Dud Waterwheel?

[Quamosthy]

Anyone know why this waterwheel isn't producing power? The one directly behind it is working just fine.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2730165745

[Grathagis]

Look if there is an actual watercurrent. That is not possible to see on a screenshot.

[Quamosthy]

As far as I can tell the water is moving, and the waterwheel behind it is working well. Would the positioning of my gear workshop impact it at all?

[Grathagis]

I know that corners and bends play havoc with water physics. It is why I either place water wheels in the center of a waterflow, or I build a canal using levees to force water in a straight path.

[Quamosthy]

That's fair. I'm still pretty new to the game (my brother bought it for me yesterday), so I'm still learning. Thanks for your help. :D

[killedinaction47]

It's happened to me before too, water wheel just quits working even after you've seen it producing power.
Like Grath said, I think a better place for them is further up river in the straight part.

[Krall]

How did you get so far along without a dam?

[Brachius]

Water wheels slow down the current, the more wheels you have in a row the less power they will create. Also you will need to control the stream by building levees to have a good power output, this is a crucial part of this game.

[Fartikus]

oh snap thats a lot of potatoes.

[Dotmatrix]

I just encountered this problem too. The water wheel works until you hook up a building. In my case I built a sawmill and hooked it up with a connector and the wheel stopped working.

[Krall]

Originally posted by Dotmatrix:

I just encountered this problem too. The water wheel works until you hook up a building. In my case I built a sawmill and hooked it up with a connector and the wheel stopped working.

Pretty sure the building creates a drag on the water wheel like when you try to build the drive shafts at angles. Doing that slows down power output.

[ulzgoroth]

I paired my water wheels with a dam or levee across most of the stream starting from the opposite side, so the current is mostly force through the wheel channel.

However, I'm not sure it was really worth it. The windmills and hamster wheels both work pretty well and involve much less trouble. (The hamster wheel requires a worker, but that's probably not too big a problem. The windmill requires a moderate amount of reserach.)

[Quamosthy]

Originally posted by Krall:

How did you get so far along without a dam?

Planning, mostly. I made sure to stock up a lot of food and water before a drought, as well as trying to place my buildings on a dry area to leave the irrigated parts free for growing stuff.

[aaror]

There is a water measurement thing you can buy, most people just use it for the depth meter, but it also measures flow. If you look at the water wheel, it is rated something like 150 power *per cm*. Cm being some measure of water speed.

[Tonisaka]

My only thing i can think of is that the first water wheel starts at the curve kinda, the water has to accelerate again after the curve so it isnt giving the wheel enough power to turn.

[Gorim]

What aaror said, I can highly recommend the water measuring tool, once unlocked, its super cheap and greatly helps to understand the waterflow (and water hight).

I am playing on the same map and tried my first water wheels at nearly the same positions as you. It can be a bit tricky, but my tip: you can build several water wheels right next to each other, they do connect, even if it does not look like it. When you later unlock levees, which block water but you can build on, it gets a lot easier, since you can direct the waterflow trough the wheels.

And a last tip which I learned after way to much trial and error: If you Stack a production building on top of a Living or storage building, it will still get the energy from below, even if you just connect the bottom most building to the water wheel. So you dont need the High Power Shaft for stacking buildings. :D