sourced from a river, lake, sea or aquifer to ultimately flow off the map edge in a cavern. This would require building an aqueduct to bring the river to the map edge, since if the water spreads significantly before flowing off the map edge, the game wont regard it is flowing. Water flowing from a higher aquifer into a lower one will also have legitimate natural flow.
 
−
 
−
=== Flowing Water Reactors ===
 
−
It is possible to exploit the game's definition of flowing water and create patches of water which power waterwheels despite the complete absence of actual water movement. When a channel is dug into an aquifer, the channel will sometimes have "natural flow". However if water is pumped into an aquifer channel, then that channel will then always have "natural flow". This is because water is regarded as disappearing from the the map at that point, and the tiles are marked as flowing water, and will power water wheels - even if the pump is removed.
 
−
 
−
The other way to create water with natural flow, is to allow the water to flow off the map edge (most commonly through a fortification carved into the map edge, although the edge of the map on the surface, or a cavern, can also be used). The body of water will then be marked as flowing, even if the map edge is blocked by a floodgate. This can even be done with finite water sources such as murky pools, for example digging out a channel next to the map edge, building a floodgate to seal the map edge drain, filling the channel with 4/7 water, opening the floodgate, then closing the floodgate and filling it back up to 4/7 water.
 
−
 
−
The ethics of these reactors is not particularly different to perpetual motion machines, the conventional perpetual motion machine uses water wheels to generate power, and uses a fraction of that power to move the water with a screw pump. A waterwheel generates 100 power and consumes 10 power, presumably the 10 power consumed represents the energy the waterwheel requires to move the water in front of its blades. But if the water wheel moves water in and of itself, the pump actually becomes unnecessary. The water wheel itself both moves the water and is moved by the water.
 

Please note that all contributions to Dwarf Fortress Wiki are considered to be released under the GFDL & MIT (see Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel Editing help (opens in new window)

Templates used on this page:

Retrieved from "https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Water_wheel"