[HELP] Dam It!

[MN121MN]

SO I need help on building a dam network for the Two Rivers map.

My original plan was to place a dam upstream in those 2 different rivers, then have a larger dam downstream. It turned into a grave mistake.

As you can see, the downstream was dried up, and the water soon rose up, flooded part of my city (thank God it's still a barren projects), and flooded the two upstream dams as well. Any ideas on how to place the dam downstream?

 

[Ri0Rdian]

I would not bother with dams at the moment. They are either broken or more likely just bugged. You can get a working dam (although almost certainly not worth it for the $, tens or even hundred+ of MWs is terrible) but it is very counterintuitive most of the time. When you expect a dam to function it often will not and you will have no idea why. The water spawners might need some tinkering with (when the height of water is not sufficient for the dam to work but enough to turn off the spawner you are screwed) or even the dam mechanic itself before they become useful. At least this is what I think atm.

Edit:
You can try how they work with the unlocked all and unlimited money mods, try Islands map. There you can pop down a 1600 MW one (which is extremely OP ). Experiment with the height a bit, etc. IRL you would build a dam, and wait for the reservoir to fill up, so it can produce electricity. You would have to pick a location though, so that it can accept that amount of water and not flood around. This currently doesn't work very well if at all.

DAMned DAMS!

Edit2:

Given their cost, you have to make at least 300-350 MW for it to be worthwile somehow, and double that for it to be great (they are great and kinda cheap source for electricity irl, although they cost a lot to build). They might need changing so that you pay upkeep from their length and/or height and not static one. Currently you can pay 3200 for a small dam making 16 MWs, and same for a huge one doing 1600MWs. First one is not even worth considering, second is godsend.

Edit3:
Screw it! Dams are certainly very fun mechanic, coupled with the dynamic water they offer a lot of fun even as a single part of the game! There would be more if you could set up walls, etc to redirect rivers, seal parts of land, or modify land to suit your new dam (this is almost aways the case irl, why not in game?!).

Why is there no terrain tool (even costly!) for us to play with? Sad, very sad story!

 

[MN121MN]

@Ri0Rdian: Thanks for the reply. In my game, I find that deleting the downstream game made my dams functional. That being said, the electricity that I produce doesn't seem to be constant (the right one produces 36 to 48 MW), but the left dam is quite stable (at 120 MW). This led me to believe that dams have some use in this game. Also, it's because I needed the space to clear up all those wind turbines...

 

[Dizman7]

They certainly need some tweaking and/or the water physics. The main problem is they need water flow to work, but it's easy to dam something that appears to have flow only to find out its a lake, so the flow stops once it's dammed.

They work on some maps, Quill has one in a video that produces 1600mw, and my friend did the same map and got the same results (I forget the name of it, Islands maybe). If they work it dams the river but flow keeps coming making the water raise behind it, once the water level gets pretty close to the road then it finally lets water thru to generate power. Which it does take a bit, even in a suitable spot for it to work.

I'm playing on Sandy Beach and I've realizes it can't be dammed. There is what appears to be a river but damming it just kills the flow and it never generates poweras it appears upstream is just a lake.

So yeah, it's super trail and error right now and seems map dependent.

 

[stumason]

You could always fiddle with the map in the editor, which incidentally also shows you were the water spawn points are so you know where the water is flowing from - you can then adjust the height of the water accordingly as well so you know when you place your dam, it will fill correctly and generate power.

That said, it isn't particularly intuitive - I built a dam on a map the other day - nominally it would produce 1GW or more, but would never fill correctly. I figured out this was because the "river" I built it on, while flowing one way without the dam, would back up and flow off the map the other side. My solution was to edit the map so the "river" didn't have direct access to the map edge on one end, so water flow was always going in the direction it was supposed to.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

I feel the issue is compounded by the watercourses in the stock maps all being relatively flat, and indeed the geography in general is pretty flat.

No doubt a design decision (cludge fix) to limit the frustration caused by the 'Too steep' building restriction, and the lack of in-game height map manipulating tools.

 

[Chehaut]

So far I did not encounter any problems with dams in my city. They generate most of the electricity and seem to work pretty well.

Image:

Spoiler

 

[Walltar]

There is only one option in two rivers ... Monster dam!

 

[Ri0Rdian]

That Monster dam only works (does it actually?) thanks to the bugged nature of dams. The left one should not work as a simple wall, yet it does.

As I stated, dams producing sub 100 MWs of power or around that number are essentially worthless, because they cost too much, and any other power plant is a cheaper source of electricity.

 

[Walltar]

Well that small dam is higher so it works as wall, since it can never fill up. But dams are capped at 1600MW... so smaller one down the stream is more cost effective.

But yeah, after some fidling I managed to get it working. You need to find the right height for it.

I managed to make even small river dam working ... problem there is that current changes around the banks of the river, so building smaller dams only to portion of the length of a river would stop that and the dam starts working. It looks ugly though, since when you connect those partial dams with road they produce hole through map.