"Guide" How to build a working Hydro Dam

[MrFisse]

Saw some posts with people having issues building dam, played around with it and came to the conclusion that it is possible. But there is some things that has to be done correctly to make it work.

1. Chose a map with water spawners on a high elevation (mountain maps)
2. The length of the dam will determine the maximum possible power output.
3. The height difference between the intake side and the output side will determine the actual output.
4. Water physics is REALLY slow and finicky. A tip when building is to use the devmode and in "Simulation" expand the "Water" section and increase the "Water Sim Speed" to something higher to speed up the water settling.

When large amounts of water are moving around on the map (after terraforming most of the time on the dam) the engine will bug out and jump between 0x and 1x and the water simulation grinds to a halt. Just spam the Sim Speed until the water starts to settle or evaporate and the sim should revert back to normal eventually.

*Note on exporting electricity*
If you want to only export there is no need to build a dam that can deliver more than 800 MW as each power line only can carry 400 MW and there is only 2 connections on each dam. Branching several lines to each connection point on the dam does not seem to increase the exported power.

Some screens on a dam I built that works "perfectly" (also after reloading)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068766775
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068767553
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068767756
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068767996
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068768310
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068768691

Dev mode settings
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068775089

[building_cities]

Thanks! I’ll try it later

[Sir Ludicrous]

Hey there, thanks for writing this nice guide!
I managed to get a pretty massive dam going ~4 GW output.
You already confirmed my suspicion that i cant export more than 800MW of power at a time, but they way your guide words it implies that you can always draw more than that for local power consumption. How does that work?