The Idiots Guide To Timberborn

A collection of useful tips, occasional madness and sleep deprived ramblings that will probably make sense, all gained by playing, failing and reading. Until 7am in the fluffing morning.

Intro.

Hello and welcome to the first ever guide I've published, if not the biggest written work I've done for years... And as this is currently a work in progress it'll be updated roughly every week content wise until it goes over most, if not all of the game's features. Which given it's in early access, is going to be for quite some time. And then then there's the mountain range of editing /cough

Firstly though, this guide assumes you know how to access the build menus, place stuff to be built, make planting/logging zones etc. Simply because describing those would take a lot of work and is also kind of boring for me to explain :P Fortunately youtube exists for those who need to learn the very basics. But I am working out how to make a video to show those bits and will post a link here when it's done.

Anyhow - the aim of this guide is help the perplexed deal with Timberborn's game systems, it's quirks, occasional weirdness (water) and point out what fun you can have with the game and how to avoid killing all your adorable beavers. Unless you need to. And keep me from playing Timberborn too much, because dear elder gods is this addictive, more so that factorio. i.e. stuff like how to use dams, what to plant, the dark horrors of logistics, surviving crises, dam worshipping 101, wellbeing and why you should maximise it etc etc.

In theory I should be able to get it all across relatively well (depression has it's "perks", definitely not worth the cost though), and I hope I manage to do that. But any constructive criticism, highlights of mistakes of the factual or grammar kind etc is highly welcome. Because I at present I never get enough sleep due to nortriptyline side effects giving me night sweats.

Also there will be humour.

So, hopefully this helps other enjoy this wonderful game just as much as I have and if not, that's fine. And if you need further help, the discussion page for this game is full of mostly friendly, helpful people.
_____________________________

Translations wise - as long as you give me credit/blame, go for it. I do not expect the jokes to survive translation of course :P
_____________________________

Timberborn 101: Part 1 - How Not to Kill Your Beavers - Water, Food, Building and Priorities, Jobs, Wood and Storage

1) Don't panic.

2) Water 1 - Water is life and fortunately you can build dam blocks right from the start, so the first thing you should do when starting is dam the nearest river asap and also try and get floodgates 2 sooner, rather than later. But we'll discuss dams and power in a later sections. Due to time pressure, you want to dam the smallest distance possible, later on once you've got forestry started and have flood gates unlocked, then you can go nuts.

• e.g: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621455604

3) Water 2 - And in the same vein - build water storage, the ratio is 1 beaver, 2 water per day from available sources. Roughly you want twice the amount of water storage you have beavers. Pump's are fairly efficient so you can get away with 1 to start with. Ideally they should be located somewhere with 2 block deep water. But to start with, place them upstream of your initial dam.

4) Getting Stuff Done - Want something built or hauled asap? Prioritise it, especially you should tick the option to prioritise haulers for this building for pumps, water tanks, food to start with. This can be exploited to get a dam's first layer built more easily without resorting to putting a path on top of that layer by layer caking priorities on the dam wall's levels. Or prevent an expensive building eating all your resources when it's being built.

5) Food 101 - Early berry patches will not last you, get a farm up immediately after building the dam. beavers need 2.5 food per day, but droughts can kill your plants and you'll need a safety net of food stores. However, to fulfil Wellbeing you need all three foods, say hello to future planning fun. And a lot of math if you want to optimise...

• Ideally you want 2 farms, 1 set to plant, 1 set to harvest. But at the start go with 1 farm and leave space for another one because you will need it. With 1 job slot open and fill it when you can and switch priorities when need be.
  
• Start off with carrots, they mature quickly and without a reservoir with at least 2 layers of water stored, you run the risk of a long drought killing your crop. Leave 1/2 the available green space for potatoes and plant once you've got a 2nd farmhouse set up.
  
• Suggested ratio is [[need to research, suggested 7 carrots: 8 potato: 5 wheat, but what per farmer is ??? + feeding...]]
  
• Once you've got the initial boom of building and got some wood spare you can build a grill to get grilled potatoes. Should also have some storage by now for the spuds, uncooked and cooked, but farms can hold 50 units of each crop.
  
• Roughly half and half carrots and potatoes works to satisfy Nutrition I and II. Wheat requires about 1/2 the land potatoes does though, so you don't need much to provide a plentiful supply.
  
• And if playing with the Folktails, get beehives asap, you'll need to put more farmhouses down, but they provide a 25% boost to crop growth. Which means you'll be swimming in food if you can feed the grills wood and set up wheat processing and cooking.
  
• Use new Districts for wheat or save some flat land for it. As you need 30 gears and 20 planks for the Grist Mill on top of lumber, and it'll take a while to get the industrial infrastructure for gear production up and running. Never mind having a constant power supply. Plus inventors to create the points to unlock the Grist Mill and Bakery.

6) General Build and Research
Build at least 2 inventor's huts when you can and get forester asap, it's in wood. Unlock flood gates 2 asap, then what ever you need. Dynamite's definitely worth focusing on though, since it makes storing water far easier and cheaper. As levee's are very expensive when mass building. Otherwise, for basic wood industry you want 4 plank and 1 gear factories to start with, and unless you're mass producing gears, keep the ratio to 1:4 when expanding. Because you will need a lot of planks. Otherwise:

• In Paths the highest priority is stairs and wooden platforms. With them you can access more of the map and build bridges allowing for better pathing and thus allowing you to build further out from the district building.
  
• 2nd highest priority is in Landscapes for levees and floodgates 2 and 3, which you need to make higher dams to get through longer drought seasons.
  
• Housing wise - Larger the better, simply because you can rapidly house homeless populations. But even the mid tier and mini lodge options can be useful to fill in space in apartment builds. Unlock as need be.
  
• Depending on game difficulty and the map being used, you can easily just have 3-4 inventors and produce points on X3 game speed while you get other things done. Though for the big stuff, you are going to want to build more of them. As 3000 research points is a pain to reach otherwise.
  
• Unlock decorations etc when you can spare the points, the bonuses can be very, very useful to boosting productivity.

7) Jobs and How to Effectively Use Them Early On - At the start you have limited adults with which to get started and no forester either. So to help keep the logs flowing pause any lumberjack flags once all the adult trees are harvested while you wait for the saplings to grow. Along with scrapping flags when you're done. Or if you need to harvest crops, open up the jobs at the farm.

• Though where this is most important is in emergencies or recovering from mass die off. It is pretty tedious though to turn off every building you don't need, but that's what pausing the game is for. So get pausing anything that isn't water/food/hauling.

8) WOOD IS LIFE - Grow maple, gives you 8 logs for 24 days growth, shrugs of droughts with ease. To start with though, you will probably want some birch, because you may need some logs asap, but make sure to put down some maple and replace the birch once you've got your first harvest of maple going. 1 Forester to 2 lumberjacks usually results in regular drip feed of wood from my experience, as maple's take awhile to gnaw down and overlapping foresters can help keep planting up. Also place 1 lumber pile near the forester.

9) Storage - There's 4 good places to build these, near district boundaries (we'll get to that later), next to production buildings, close to Distribution Hubs/Drop Off Points and under or by houses. Wood storage you especially want on the borders and next to planks and for the starting faction, you're especially going to want to put them on the boundaries and by foresters. As as they can only store 180 logs and you're going to need a lot of logs. Get warehouses when you can, as they provide a massive amount of storage and can be stacked on top of each other with some work.

• [[go over how to set storage up to take only certain items, need to test]]

Timberborn 101: Part 2 - Housing, Expanding and Building New Districts, Power and Builders + Haulers

Split into 2 for more room to explain things + the eventual pictures. Editing brought to you by Tired Lion - Breakfast For Pathetics, which fluffing rocks.
_____________________________________________________
11) Housing - With Folktails Housing is how you grow your population, so you want some excess housing if you want more children. And if you want them fast, you're going to need to cut working hours and have more leisure buildings etc. But some otherwise general housing tips:

• To start with house everyone you have + 1 extra 3 person lodge for more kids or to house them once they've exited the pod(s) if playing Iron Teeth
  
• Houses are stackable, so get stacking once you've unlocked the relevant platforms and stairs like I suggested. And remember to make paths on the platforms too.
  
• Helps though to plan for adding in leisure, deco and monuments in the future, and leaving a 9x10 (for the stairs) or more square and building in a C-shape, with some storage included can help with that. e.g. here's the two I use roughly, as they're prototypes: [[grab one of the main housing block in D1 already]]
  
• As for where to build - since green land can be at a premium at the start, usually any area of grey, dry land will do. And can even be expanded via platforms and dynamite. And since area of effect monuments give is as high as the map, feel free to build up as high as the pathing will allow for.

11) Expansion! - To build a new district it must be connected by a road with a district gate to another one, which can create problems on more hilly maps. However, overlap districts, combined with placing storage in the over lap makes districts more effective and can allow another district to build the stuff in the overlap. Which is very useful for expensive buildings. Generally though, you want to expand up river and create the largest body of water you can + get metal scrap so you can get dynamite.

• For example on the Prairie map, the best spot is the dry valley next to the C shaped hill. As you can dam the river and the valley using the hill and get a decent starter dam that will provide you with 1 level of water for droughts. And can be expanded to provide 3 levels with temporary labour Districts.
  
• Next place on that map would be at the exit of the lake so you could dam it to create a 3 layer high lake, giving you plentiful water for pumping. Also the dam can be used to channel water for power production.
  
• Important - you can plant trees and they will still grow underwater, so you can use this to get the logs you need until you can solid distribution set up.
  
• Though generally you want to aim to get a 3 layer deep dam set up. Which is why my usual River's End district for damming the lake in the Prairie map is sitting unoccupied in the current save.
  
• Generally you want to set up forestry and potato farming and processing if you can in every district, as you're going to need the logs.
  
• Also read 12), you're going to want to know how to use the limits to avoid killing your beavers by sending off all their food/water or running out of wood products etc. As otherwise they will send everything you need to survive.

12) Power - Rather annoying it is, basically stick to waterwheels, as with the buildings in the power menu you can chain them together to produce massive amounts of power. Which you will need. And with floodgates you can have them running all drought if you dammed enough water. Anything powered by windmills will eventually shut off when the wind drops, and since wind drops effect the whole district, say goodbye to making anything. Don't worry, I'll be doing a whole section on it :evil:

• In red is the core I started my industrial section off for that save: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2624268330 All three wheels will usually run when there's flow and provide enough power to make sufficient planks and gears to get you started from just 2 Water Wheels.
  
• Also, once you unlock levee's you can redirect the water flow, which is useful when you have a curve in the river you want to run water wheels on or at the entry for a dam. More details (eventually) In Dams 101. Which you can see an attempt to do in the above picture.
  
• Although, given the variability of wind speed across the map, in theory you could set up a map wide power network to average out the wind speed variability for Large Windmills. Placing power transmission parts on platforms. Royal pain to do though due to the need to sometimes dynamite land for water canals. Otherwise is an option provided you work within the constraints
  
• Hamster Wheels are also an option, especially for low power needs, like small scale local plank, gear production or for a Grist Mill for wheat. But it doesn't scale like water wheels or even windmills can.
  
• Of course Hard Difficulty changes this, due to 21-30 day droughts you're going to need to use Large Windmills and Power Wheels, or if playing as Iron Teeth - Power Plants, as water will not be available anywhere near as long. Which means I really need to test out the distributed windpower network already...

13) Builder Huts and Hauler Posts - You will need them, also when they're not building stuff, builders act as haulers, making it very worth building them. Haulers you will never have enough of until you build a very high population district, but can be run at 4/8 usually until you have enough unemployed or high hauling needs.

• You'll know when you need more by checking how much processing buildings (like Wood Mills or Grist Mills) are stocked with ingredients vs how much is stored in farms/woodpiles etc. If the worker is having to run off to get goods you don't have enough haulers.
  
• And since I didn't mention it yet - build haulers next to production buildings and close to lumber piles, along with having storage close to production buildings.

Timberborn 101: Part 3 - Distribution Posts and Wellbeing

I keep running out of space dam it.

_____________________________________
14) Distribution Posts and Drop Offs - Welcome to hell, population you. Since beavers haven't invented 1 wheel cargo wheel barrows, trains or cargo barges, they can only haul 23kgs of goods. Which amounts to crap all if you set up lots of routes. Don't do that, instead each distribution post should only send 1 to 2 things to only 1 to 2 places, although posts feeding districts that are starting up can send everything to begin with. Drop off posts should be right next to haulers or places using the cargo.

• To avoid the hub giving away all your stuff you need, you can set limits in the hub's panel for how much you want of each item, low = amount you want to keep locally, high = the threshold stuff will stop being imported. Especially important for outposts sending food to other outposts, as if you don't set a limit you will run the risk of starvation.
  
• i.e for food, it's usually better to send potatoes or flour than grilled potatoes or bread, because they take up less space. However, on starting a new place, you're better off sending grilled potatoes or bread until food processing is sorted there..
  
• Water can be safely hauled, and should be because not every outpost is going to have a water source.
  
• For logs, you're better off just putting log piles in the zones of district overlap and using haulers to do the dirty work. But if you really, really need to move them, you've going to need multiple distribution hubs with the full 8 workers
  
• Probably the most efficient way to use these is to chain them, making sure to send stuff only to the nearest district, rather than a far one. That way you can multiple deliveries done in 1 work day.

15) Wellbeing - The Nuts n' Bolts - Actually worth building, as they increase work speed, walking and growth rate. Books for example give a massive 30% buff to work rate. So build them when you can. [[rewrite asap dam it]]

Managing Crises 101

Originally part of section 2, ran out of space lawl. But hey, makes it eaiser to find.
[edit] Ugh, oh for a better text editor with steam.
___________________________________________

Crisis Management 101 - Unless you're hyperaware at all times, statistically speaking things will go wrong. Maybe you forgot to set a district limit at the Drop Off Point or Distribution Hub and sent all your food/water off. Maybe you forgot to seal a dam up properly and flooded you water pumps or just didn't build enough pumps and had your population boom. Fear not, for you probably don't need to give up just yet. Even if the deaths are piling up in the event ticker.

1. Don't Panic. Pause the game and go though the ye olde "Orientate, Observe, Act" mantra, and work out what's needed and how bad it actually is.
   
2. See What Resources You Have. Chances are you probably have a stock pile or harvestable plants in the ground or in a store house. Or lots of water stored in another district. So retask Distribution Hubs (or build them and free up 8 workers for them) from sending anything other than food and water and set them to deliver those.
   
3. Beavers Can Survive More Than You Think. Basically from my observations they can go 1 day without food or water, they'll still flash the water/hunger icons, but they wont die and those 1st to reach those states gets resources first. So you can string a population along with deliveries until the cause of the crisis is sorted.
   
4. Job Reallocation - Unless you need to build stuff, restask any builders, and any factory workers (bar Grist Mills of course) to fill needed jobs. Namely Water Pumps, Farms, Food Processing and Haulers. Why Haulers? Because sometimes food needs to be processed and due to the distances involved the worker can't get themselves. Also water needs to be stored to prevent it evaporating during a drought.
   
5. Sacrifice - At the moment there's no negative effects for beavers dying of anything, which means if you only have enough resources to keep a certain number of beavers alive, you can make a district and send them there to die. Though you're going to need to turn buildings off to ensure vital stuff stays functional.
   
6. Save Scum - Sometimes things are too f*cked to unf*ck or you brain's got the dumb and can't see a solution despite this guide + other guides etc and provided you didn't turn it off autosaving you should have plenty of autosaves to turn to.
   
7. Learn From It - i.e. what went wrong, how did it go wrong and what's needed to prevent a repeat? It might be you need more water storage, or more food, or even more dams. Could be you grew your population outside of the available resources or failed to set up Distribution Hubs properly. Probably the most important step, and who knows, maybe you'll learn to do it irl :P

Dams 101 - Part 1: A Guide to Dams and Where and How to Build Them.

1) Intro
You might think this game is about beavers, but you're wrong, it's about dams. Mighty, majestic, towering dams of mere wood. Holding back gigalitres of oh so heavy water, threatening to flood you if you fail to master damming. Which are used to help keep your beavers alive so they can build more dams, through the worst of droughts where even the deepest of lake can dry out. And your tiny 1 level high dam ain't going to save you then. No, as all there will be left is dead beavers and no one to build more dams.

Fortunately for you this game provides you some very nice tools and the minions to fulfil your dam requirements. Minions who think they are star of the show, but will work night and day even if you feed them only potatoes and leave them homeless with nothing fun to do. Just remember to water and feed them and keep the replacements coming as the current ones attempt to escape their grim reality as slaves to the god that is the DAM.

/ahem

Anyhow, now that's out of my system (ADHD can be fun) - To survive droughts as they intensify you're going to need to build dams and potentially lots of them. And depending on the terrain it may be something massive or something relatively small, but remote and a pain in the rear to get to/supply. So my aim here is to take some of the headache out of building dams. So you can move onto stupidly big mega projects like greening the whole map or flooding everything. And just maybe start thinking hard difficulty is possible.

2) Dam Basics:
So you want to build a proper dam? Well, you're going to need the following:

• Forester unlocked and forests grown and harvested and the wood industry to provide planks
  
• Levees + Floodgate 3 unlocked, all the wood platforms + stairs,
  
• Distribution Hubs and Drop Off Points + the population to fully staff 3 or more of them.
  
• A suitable choke point in the terrain that can be blocked with Levees and Floodgates
  
• A path that goes to or close to the area so you can place a district
  
• Preferably some land you can grow hopefully maple trees on.
  
• And some Dynamite set up and being produced will help a lot here. Mainly to allow water to not get trapped and to increase reservoir capacity. Which will in turn give you more water.
  
• Preferably some watered land at the site you can grow trees on, even if you drown them after planting, because they will still grow.

So find your ideal location, often the maps contain gorges or pre-existing lakes that can be raised in height to 3 levels or more. The smaller the space to span with flood gates and passes to block with levees the better. Because the faster you build it, the quicker you can fill it up before the drought hits.

For example, on the Prairie map there's 2 good locations for major dams that you can hit early on, 3 if you rush it.

1. Site 1 Location: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621466977 The exit for the lake is one and can give you a 2 level high reservoir and has the wood available locally to get the dam completely build. And you can make a road around the edge of the map to get to it without needing to build anything. Though it is downstream of your starting area and so unless you're irrigating via water dumps, you run the risk of crops drying out in longer droughts without water flow from upstream.
   
   
2. Site 2 Location: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621465805 Reachable once you've got stairs unlocked and you can easily bump it up to 1 level high safely by sticking a line of levees across it. This can be done by building a district so it covers both sides of the hill, allowing you to build a dam across the dry flats. However, to get it up to 3 you'll need 4 districts. 1 temporary one on the lowest part of the hill to build the route across + the stairs to get up 1 level at the edge 1 near the edge to set up forestry and gain access to the higher sections of the map. This allows you to keep building the levee dam on the edge of the map up two levels. Pretty easy to do though and no dynamite needed. Unless you want to increase capacity of course :P
   
   
3. Site 3 Location + Side Dams: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623450267 Just upstream of Site 2 is the main gorge of the river. This is almost ideal to dam with a layer or two of levees + 6 to 7 Floodgate 3's. As you can see from the picture, you've got 3 side dams + the main one to build. Do to this, it'll takes 3 districts - 3 permanent ones, 1 possible temporary one. One permanent one is seen in the upper left, and the upper right one can be set up from that one or a temporary one in the basin which I usually do to save some time and make it easier to blast out the terrain to allow more water to flow.. Along with the 1 at the bottom left, which helps with the lower side dam and further work + harvesting scrap metal. Site 3 provides considerable water, on part with site 2, but also provides more power and scrap metal.

Site 1 is the easiest for new players to deal with, since you only need to send water and planks to get started given the local berries and trees and secures drinking water for your main settlement due to it's shear size.

Site 2 however provides something a bit more useful - water to power waterwheels through the drought. Meaning industry can work and not be subject to the variability of wind power or the lumber devouring of Iron Teeth power plants.

Site 3 provides even more potential power from modifying the gorge, which is useful if you need to produce a lot of dynamite etc. However, it requires considerable investment in Distribution Posts to feed, but is faster than Site 2 to get completed due to needing less investment in levees. It does however, rely heavily on dynamite to be fully effective, due to the pass into the basin needing to be dynamited to get access to the full 3 potential layers of water there.

Now that you've got examples - more generally the best spot to build dams is the locations that allow you to capture 3 or more layers of water with the least amount of levee blocks and explosives that you can reach and supply with ease. As your colony grows, and you build up the forestry and population to support more distant locations, along with an explosives industry, you'll be able to do larger projects and possibly green the whole map depending on water sources and drought length.

Though to survive those 21+ day droughts you're going to need more tricks than just dams. Which I will eventually get around to :P

Dams 101 - Part 2: Dam Building Logistics and Droughts: The Dam Bit + Overfilling

Why yes, I ran out of space again, was it obvious lawl?...

Dam Building Logistics
It's actually a lot easier than you think, as you can exploit the fact saplings will still currently grow when submerged, i.e. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623450222

A temporary district was set up above the level 1 water height and 2 foresters where built, though ideally you want to place more to get trees planted asap so you can have more wood sooner. Also provides a longish term local supply of wood for future long term projects. In this case for building a high canal of levees to water the highlands to the right on the image. This temp district was then used to build stairs to gain access to the left and right of the map and then deleted once the dam to block off the edge of the map was built and the lake level could be raised. And rebuilt up on the high lands. The new district can then be used to plant trees up on the new arable land, expand arable land via explosives and water dumps and so provide to the district that's building the next dam (Site 3 in this case). Along with building my mega project to green the highlands.

Otherwise the general scheme is so:

• A new District that can cover most of the building site or all of it with routes in that wont get blocked off when you start building.
  
• You'll need 2 relatively close by full staffed Distribution Posts as the Source
  
• A steady supply of logs or the ability to feed the Source with logs via ofter Distribution Posts
  
• A dedicated Drop Off Point with local district distribution limits set to 480 logs for high and low settings
  
• A Distribution Hub to send food, planks, water until local water supply is up and food if possible.
  
• The Dam District should have 2 Drop Off points, the District building set to be fully staffed, 1 Builders Hut, set to fully staffed, 1 Haulers, set to 3 workers, 3 log piles close to the dam site(s) and a small warehouse for food and planks. Plus enough beavers to beaver the lumberjack flags to eat up any local sources of wood. We need haulers to move logs to keep them flowing. And lastly - Foresters and beavers to run them if there's any arable land we can plant trees on.
  
• Make sure the Dam District has been supplied and send enough beavers to it to man everything.

And now you can more easily build most medium sized dams, though remember, floodgates tier 3 are expensive, so make sure to have a good supply of planks and the platforms set up to build them.


As for bigger projects - if aiming to build them faster, you need to have more builders huts and the larger supply of wood needed to feed them material. Along with preferably a local water supply as water is heavy to haul and also some crops to help feed the local workers. But I'll go over the specifics in Distribution Posts 101 and District Specialisation and do a section afterwards showing an example. Since I have some big projects I'll end up doing in the current save.

Droughts - The Basics For Dams
Worry not, there will be a section on this going into the numbers (oh elder gods), but generally a 0.5 drop in a single floodgate is enough to sustain a flow downstream to feed downstream dams and keep water wheels ticking over. You will need to adjust the top dam's floodgate. Case in point:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621465805

But basically, the deeper the dam the longer it will last, so the more water you can have behind your dam the better. Though due to the mechanics of evaporation, a shallow dam reservoir will evaporate quicker so it pays to blast out unneeded land submerged in one. But if you place the floodgates atop levees at the front of the dam, you can have an emergency amount of water you can release if need be. You just need builder access and the resources to replace the deleted dam parts come the wet season. And you can build a line of flood gates 2 blocks in front to help trap some water while waiting for the dam to be rebuilt. In fact, you could do this upwards as much as need be, the only issues being rebuilding everything in the right order. At least until we get higher floodgates etc.

As for refilling, build a water level next to the dam and, put all bar 1 floodgate at the dams usual full level and have the remaining one set to zero. You should notice the water level rises above 0.5m above 0m position. Once it has, lift the floodgate up in 0.5m increments until the reservoir has risen back to the normal height of the dam.

Overfilling Dams
You can also overfill the dam in the day just before the drought, e.g. if you had seven floodgates tier 3 you'd set 4 to 3m and the remaining ones to 2.5, adjusting as need be to keep the dam from spilling over. This allows you to get 0.49m of water that gives you just under 1 day's worth of evaporation losses.

Power Generation 101 - A Guide to it and the Art of Water Flow Manipulation

WIP
__________________
To Do:
1) basic power generation, ie how to exploit rivers effectively + hamster wheels

• Can use d1 industrial zone pic? Need to highlight 1st 3 water wheels
  
• Exploiting gorges

2) Rework Water Flow, have rivers first, then dams, then canals for fun and profits
3) Industrial POWER - or how to gets all teh powers
4) Windmills - backup power, power networks to mitigate wind variability (theory and practice) and best uses.
________________________________________
Cut from dams:
Water Flow and How to Exploit It It
Water in this game has momentum, and drains similar to water in real life. Which creates some issues with dams and insuring a good water flow to keep the water wheels running all the time. I found this out the hard way with the precursor to this set up: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621465759
Originally there was a line of wheels behind the dam top, but they had inconsistent flow and only the wheels placed downstream seemed to move consistently. So finally getting sick of it I deleted everything, and built the lines of levee walls seen bellow and finally got strong enough flow in the same direction as the wheels to run them. This ran even when the dam was closed off and set to 2m on all but one floodgate to .1.5m to give some flow. Though not always and I suspect at greater evaporation rates there will be reduced flow.

As for rivers, this sort of works: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621495682
main issue is the lack of space and failure to build some levees under the Explosives Plant. So often some of the wheels wont work.

This works much better I used the natural constraints of the gorge to further channel the water: And eventually would have had further supporting levee walls to direct flow downstream to power more water wheels.

More generally though, the smaller the gap the water has to flow through and the greater it drops (in theory, game engine may have a hard limit), the greater the speed with which it flows. Which means you can potentially get power out of any flowing water source provided you work with the constraints of the game's water physics.

_______________________________________

And from the department of "using" the game's systems, here's how to generate energy with water dumps and pumps:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/discussions/0/4814903332720658648/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2629074248

Credit goes to tenderloveheart for showing this off :P

Work in Progress + Future Sections + To Do.

Scratch pad to show what should be coming and what I should be doing, because ADHD and depression = fun getting stuff done

WIP Current- will probably sort out a dam and a power guide, but first I need breakfast and my bloody 4-bag cup of tea damn it.
- Dams - mostly done, edit pass, more pictures
- Power - Started, includes water flow

Roughly other bits:
- Housing - Folktails to start with obs.
- FOOOOOOD - aka farming 101, food bonus and data stuff, when I find it to replace the mk1 eyeball method.
- Water and how to irrigate effectively + cisterns and water storage
- Forestry tips - because someone will totally need it.
- Storage, how to use it the smart way lawl.
- Districts 101 with specialisation in a separate section, as you need knowledge of distribution hubs to pull it off.
- Drought survival
- Expanding the smart way
- How To on Distribution Hubs and Drop Offs.
- Whatever else my sleep (and now caffeine) deprived brain comes up with.

----------------------------------
To Do/get started 4/10:
- Get started on Dams, 3 sections - intro, how to build effectively, long term aims [2/3rds done, needs a pass over]
- Power and You - show how you can build waterwheels under water and have them work, minimum flows need to run them and how to get effectively generate massive amounts of power. Also bits on how to route power effectively despite terrain getting in the way. [getting there]

To Do: 8/10
- Split Timberborn 101 into 3 sections, ran out of space in part 1 damn it. - Done!

To Do 10/10
[shifted here, as too tired to do this on the day from biking 10Km...][edit - lawl, got caught up again in Timberborn >_< it's 12:30am so hitting the bed...]
- Get pics for the sections, make a physical list so I remember

- Finish dam guide and review it for errors, grammar, sensibility - Do some more work on Power section, probably start on Farming and Food, because it's something people seem to struggle with. but will take 2-3 days vis research etc. - More editing as need be. - Add food data to guide from here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2616182664 if I can do it today. ______________________________Stuff to include: Drought management stuff: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/discussions/0/2956041222227392007/Another source for info + as an alternative to my guide:https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/guides/

Update Log

Record of updates so I know wtf I've done, because sometimes my memory is totally crap. All NZ dates and date format.

• 06/10/21 - Added Update Log section + spelling/editing as need be + (add stuff done today)
  
  
• 07/10/21 - Added new sections due to running out space and splitting off stuff into the correction sections (Dams 101 Part 2, Power Generation 101), add pictures (finally lawl), various edits and corrections. [edit] Plus more corrections, edits and edits, because editing is foreeeeever. [edit2] And more edits, because only at 10:30PM NZ time do I notice stuff ;-;
  
  
• 08/10/21 - Fixed the wrong picture for site 2 (how the?....), split Timberborn 101 into 3 due to lack of space (stupid character limit is stupid), edits. Procrastinated and wrote the intro, added sources/credit section.
  
  
• 09/10/21 - Fixed formatting in Timberborn 101: Part 2.
  
  
• 10/10/21 - Some minor edits, finished Dams 101: Part 1 to first final level and added remaining picture to it and Part 2. Added picture of a good spot to put a water wheel + industry.
  
  
• 11/10/21 - fixed formatting error in Dams 101: Part 2.
  
  
• 12/10/21 - fixed food per day value in Timberborn 101, added note on hard difficulty power generation to Timberborn 101 and added a source for District Limits stuff to Credits/Sources section for future reference.
  
  
• 18/10/21 - fixed a mistake in the Timberborn 101 section's bit on research, and over the last couple of days have outlined new sections that are work in progress so I don't forget to make them later. Semi-confirmed the lodge based dam doesn't actually work.
  
  
• 19/10/21 - Added WIP section for the walkthrough video, outlining it's content.

Sources/Credits - WIP

Sources/credits dump

- need to learn how to put html anchors in/if it's actually possible in steam for proper citing

Water and food usage - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2616182664

Building productivity data:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Timberborn/comments/pyfhev/building_productivity/

- District Limit's and Distro Posts stuff from The Undead Watcher:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/discussions/0/2953788788205365663/#c3084394448739390265

- One weird trick for dams. credit to Aieonae for showing it off: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2616520787

Dams 101: Part 3 - Advanced Dam Design (WIP - Stuff To Test)

So it turns out that a single gap in a dam wall can actually dam the flow and regulate how much it flows, thus allowing massive dams.. But this probably depends on much water flows from the water blocks in the map:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2616520787

Moar testing is required. But not tonight.

As this could mean that it's possible to build a dam that can last though out the hard difficulty's long droughts without having to constantly rebuild

[edit] - Huh, it actually works. Dams take longer to recharge though, but the downside is you need a massive reservoir to keep it running through the dry season. My upper reservoir bottomed out in testing yesterday in less than 4 days days, but that's relatively small.

Hmmmn, need to hit a map with moar water for it...

There is a hybrid approach to this though - just place a single floodgate lower than the others and it'll boost dam drought usability by a day or more depending on the size of your reservoir.

__________________________
And then there's this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2626291276

It's magic. I think I know how it works, but dear elder gods, it's going to be fun to test...

[edit] - doesn't work face forward, maybe side on? Had massive water flow, equivalent to the open gap in the dam testing it with it coming out of the dam.

[edit 2] - Okay, I think I know how this works, it's basically the single gap dam but with 2 gaps as the lodges aren't waterproof and water flows through them. Will change my mind if there's new evidence, but I've got other things to do that test this again.

(WIP, just notes) Food 101: How to Feed Your Beavers + Irrigation

Right, rough notes while I remember I need to do this, because ADHD = forgetful at the best of times:

- values are in the timberborn datasheet guide, need to bring them up and frame the info in such a way it sticks in people's heads

- like using food per beaver per plot value (have spreadsheets will do maaaaaaaths)

- need to go over good plans for fields (maybe? area's probably better), the cost/benefit of placing farms on arable land vs off it, plus the problems with height reducing farmer's abilities to reach crops.

- general method for farming effectively is one farmhouse on planting, one on harvesting. Ensures a steady use of crop fields unless the patch is too big or there's not enough storage/haulers.

- Food storage = warehouses dedicated to only food, nothing else. Why? Need food stocks for feeding districts that can't farm, setting them up and in the event the faecal matter hits the fan and you run out of water to keep your crops alive.

- Is a section on how to feed distant districts needed? Probably, but better off in distro posts 101, maybe just a mention it's better to send potato's and wheat/flour rather than processed foods.

- Irrigation is basically easy. 1 dynamite, 1 water dump = huge area of arable land. Or use a corner of the land, block it off with levees and use a water dump for the same effect. Canals are ascetically pleasing though and have utility as a place to put buildings like farms and distribution posts and hauler's huts. But should not be used for drinking water.

- berries = not that useful at present except for starting off a new district or if you're playing the Iron Teeth faction. Need berries per pod value for that too. Should mention it here and in population management for Iron Teeth.

WIP - Water 101: How To Keep Your Beavers And Crops Watered

Note - there will be maths, so sorry for anyone with dyscalculia those brain can't use numbers ;-; There will be some written guidelines though.

While the info's still in my brain:

- 1 cube of water contains 5 units of water (way to small frankly, should be 100) and evaporates at 0.045m/day. So 1 cube of water will last 22 days, 1/2 a cube 11 days

- Pumps can output 44 water per 18 shift before any , which is enough to water 22 beavers, or in the case of one of my 10 pump set ups, water 220 beavers before wellness bonuses. But that's 440 units of water, which is a fluffing lot per day.

- Therefore, for hard, you really want to store as much water as possible in tanks, mainly because the water in them doesn't evaporate and also compresses 60 units of water into 1 tank. And 1 large tank contains enough water for 150 beavers for a day. Which comes out as 0.0066666666 tank/beaver aka 1/150 per beaver. Using that we can then use your population number to find out how many tanks you need per day and use the length of a drought to find out how many tanks you need.

- Ugh, really need to buy a grided maths book to work out the formulas if they're not elsewhere available.

- But basically, take the water height, times it by the width and length of the reservoir, then by 5 (the units of water per cube) and it'll give you the number of units of water per reservoir.

• Which for a hypothetical 2.5 high, by 10 wide and 10 long reservoir gives us 2.5x10x10x5 = 1250 units of water, which dividing it by 2 gives us the number of beavers it can support.
  
• Divided by the number of days a drought lasts gives you the rough estimate of a reservoir's capacity to provide drinking water. Which for a 9 day drought, gives us enough water for 69.444444444... beavers.
• 
  Taking into account evaporation, that's more like 2.1 levels of water, which running the numbers gives us enough water for 58.333333... beavers before we take into account water dumps or any canals.

- So basically, for storing water in reservoirs, the bigger the surface area for 2.5 level water depth they are, the better they are

- Ultimately though we're limited by the strength of the water source blocks in the map in terms of how much water is available per wet season.

(WIP) Timberborn 101 - Part 4: Walkthrough for The Still ???

So turns out my computer wont catch on fire when recording with AMD's built in stuff in their graphics driver package and the game plays "okay" enough on 3x speed. Which means I can finally do something about the very, very basic stuff + a walkthrough for starting on the Prairie map. Because writing isn't always the best way to explain things, especially when you need a butt ton of pictures.

Time limit will be about 20 minutes and it'll go through using the UI, setting up path networks, forestry, water, food + farming and the importance of daaaaaaaams, industry start, research and even making new districts + where to put your next dams! But it'll take me 1-2 weeks from now to make it and learn to cut and edit it together into an acceptable mess :P

And yes, there will be timestamps and I'll aim to make it add free, but with Youtube's "content" ID system who fluffing knows what will happen.

__________________________

Right, finally getting started on the ground level stuff, youtube now customised, script outline which I'll ad-lib from being drafted out. And my handwritting is utterly horrible lawl

[gravy_business]

Thank you for writing this! Very very helpful and I'll be coming back to it as I play more. And gosh what you're saying about ADHD sure does resonate with me.

[The_Mess]

@WORLD OF AJ - um, having grown up in the 90's I'm a big fan of "read the manual", however there isn't one for this game, but there is a settings page with the keyboard controls in there.

Which I why I didn't cover it. Anyhow, post it notes are great for giving you controls reminders if you need them too. Otherwise playing as always is how we generally learn basic controls these days :P

...And if anyone's wondering why I haven't updated this mess - my ADHD went from moderate to severe since 2019, so brain currently is being a [redacted] on everything. Otherwise I'd been able to get back into this game and have a rough bad water guide to help and finished off the WIP parts all-bloody-ready >_<

[WORLD OF AJ]

great guide but I need what buttons to push too. You think that could have been in the very beginning part?

[James Finn]

>depression has it's "perks", definitely not worth the cost though

Have a hug, OP. > <

[mdeha004]

I think the powering through water with the dam is an interesting concept but what would be superior would be to power through engines and make enough canals for forests to power them. It takes 12 Maple trees per every 30 days to power one engine. So engines are far more space efficient than would seem to be and are superior to dams in almost every way.

[rororobin]

this is an awesome guide, thank you for writing this! it was also a very funny and relatable read :D

[Rindr]

This really helped, was having problems with my other district but now it's all fixed

[Techhead7890]

I relate a lot to the ADHDness lol. Good pile of info to leaf through!

[Ninsky]

this guide is too dam good

[mystery]

Thanks for the guide. It helped me build a settlement that can last through the droughts on normal difficulty. Regarding the trees, I picked Chestnut trees, due to the combination of wood & nuts (harvestable with gatherer flag). Currently setting up my first district for building my first large dam (on spot 1) per the guide.