v0.31 Talk:Water

Stagnant Water

I just tested Khym Chanur's theory, and I think it is false. Embarked on a forest biome, set up my bookkeeper for stock info, and began filling ponds. Water from the stream is not stagnant. Water from the murky pool is. Built a 1 z-level deep underground reservoir connected to the stream, water taken from it is not stagnant. Created an underground reservoir connected to the murky pool. Water taken from it is stagnant. Embarked on a swamp. Water taken from the stream is stagnant. It's a biome thing, and has nothing to do with z-levels. Swamp biomes and murky pools produce stagnant water. GhostDwemer 16:40, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Oops, you're right. -- Khym Chanur

This doesn't seem to be true either. I have a fortress that crosses two biomes, neither of which are wetland (temperate freshwater lake and temperate coniferous forest). The site has a lake (obviously) and a river. Water taken directly from both, observed in buckets, was stagnant; I was only able to get clean water by tapping the aquifer. I haven't tested exhaustively but here I am staring at a bucket of stagnant water taken directly from a lake, not a murky pool, in a non-wetlands site. By the current text of this article, this can't exist. There are so many variables in my situation, however, that I couldn't even guess as to the real cause of my stagnation. --Polycarp 04:35, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Water as cushioning

Tried dropping various creatures in various places in arena mode. Everything survives 1z drops unharmed. 2z is damaging. 3z is more often than not lethal. Water appears to cushion falls. I dropped things from the top of the arena into the 3z deep end of the water and they weren't injured at all, though they quickly drowned due to not being swimmers. Also tried dropping people in 3z of magma. Magma seems to provide less cushioning than water. And then they burn. Suggest making irrationally large (200-300z or so) drops into various depths of water to test cushioning effect. Rkyeun 04:44, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's worth noting that layers of water in previous versions did not cushion your fall so much as the depth of the water didn't increase it. I.e. the drop damage was calculated by the amount of air you fell through. Is that a possibility here? --Eagle0600 05:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

This appears to be actual cushioning. Creatures fell 5-6z before hitting the water and falling another 3z. If the water simply didn't count, they'd have splatted as normal for a 6z fall. Instead they were unharmed and seemingly unaware that they should swim to safety. Or merely unable to. Rkyeun 16:41, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Contamination

I've built a very large reservoir (currently 30x25x4 approx) on some ground that had mountain goat blood on it. There is also a small amount of mountain goat and dwarf blood on the area around the reservoir. On overflowing the reservoir (which is fed from the top by a "clean" source), I get blood EVERYWHERE the water flows, seemingly on evaporation of the water. There's now far more blood spread around than the creatures had originally... anyone seen similar? --Nimblewright 21:21, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I did some arena tests with blood and water. apparently adding a 7/7 tile of water on top of a pool of blood creates more pools of blood which are pushed out to the edges of the water as it moves. This behavior may be a bug. There is an open ticket about the subject on the bug tracker here with my full results. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=296 - Doctorzuber 01:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

This appears to be fixed in 31.16 GhostDwemer 00:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm grumbling a bit at my water reservoir. My Dwarves have apparently declared it to be contaminated and refuse to drink from it any more. This is especially annoying since I was quite careful to make sure not to let any dead animals fall into the reservoir, it should all be nice clean water. But for some reason, it is not. I'm curious if anybody has any useful tricks to help prevent this issue. --Doctorzuber 13:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Verifications of old behavior

• U-bend test from a river fills to z-1 as expected
• U-bend test from a murky pool fills to z-1 as expected
• channeling directly from a river temporarily has no flow, but soon becomes naturally flowing as expected
• screw pump to a dead end one level above a river generates natural flow as expected
• Diagonal connections neutralize water pressure as expected
• Diagonal connections do not prevent the spread of flow as expected
• Reactor#3 built as a perpetual motion test -- behaves as expected

• some flow artifacts at the bottom of both U-bends -- this was always a bit quirky, but should run more tests
• screw pump from a murky pool in a 1x18 channel which doubles back to the murky pond generates reliable flow -- possible change in flow mechanics
• Screw pump from z-2 one level below the river, pushing into a 1x100 channel generates flow only near the end of the channel where the water is still filling. Behaves as expected, the previous test appears to be a fluke.

I'm running through a battery of tests here, I will update this with my results. The one surprise so far is the murky pool test. In 40d a similar test would quickly become saturated with 7/7 water and only indicate flow at the end of the channel. need to test that more to make sure this isn't a fluke. I will continue to update this as I verify more things. Once I have a bit more information I'll start updating the water pages. Doctorzuber 01:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Ran a new variation of the long channel flow test using a level drop this time to break the natural flow effect from the river. This time I got the expected result of many tiles of still water with a small amount of flowing water near the end of the channel where it had not yet filled. This does however mean I'm using pressurized water this time which might be worth a bit more investigation. This also demonstrates the simplest form of water teleportation which is what is believed to be why flow of this nature fails to appear. Doctorzuber 19:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Springs?

Reading this article mentions that water can come from springs... and it's linked. I hadn't heard of this before, so I followed the link and it redirected to Calendar; it meant springtime. I removed the link for now, but do water-springs occur? Someone who knows either remove the term in this article or work on the Spring page. --Waladil 04:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Springs" probably refers to mountain brooks. At the head of each brook, there is a spidery section of water, and at the end of each "finger" of water there is a "river source" tile that can be viewed with k. These are infinite sources of water, and probably what the article refers to.JohnnyMadhouse 04:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

the source of many rivers is a spring, it's a weird spidery looking thing that is a direct source of water. They can sometimes be found on open plains. They are often found deep in the mountains. If you have one in your embark map, they have some odd properties as discussed in the wiki. They will have a number of tiles that are treated as water sources, which will constantly and rapidly refill to 7/7 water providing and endless supply of water. a collapse above these tiles will break this effect. This is different from the much more common behavior of off map water sources where you have and edge of map tile that will constantly refill. Edge of map tiles cannot be destroyed. --Doctorzuber 15:41, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well thanks for the answer... someone might want to make a Spring(Water) page as opposed to the Spring(Season) page... Either one of you guys prolly could... I don't have any firsthand knowledge, so I prolly shouldn't. --Waladil 00:48, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

fortifications on map edge to drain fluid away

They say you can designate fortifications on edge tiles to drain fluid off the map. --TomiTapio 13:44, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

You can't dig out an edge tile. If there is solid ground there it is there to stay. Just to double-check I even tried to carve fortifications out of an edge tile. as expected, it doesn't work. You can smooth and engrave the wall if you so wish but cannot otherwise remove or alter it. However in underground complexes it is common to have open spaces at the edge of map. In this case you can choose to place walls (or fortifications) right up at the edge of the map. On the surface of the world where caravans travel, you may not place any structures within 5 tiles of the edge. --Doctorzuber 17:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I've done the fortification trick. If you smooth the edge wall, you can carve fortifications in it and use it to drain an infinite amount of water/magma. 64.255.180.84 16:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Even in version 0.31? It's well known that this was possible in 40d (though only with water), but some things have changed since then. --Quietust 16:53, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Smoothing it first you say? I'll have to verify that later, if true that's useful to know. --Doctorzuber 01:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Works fine, if you do this to a wall at waterlevel in a cavern near a part of the edge that generates water you can create real easy power supplies.--MLegion 09:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I once drained water into an open-sided (dry) cavern and it worked fine, the water went off the edge. So I later tried the same thing but into a cavern-lake that was open to the map edge. Ha big mistake. It flooded. I guess lakes in caverns that are open-edged (water to the edge) have some equilibrium mechanism so they don't drain themselves away (makes sense now that I think about it), so adding water to such a system will flood it. I got the right floodgate shut and the water is going away, but I'm not sure where it's going. Will try the fortifications trick, or maybe redirect the exit channel to a dry cave space.--Dwarvenjames 15:29, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Freezing documentation?

Source water that freezes in colder months won't freeze if piped to an underground area. Rather, the source will freeze, but the water already underground won't become ice. I made an elaborate magma heating system, only to realize that it actually wasn't needed.

Communicating vessels don't work

I've tested it with a very simple two z layers setup (see below), and it doesn't seem to work. I think this should be a bug. Because it provides many interesting engineering and opportunities for fun.

The setup is two pools separated by a wall, which are channeled below them, without a wall separating them. Filling one should raise the water level in the other. The profile is like this:

Level Z:   ====#   #
Level Z-1: #=======#
Level Z-2: #########

The right part in level Z should have water too. 89.141.113.238 20:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

You've basically just built a sloppy u-bend. This is consistent with the current pressure rules. U-bends push water back up to Z-1 not to Z as you might expect. I suspect the reason for this quirk is to avoid an infinite loop with water bouncing back and forth in a U. --Doctorzuber 22:29, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Murky pool + rain = no evaporation

Beware: water from a murky pool appears to never evaporate in the rain. Free-flowing, unconstrained water will stay at level 1; the rain will add to the perma-water and cause it to spread horizontally.

The effect seems to be tied to the original tiles of the pool. I used such a pool to irrigate a subterranean farm plot. Even indoors, the water never evaporated and spread further into my fortress, until I managed to wall off the farm from the original pool tiles.

I was only able to do construct such a wall by knocking out more boundary walls of the pool, toward some open plains. This allowed newly-fallen perma-water to flow away from my farm long enough to build a wall. Unfortunately I appear to be on an embark where it never stops raining; six years in, the level-1 perma-water has spread to cover an area of about 70x40. It has spread in a large circle (bounded by other walls of my mountain) with the original murky pool site at its center. I have never seen any tiles evaporate or recede. --Squeaky 22:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Is your TEMPERATURE: ON? Maybe there's a bug in it relating to the necessary heat to evaporate water. Try to take some water from this pool and ponding it elsewhere and see if it evaporates for the good of !!SCIENCE!!-Anon 16 December 2010

While this is uncommon, it is not unusual. It's a safe bet that you are in a wet jungle biome. A nice wet/warm biome and murky pools refill VERY quickly. They refill so quickly in fact that like you described, they just never stop dumping new water into your fort. Assuming it's not already a lost cause, you can probably get control of this situation by cutting a nice channel to control the flow of water long enough to get some walls up and contain the flooding. --Doctorzuber 13:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Workaround: If you build a roof over the pool it will dry out eventually. Angela Christine 00:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

That will work if the water level is low. You could simply construct something (floor?) on the murky pool tiles. That removes the "special" tag that allows rain to pool there. --Kwieland 03:34, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Salty Water

The page mentions that if salty water touches any natural, non-constructed walls or floors, it will become salty again. However, this is currently at least somewhat disputed, as you can see in this forum thread http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=95811.0 Should we put up a notification that this theory of salinization is disputed? --173.167.163.13 17:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Someone removed the last bit under salt water about dwarves getting unhappy thoughts from using a well above a salt water source. Can someone confirm and perhaps add the information again, except more succinctly this time?--Introprospector 09:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Explanation

At present it seems that dwarves do not receive unhappy thoughts from drinking salt water beyond that of normal water: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=95811.msg2739621#msg2739621 and essentially my approach was to go with the bare facts. What people make of those facts is up to them. Perhaps it might be worthwhile saying something along the lines of "dwarves do not seem to suffer negative effects from consuming salt water, but that they can at all is almost certainly a bug"

The problem is that we would also need to mention that desalination is also probably a bug, and that the way saltiness propagates is also probably a bug (or an "artifact" of other water-management code) and is very likely to change - on the other hand, toady might actually be content for these oddities to exist.

In the case where science has overthrown popular belief, I think a line referencing the debunked myth is necessary, but otherwise I think that the various behaviors surrounding salt water are unrealistic and unexpected is self-evident, thus there's no need to mention it and it's enough to go with the bare facts. Not that I'd press the matter as long as what is said is factually correct. ---Nand 10:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)