User:Eddie

After about a week of playing (and poring over the Engravings on the walls of this site), I feel I'm ready to make some additions of my own! ..or at least learn how to do that. I'm terribly new to this. Hell, I don't even expect my links to work. But I'll at least strive to keep my information accurate, and my typing form proper.

Now, on to some research about artifacts. *Cracks his knuckles, and heads into the game.*

Current research projects:

Dwarven Waterway Statement: Attempting to redirect a brook, and while there is a lot of data on the site about this already, it's my own little pet project, and something I'm performing for kicks. Objective: To watch the flow speed of water in different size channels, to see if water spreads at a significantly different rate from smaller or larger apertures into large spaces; To see if water without an exit will spill over onto higher Z-levels or not; To see if the brook itself will empty out in the process of spilling into the new area. Status: Main waterways established, Z-level of the brook's water cut off from map exits (excepting the brook itself), series of floodgates established for fortress use (hey, practical applications of research are always best!).

Artifact craft items Statement: Dwarf crafted a "Perfect Aquamarine" and I intend to find out the details about such a thing. Objective: Find out if the perfect gem can be placed in a noble's room using a specific stockpile to elevate the room to "Royal" status. Find out if the gem can be set into an object, such as a throne, and determine the results of such; will the chair become extremely valuable? Will the furniture be trade capable? Will the artifact crafter throw a tantrum? Will placing the furniture in a room elevate the room to "Royal" status?

More on this later as the results come in. If anyone has insight to provide on this, feel free to add it to this page. I won't mind. Honest. --Eddie 14:26, 2 July 2008 (EDT)

To my experience dwarves are rather reluctant to let go of their precious but once they do you can re-use it however you want... just don't let it get destroyed otherwise they will tantrum.

Unfortunately this can also be the case for masterly-carved wall engravings.

GarrieIrons 02:56, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

I've finally broken the dam for the water test; the water is flowing down the constructed waterway at a surprisingly slow rate, taking roughly 3 seconds to move to another square. The spreading seems to be a continuous rate regardless of how many squares it is filling; a 3x10 room fills at the same speed as a 5x10, for example. It takes longer, yes, but the water "grows" in tiles surrounding the areas already flooded without concern for how many flooded tiles it is connected to.

Also of note, on a whim I looked to the part of the brook beyond my artificial branch, and noticed that those tiles were all but dry--it seems the water spreads out evenly between the two branches, thus reducing the majority of the squares to depth 3 or less. Not surprising really, but worth noting.

What may be interesting, however, is that a pit in the ground does not slow water advancement if there is a way around it. Water will begin to fill the pit in a waterfall (side note: producing mist, which gave my poor thirsty dwarves a happy thought when the observed this), but will also spread around said hole without slowing. In fact, the area surrounding the hole flooded before there was even more than muddy floor at the bottom of this pit. Perhaps this is because the pit was an Up/Down stairway, it somehow stunted the downward flow of water? Hmm. Regardless, said pit still went to 7/7 full shortly after the water began to pour in, so while this is an interesting sidenote (to me anyway), it doesn't have any practical purpose, unless you were hoping to use the edge of a chasm as an exit flow for water. But this requires testing of its own before a conclusion is drawn.

Obstacles blocking water flow leave a "tail" behind them as water advances, in which the water fills much more slowly than surrounding regions. I wish I'd been timing this, but it's a bit late in the game to lament over this fact. In any case, water flows are very realistic so far with water pressing forward around walls, and moving in to fill that gap later.

Looking back along the water flow now, the brook has entirely resumed its 7/7 depth, and the starting stretch of my constructed waterway is also the same depth. It's not even halfway along the (fairly long) stretch I've created, which took a little over 2 years for my dwarves to tunnel out between their various other tasks, and it's soon to hit the areas of more interest to me: starting with the two-floor cavern.

The purpose of this cavern is purely for aesthetics, but it's a little more than halfway along the stretch, and is a two-level cavern that fills from the water z-level, and has open floor in the z-level above. The upper floor opens outside to grassy fields. The water entry on the bottom floor is constricted, being only one tile in width, and is branched at a 90-degree angle to the main flow. I've noticed that my earlier observation of square entry size may have been inaccurate; the water seems to be advancing along the main path faster than it enters the side-chamber, at a very noticeable rate. Perhaps more study into this is needed.

Now the water reaches the natural canyon that my waterway connects to; normally this canyon would lead off the map, but that seemed so boring in the grand scheme of this research that I decided to build a Shist-wall dam to prevent that from happening. While it would have been advantageous to keep that exit for the water to reduce the risk of fort flooding, there's nothing as satisfying as jumping into the deep end (*Cough*) when doing research.

Besides, I saved before I broke the dam, so worst case, I just reload and remove the dam.

Water advancement slows to a near crawl in this wide valley, further disproving my earlier suspicions about water spread; water advances in a more natural way than I predicted. The highwood trees stand against the water flow, and now my curiosity is piqued on the matter of aquatic flora. Well, more accurately, at what water depth will a tree "drown." Water refuses to enter the same tile as the tree, at least so far, as the water is still only depth 1 surrounding. The slow rate of water advancement is giving me a great deal of time to write mundane details, it seems.

Also, it seems the water is spreading through the canyon at a much faster rate than the water fills the side chamber. Some day this information may be useful to someone! ...probably not though. But I digress.

Now the water flows through the shist fortification that supports the bridge to the aboveground entrance to the fort. The waterway serves as both water supply and moat to my dwarves, or it will if everything goes according to plan.

Hmn. My legendary gemcutter seems to have had no qualms about crossing the flowing water, having walked down the slope of the eastern wall, across the filling canyon, and up to the west. The water was extremely shallow, but it was still disconcerting to see such a large investment tread water like that.

The water is approaching the dam, so I feel I should elaborate on it while I wait. dam is built at a 90-degree angle from two wall sections; the eastern wall is two floors high, and the southern is one floor. The eastern wall stretches from valley wall to valley wall, and surpasses the valley walls in height (the natural valley being only one level deep). The southern wall is only one level high, but it only blocks off a small bulb of the valley, which I consider to be my spillway. The 'bulb' is actually two z-levels high, unlike the eastern wall, and I dug out a trench in the second level of that cliff side that leads past the dam and off the map. In all honesty, I'd forgotten that the section there was carved out; this ruins part of the fun of the experiment, but should make little difference, if any.

From here on, I'm going to resume actually playing the game; the water is just going to continue in to the floodgates of my fortress without interruption, and I hear the war-drums of goblins in the distance. Once the water has had a chance to fill in the valley more, I will resume my writings. --Eddie 14:11, 3 July 2008 (EDT)

Okay, after a nap and breakfast, I'm back to writing! I did some research in the water flow and pressure page, and it has answered a lot of the questions I had with pre-established theories on the subject. Of note, is the fact that water will not rise above its source without the assistance of a pump; this is convenient, and means my fortress won't be flooding any time soon, but it takes some of the fun out of the research to already know the answers. I'll continue to monitor the water flow, for my own sake more so than anything else.

A turtle is sitting on my bridge directly over the water flow; if it somehow washed up on that bridge, or fled to there, I'm not certain. I wish I'd seen how it ended up there, as it would have been a decently long walk for the little thing to end up there, and the water below is currently only depth 3. After the water reached the end of the line, the valley began to fill much more quickly, as the water now has nowhere else to go. Once the valley is nearly full, I'm going to open the floodgates into the fortress' internal water supply. I'd like to observe more closely how this will affect the depth of water in the areas surrounding the gate and the valley itself.

The trees continue to stand despite the depth-3 water surrounding them, leaving me to wonder if these trees will only disappear when the tiles are completely full, and the trees submerged. All speculation and no facts; not yet, anyway. Nearly all the grass and shrubs under the depth-3 water are dead or "dry" (ironic), so I imagine it's a matter of specific depths killing plants of different types.

So far things have remained inconclusive, as even about two hours later this valley is only just reaching depth 4 in certain places. Trees still stand, though now my dwarves refuse to go down into the valley, and I've had a few queued jobs canceled to "Dangerous terrain" because they were outside the fortress and, in spite of the fact there is another entrance further from the job site, they want to instead cut through the valley. Looks like it's time to open the front door; I've traps set there against marauders, and three guards stationed nearby, so it should be safe from goblins. This is all, of course, unimportant to the experiment at hand.

More I will write as there becomes more TO write.

Okay, few days later, time to write the conclusion! Also, I apologize for not adding the signature to the end of my posts; just a habit I need to get in to. :P

Alright, so, end of the water's course! After the channel finished flooding, I noticed a few things: ONE, water that is labeled as above ground freezes; water that is underground will not, even if the two tiles are adjacent to each other. So, the places where the water was "above ground" froze in the winter, but my fortresses water source remained nice and available to my dwarves (though it did not refill, so making the area larger than the well source alone ended up being a good idea). Also of note, ice next to water is, amusingly, "Damp Ice," so you don't need to worry about striking water and flooding your dwarves when digging in ice.

Oh, and if you make a channel into a moat, piece of advice: don't leave an opening into your fortress facing the water. Trust me, the results are bad for all parties involved (well, unless you're the titan that gets a free ticket into the fortress).

The trees in the flooded valley still stand, and have gone through several freezes. It seems that water does not kill trees, nor does ice. If there is any kind of advantage available to having done this, I have yet to figure it out, but I'm sure someone more ingenious could find a way to use this.

I believe that my findings past this point are moderately useless, as there is no new or interesting information to provide. ...not that necessarily anything I've posted has been new or original. I've expanded the water source in the fortress slightly as it's grown, by digging down near the subterranean water and using a channel to connect the new tunnel and the existing water. The resulting hole is then covered with floor to prevent......accidents.

Oh, and as a side note, make a door in front of the impending hall and declare it "tightly closed." Else you'll suffer from drowning puppies like I did.

Well, I think I'm finished with this fortress; it's served its purpose, and the layout of it is making my OCD act up. Perhaps I'll attempt to flood it a vast quantity of screw pumps connected to wind mills. ..or I'll just keep cutting down trees and let the elves in. *Grins* We'll see how my traps and flood-rooms do against those pointy-eared pansies!

--Eddie 21:55, 6 July 2008 (EDT)