Major issue with fluid dynamics

[GeneralZaphod]

I am about 30 hours or so into a game. First map (again). I have played before update 4 and logged a lot of hours so have some experience. BTW, love the changes especially removing all the complex and annoying district routing.

I have a series of damns of course along the river and all the way to the water out. I have a large reservoir of course in the typical area towards the water out and a damn going into the final river where I have a long series of water wheels.

The issue is that the water at that last damn into the river stops and starts non-stop. So the wheels run about 50% of the time. This effect can be seen all the way back to the starting area where it floods each time this occurs, then it "waves" out to the reservoir, then starts flowing over the damn again before it stops. It makes the game almost unplayable considering the floods are so regular now. I never saw this before a few hours ago and have changed almost nothing in this system.

This feels like a pretty major bug but wanted to see if anyone else saw this and might have a solution, or a concurrence that it is an issue.

Thanks!

[Fall2YrDoom]

I been having issues with the waves of water as well.. I try a work around and make where any wheels go a steady flow with no dams.. I normally use Iron teeth and build power plants right away and deleting any wheels after. I can see a wave of water for a little bit tell everything balances out, but it seems to take forever to balance out if it does at all.. I reported a flow bug earlier and I am just waiting on instructions on how to send them my save game.. Hopefully it is a glitch and can be fixed, I hate working around it. I get flooded out many times before I just levee it all up and say pea on it.

[Alcator]

What you are experiencing is called SLOSHING and is a real-world phenomenon. You can solve it by cascading the water better and not having S-bends of the same elevation of water.

[QTV]

The fluid dynamics haven't drastically changed and the "issues" you are experiencing were always there. "Issues", because it is a problem you built and you can also solve it.

[GeneralZaphod]

I have been studying the water levels at the source with a gauge. It rises and falls about .25 cms at the cycle rate of these waves. This is a problem at the source, and I would call that a bug. Note that the source has a dam and if the source had a constant rate this would not occur. So, for the two comments that it isn't an issue, I think this debunks that theory pretty well.

[QTV]

Originally posted by GeneralZaphod:

I have been studying the water levels at the source with a gauge. It rises and falls about .25 cms at the cycle rate of these waves. This is a problem at the source, and I would call that a bug. Note that the source has a dam and if the source had a constant rate this would not occur. So, for the two comments that it isn't an issue, I think this debunks that theory pretty well.

source not being a constant is not a bug, that is a feature.

[emprimaker]

I offset the wheels. Putting them in a straight line doesn't seem to work. Also build levies to channel the water narrowly to the wheels.

[QTV]

Originally posted by emprimaker:

I offset the wheels. Putting them in a straight line doesn't seem to work. Also build levies to channel the water narrowly to the wheels.

it works fine.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3028574910

[UnderTow]

you need fall to get full water pressure, like the real world

[Lil Puppy]

Originally posted by UnderTow:

you need fall to get full water pressure, like the real world

The game doesn't simulate pressure, only velocity. The faster the water the faster the water wheels. Squeezing water into smaller streams makes everything faster.

Sloshing is a real world problem too, we solve it with baffles in containers and having less water mass to bounce off of things in lakes/rivers/dams, so put more dams in your streams, don't make regular shaped reservoirs, and disrupt the flow by placing random dams/levies in water paths.

[QTV]

Originally posted by Lil Puppy:

Originally posted by UnderTow:

you need fall to get full water pressure, like the real world

The game doesn't simulate pressure, only velocity. The faster the water the faster the water wheels. Squeezing water into smaller streams makes everything faster.

Sloshing is a real world problem too, we solve it with baffles in containers and having less water mass to bounce off of things in lakes/rivers/dams, so put more dams in your streams, don't make regular shaped reservoirs, and disrupt the flow by placing random dams/levies in water paths.

I would probably do the opposite if this and just let the water flow at the pace it wants to.

[Joman]

I also experienced this in setup I had.

[night]

Something else... the game doesn't model more than one square depth of water flowing. This is my first play through, but my dam face is 5 wide. Four dam piece and one 3 height flood gate in the middle. With that gate all the way down the dam still fills and reaches the same height and flow rate as when it is completely closed.

[FizzyGig]

Originally posted by GeneralZaphod:

I have been studying the water levels at the source with a gauge. It rises and falls about .25 cms at the cycle rate of these waves. This is a problem at the source, and I would call that a bug. Note that the source has a dam and if the source had a constant rate this would not occur. So, for the two comments that it isn't an issue, I think this debunks that theory pretty well.

real lakes slosh around in their basins, usually from wind.

[Entoarox]

Originally posted by night:

Something else... the game doesn't model more than one square depth of water flowing. This is my first play through, but my dam face is 5 wide. Four dam piece and one 3 height flood gate in the middle. With that gate all the way down the dam still fills and reaches the same height and flow rate as when it is completely closed.

It does not model any squares at all, it uses a heightmap to manage water flow, but neither actually matters because that is not the issue, there is a hardcoded limit to how fast water can flow on a per-column basis, this is why your water is not flowing any faster, it is flowing as fast as the sim allows already.