tips for making a mist generator?

[george constanza kinnie]

I'm still trying to understand the water system but how does mist generating work?

[treehann]

You need water flowing fast downward and falling past the spaces whre you want mist, into a deeper place. a.k.a a waterfall. I'm in the process of researching this too and I think the answer to getting a waterfall is, you either have to find a waterfall (link below) or make one. I'd like to make one on my map but I don't know how yet. I can come back if I find out.

Link to finding natural waterfalls:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zhhou7/waterfalls_and_you_guide_to_finding_a_water/

Note if you build behind a waterfall, you will need to put vertical iron bars or vertical grates between the waterfall and the mist room, otherwise dwarves will try to drink from the waterfall and fall in and die.

[db48x]

When liquids fall from one z–level to a lower one, they can generate mist in neighboring tiles. It should not be difficult to come up with practical designs. Try them out and report back on the results; we love screenshots!

[Dagmar]

Identify a handy renewable water source, like a river. DO NOT TOUCH IT YET.

Next to that, start digging. Dig a tunnel just under the surface right to the edge of the river. You'll channel that out later but NOT NOW unless you have amphibious dwarves.

Split that tunnel so that, for example, if it's going east, you have it flowing through a diagonal both northeast and southeast. Keep it going a couple of tiles like that, and turn them back around toward the middle and split those so you've now split it into four streams that each end in the four corners of a 3x3 checkerboard. For reasons you'll learn later if you don't, go ahead and floor up everything with stone tiles, but the four corners of the checkerboard you're going to dig down and cover with four stone grates.

Now, below that build a cross-shaped wall and run that water out from each in the NW, SE, SW, and NW diagonals and dig down again, covering all eight of those with floor grates, so that you now have eight places where water comes down no deeper than 1/7 at a time (because it has been very depressurized).

Repeat that pattern as far down as you like (and heck, put some ramps or stairs in the middle of it) and then hollow out a space about 9x9 so the water won't have a chance to build up, and then on the floor below that, run a drain to the edge of the map, smooth the end, and carve a fortification (or just flood the hell out of the first cavern).

This will generate plenty of mist without drowning any of your dorfs if you do it right. Dwarves going up and down the stairs/ramps will frequently experience a sense of relief from seeing the falling water. Note that this definitely causes an FPS drop, so... absolutely put in a floodgate and a grate at the top before you seal up the "sprinklerhead" so jetsam doesn't get in and block the floodgate, and at any moment if you need to you can turn off the water.

Yes, this is tedious, and usually I build sort of a half-arsed vertical fortress alongside that while I work on it so I don't have to really move everything and then once I've gotten that working I start the process of building a more properly optimized fortress.

[Morkonan]

Is there a way to make this an enclosed system? IOW - Will water evaporate if it's not on a floor?

I have a stream that freezes during the Winter. (Warm swamp biome, go figure...) The only other water is likely far below and I don't want to deal with that right now.

I have a huge cistern, though... I could draw from that and create a waterfall loop, but... I'm unsure what the loss rate would be or if there would be one at all.

Any advice, anyone?

[db48x]

I believe that any 1/7 tile of liquid can evaporate, even if it is falling. But the chance per tick is pretty low, so you are unlikely to lose much water that way. I suppose if the waterfall were tall enough…

[Mepho]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Is there a way to make this an enclosed system? IOW - Will water evaporate if it's not on a floor?

I have a stream that freezes during the Winter. (Warm swamp biome, go figure...) The only other water is likely far below and I don't want to deal with that right now.

I have a huge cistern, though... I could draw from that and create a waterfall loop, but... I'm unsure what the loss rate would be or if there would be one at all.

Any advice, anyone?

It seems that only surface non-salty water freezes, so if you make an underground channel every inch of water running there should keep going (as long as the "injection point" doesn't freeze over).

If you take my save and look at the pit we talked about, everything on the sides freezes over (water drips from the walls and makes an ice wall) because it's considered surface. All the water in the covered spaces instead doesn't freeze (despite being in the middle of freezing water still). On the left side, two Z-levels down, where the main drainage is, the very first square freezes because it's channeled from the top but the rest of the "tube" stays liquid regardless as it's considered underground.

[edit]
As per evaporation I think there's literally always some consumption, but if you make a reservoir it shouldn't really affect you, at least from the bit I've seen so far.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by db48x:

I believe that any 1/7 tile of liquid can evaporate, even if it is falling. But the chance per tick is pretty low, so you are unlikely to lose much water that way. I suppose if the waterfall were tall enough…

Gotcha.

So, the trick is to make it a much more biggerer... waterfall. 7/7 falling water for everyone!

Gotta put those toy boats to use, after all.

[db48x]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by db48x:

I believe that any 1/7 tile of liquid can evaporate, even if it is falling. But the chance per tick is pretty low, so you are unlikely to lose much water that way. I suppose if the waterfall were tall enough…

Gotcha.

So, the trick is to make it a much more biggerer... waterfall. 7/7 falling water for everyone!

Gotta put those toy boats to use, after all.

No, I don’t think you need to engineer your way around this “problem”. The evaporation rate is low enough that you may never need to top off your cistern. Just do the simplest thing possible and let us know how it works.

[Xcorps]

Mist generators are a bit too involved for a forum post, use the Wiki and the video I'm going to link to at the bottom. They aren't hard. You just have to learn a few rules.

1) I strongly recommend that you do NOT use a flowing water supply like a river or a brook to power a mist generator. Mist generators are great for happy thoughts and flooding. Fill the water supply for the mist pumps by hand and then stop.

2) The first time you make one, make it outside your fort. Build up from the ground. You don't need tons of parts. Build enough parts for 6 pumps, have at least 20 logs on hand, blocks, and 20 mechanisms. You're going to want some floodgates probably. Skill doesn't matter.

3) For power you do not need waterwheels in a river or brook. You can build or channel the flow channel and use a pump powered by a dwarf. As soon as the dwarf starts the pump, the waterwheel starts turning and assuming you have it connected correctly the waterwheel will power the pump that powers the waterwheel. I'm generating 1200 power in a 10x14 area, completely isolated from the brook. I did use the brook to provide the initial charge of water to fill the water channels, but then I shut off the floodgate. You really don't want to provide infinite water to pumps unless you are diverting flow.

4) You don't need a lot of them. 3 single-tile generators will cover more than 28 walkable tiles, so if you put a couple on your highest traffic hallways like the entrance to an inn or temple your dwarves are pretty much have a permanent happy though and memory buff.

The same rules that apply to moving water apply to magma. Except that if you are moving magma you have to use magma safe components.


If you haven't used a screw pump start here: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Screw_pump


This video does a great job covering power and building small footprint generators in the Steam version.

https://youtu.be/5IYsQ9FjtfA

[True Guesser, Wand Bearer, etc.]

As an aside for anyone else reading this; I've found the simplest mist generator is to drop water on top of a statue. The 8 tiles around the statue can be floor grates for drainage or recycling. You do not need much flow, a depth of just 3 or 4 will be enough to spritz your Dorfs.

[ARRATHON]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Is there a way to make this an enclosed system? IOW - Will water evaporate if it's not on a floor?

I have a stream that freezes during the Winter. (Warm swamp biome, go figure...) The only other water is likely far below and I don't want to deal with that right now.

I have a huge cistern, though... I could draw from that and create a waterfall loop, but... I'm unsure what the loss rate would be or if there would be one at all.

Any advice, anyone?

For ideas see this video by Blind. Small, enclosed using four pumps and just two buckets of water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdrkZ2Zb5uc&list=PLcOt9GXNrkgiFBTcz_kMycm6fvnYsn9XG&index=34

[Helios]

i made a reservoir with water filled from river seperated it from river (important or you get overflow) and pumped water 3 level up with 3 pumps split it into 3 channels and let it drop on floormetalbars near my corridor leading to my temples so every dwarf has to pass the waterfall if he go into the temples.

[Erei]

Drop water from above (any way work, but I would suggest an automated way). At every places you want mist, put metal bar or floor grate. Feel free to put fortification around so people can't go there but still get the mist effect.

Tapping a river works but it may freeze during winter. You can also make a closed loop with screw pump to pump it back above.