Mechanical Water Pump?

[DracoDruid]

With requiring an insane 700 hp only to pump water from a lower level to a higher, I never ever even tried using this thing. With an abundance of explosives, I just blow everything down to base level :P

Is anyone acutally using this thing?

[Alcator]

It's an endgame tool for very specific "perpetual motion" systems. Most players don't bother with that kind of setup, since either windmills or engines are typically enough to achieve what can be achieved with these pumps.

It requires "insane" levels of engineering and very deep knowledge of the game systems (including how to exploit them).

[PUMP] --> [PUMP] --> [PUMP] --> {top of a cascade} --> Wheel --> Wheel --> Wheel --> Wheel --> Wheel ...... Wheel --> {Bottom reservoir from which the pumps take water}

This kind of setup (with 30+ wheels in it) can result in a positive power balance, which means you can have this operating even during droughts, at least until enough of the water evaporates. On Hard difficulty, this can be quite powerful.

[DracoDruid]

Yeah. Why bother. I usually just levee/dam up the map's water exits. Add some bigger reservoire with floodgates at the source and you have an overabundance of water anyways.

[Alcator]

Originally posted by DracoDruid:

Yeah. Why bother. I usually just levee/dam up the map's water exits. Add some bigger reservoire with floodgates at the source and you have an overabundance of water anyways.

So, to clarify, the Mechanical Water Pump is NOT meant to primarily solve "Water shortage" -- it's supposed to be an ENERGY component. Reservoirs are of course great, but they won't give you power withOUT a lot of micromanagement (operating floodgates etc.).

[Wolfman]

Actually I would like to see more of those very specific tools in the game. I think it's totally okay that the mechanical pump is something that you won't need in your first 100 hours - or that you don't need at all to have fun in this game. But more of these tools would give us more flexibility to build special situations where it is fun to use these items. It's a sandbox game, after all.

[hokomili]

Originally posted by DracoDruid:

With requiring an insane 700 hp only to pump water from a lower level to a higher, I never ever even tried using this thing. With an abundance of explosives, I just blow everything down to base level :P

Is anyone acutally using this thing?

You can use it to construct a "perpetual irrigation system", or a constant water flow system.
The concept is to have a large water reservoir and the reservoir contains 1 input and 2 outputs. The input is of course the water source. One of the output is the mechanical water pump, with a long canal stretch around your colonies (usually with watermills to power back the mechanical pump). The other output is flood prevention output (toward the map border).

The purpose of this is to irrigate as much land as possible during drought without the need of beaver dumping water or transfer water to the irrigation tower. You may also want to add some water pump at the end of the canal, which may give you a higher productivity. (It's certainly faster to pump downstream than to pump at reservoir and distribute them, if you have a district down there.)

Originally posted by Alcator:

...
So, to clarify, the Mechanical Water Pump is NOT meant to primarily solve "Water shortage" -- it's supposed to be an ENERGY component. Reservoirs are of course great, but they won't give you power with a lot of micromanagement (operating floodgates etc.).

I don't think they were mainly designed as an energy component. But surely they can be used on a battery/pumped-storage hydroelectricity or whatever that was called.

[Kinkystador]

I use it with a pair of windmills when I forget to open the flood gate, my water gets out the reservoir, then I need to pump it back in, just to avoid waiting it to evaporate or flow away from the buildings below

[QueenPixxa]

You are all so clever!!
I remember one of my first games, not having any idea what that pump would do, and I used the science points to unlock it. At that point I had no way to set it up in a way that would make sense, so ended up losing much needed science points, no way to power it, even just for kicks... so put it on a list I have of "items NEVER to buy until I have a large beaver structured life". Good learning, though.

[Jambie Lionheart]

>.>
<.<
You can achieve the same thing by building a dam and then the wheel(s) on the downhill side of it. It's merely a question of funneling the water into the wheel for extra efficiency. The downside is, of course, droughts, but batteries will counter that. Build them tall.

[jamiechi]

Originally posted by Alcator:

It's an endgame tool for very specific "perpetual motion" systems. ...

The developers said that they disabled the ability to make perpetual motion systems. I just read it the other day and can't find the post for some reason. (It was a link to an offsite location.)
Just found it:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/discussions/1/3825288583723147680/
The link is on the 3rd post down.

[Lil Puppy]

They have 2 purposes:
1. Pumped water storage. Water wheels don't move if the water doesn't move.
Pumped water storage is used in the real world to provide for both power and water to homes depending on the purpose, most are used for power storage. You can do this in-game too. Create a large reservoir, use the pumps to fill it from a lower reservoir, then create a levee system from it with water wheels in it. If you create enough water wheels on the flow from high point to low point, you can overcome the power requirements of the pumps to keep them working and generate positive net power for your city.
2. Emptying a location you want to terraform/mine that is constantly under water. We usually need to dam a location, place the pumps, evacuate the water from the dammed location, then remove the pumps. This allows us to use the new dry area for whatever we want.

[Holce]

I have 3 use for them.
With ironTeeth when I cannot dig (not enough depth), I uplift water during the wet season with a huge water wheel (or two).

With FolkTail, I have two uses.
Folktails can only pump water 2 depth. I Build a one height levee where the pumps are. I dig 3 more depth and use a mechanical pump with windmills to fill the small two depth reservoir.
That give me a 5 deep water reservoir for ForkTail.

But I also dig a hole in the the lake I plant my water crops. I use the mechanical pump to keep water during the drough. I use one high floodgate at 05 height. The excess water returns to the hole instead of excaping through the 0.7 height dam. That keep the level around 0.5 for even a 30 days drough.

[Puppy Cat Underfoot]

I'm not even working on perpetual motion, my goal is to green the entire map. To do that I need mechanical pumps, and channels for the water to go through.

[jamiechi]

I was thinking of starting at the water source, and making a channel all round the map edges at the highest level for Irrigation. But this will only work well after you have dynamite, and maybe the dirt blocks. Could make this 'aquaduct' with Levee blocks though. That would remove the need to use the pump.

[LadyAquanine735]

I use the water pump for two things: filling up water-based farm fields that are not accessible by a normal water source, and water reservoirs that are higher up than the regular water source.

In fact, I'm currently using water pumps (Ironteeth, Experimental Server) for the Craters map.

I have two [levee-surrounded] fields of mangroves that I pump water into periodically to keep the trees properly wet. I also am working on building reservoirs for districts that will be high up on the crater walls, and in order for my beavers to survive in those districts, they will need water pumped up there to both hydrate them and fertilize the plateaus. Since the deep water pumps can only go down 6 levels, I have to use more than one and I create "water steps" to transport the water uphill.

It's one of many reasons I like using Ironteeth for extreme terrain maps, because their pumps can go so deep. Their wood-burning engines also come in handy.

[Furball]

On most maps there will generally be a natural basin you can collect a deep amount of water in and depending on where this is on the map depends how you may use the water pump.

On my current map the natual basin is the lowest point of the map so i have
Water source---> 1 tile high Dam to keep water for my land farms and also my shallow water aquatic farms---> 2 tile high dam to create reservoir of harvestable drinking water---> 2 tile high dam with 1 tile high of levees (4 tiles deep) to hold as much leftover water as possible.

In long droughts i use water pumps going from my final reservoir 4 tiles deep to my farm zone to keep just enough water in my farm zone so they don't dry out.


On another map there was large natural resrvoir at the start of the map with the water source so i had
Water source---> 3 tile high dam with 1 tile high levee (4 tiles deep) to hold a much water as possible ---> 1 tile high dam for farming ---> 2 tile high dam for drinkable water.
In normal droughts i would use the 3 tile high dam to keep the farm zone topped up and then in really long droughts i would use the water pumps to utilise the final tile of depth trapped by the levees so all 4 tiles.

Some may look at the 700hp power requirement but tbh if your at the point of using water pumps you should have the ability to produce and store massive amounts of excess power and 700hp really is not even noticable especially as you will likely only really be using it for topping up and not using it constantly.

Obvioulsy with the iron teeth natural ability to pump water deep they have less need for a water pump but simply being able to pump large quantites of water without manual labour still makes them useful. Before water pumps were added i used to do the same thing with lots of beevers/bots and water dumps but it takes a lot of beevers to do the job of one water pump and not just the additional pumping and dumping but also the transportation...i would have around 10 water pumps (10 beevers) 10 water dumps (10 beevers) a hauling post to carry the water (8 beevers) and depending on how far apart the water zones are district gates dedicated to just moving the wate (10 beevers) and in that case another hauling post in the other district (8 beevers) so up to 48 beevers or 1 water pump.

If you really wated to you could put 14 beevers in power wheels to power the water pump and save yourself the need for 34 beevers and all the additional housing, water, food, entertainment etc you need to maintain them.