Ground water pumps as backups

[ragen311]

I don't want to bleed my water resevoir dry so i am introducing other sources over time. How can I make sure that the ground water is the last water to be used.

Example: if rain traps are satisfying all needs, pumps will wait until more water is needed than the traps can handle...rather than the other way around.

[Lucky_Star_Fan]

Build a liquid storage with a pipe balancer before it, prioritize your other water sources at the balancer.

[Kaery]

Strictly only needs the balancer. The storage just adds a bit of a buffer. ...Which is a good thing, but not always needed.

[VladK02]

by the end-game, you will completely forget you have groundwater. And when you see it puts out less then a full Tier 3 pipe, (and you need 3-4 full pipes just for farms, 1 pipe for acid, 1 pipe for industrial park, 1 pipe for ethanol, half a pipe for oil refinery until you switch to hydrogen.,..etc) you will go LOL what is this trash, and delete the groundwater pumps entirely.

So dont worry about depleting reservoirs.

Just bee-line straight for nuclear reactors, and set one reactor to making water.

But the most common setup is like this:

1. Route ALL groundwater, from ALL locations, into one giant barrel somewhere in a central location.
2. Connect all rain collectors to those incoming pipes on a priority input of the pipe router.
3. All water for your entire base then leaves form that central location.

Size of water deposit determines water regen rate. I forget exact ratio, but 15,000 water will perma-run 2 water pumps, by memory. So you never worry about running out.

Best way to save water in mid-game is stop supplying fresh water to your settlement. Once you unlock water treatment plant, waste incinerator, and vacuum desalinator, those together make a closed loop that permanently recycles waste water into fresh water, with a little top-up using steam from the incinerator, that runs off gas from sludge from water treatment plant. Saving 200-300 water this way makes a huge difference on your ground pumps drain.

You can also recycle most of the water from coal / wood power plants back into the system using cooling towers.

Biggest drains are - town, farms, power plants. ground water and rain not enough past early mid game to run all that. So, eliminate town usage, reduce powerplant usage from cooling towers (or make em water-positive by cycling low steam into vacuum desalinator), and all you got to feed are farms and some industry. And then its manageable.

[pete1051]

I have noticed that rain does replenish groundwater to a degree, but only if I have on pump drawing from it.

I also use "easy" wetter settings. And with that if I make tons of flat space, I can run entirely on collectors. But on the easiest wet settings, I get 7.3/60 from one, I use banks of 10 for 73/60.

Efficiently recycling helps a lot too. A lot of things only temporarily need water and spit most back out again. Or they just sip water.

I try to keep settlement water separate and over supplied.

The down side is waiting longer for trucks to dig/fill needed space.
I use lots of space, I like the new maps. I am a COI pack-rat. :P

Tank farms bigger than the ground reservoirs.

I get enough flat land leveled out, it's a sea of collectors, tanks, and warehouses.

I forgot I had ground water by mid-game, lol.