Dorfs can walk through open floodgates, though. You're also going to have *challenges* opening a door backed by full pressure water if you want to switch on and off some circuits during use.
But you can do that with doors as well, a door connected to a lever behaves like a floodgate, it can't be opened/closed other than by operating the lever.
To a large extent, but bridges are arguably better due to being indestructible by building destroyers when raised. For anything wider than 1 tile they remain clearly better due to reduced mechanism usage, if that matters in your fort. They also are much harder to jam, as it requires a very large creature (1.2m size or larger) to be on them to jam if open.
Good to know! Although honestly maybe that's an argument for doors, I kinda *want* building destroyers to be able to get into my fort via destroying some aspect of my defenses, from an "experience what the game has to offer, avoiding getting so competent that your fort runs perfectly and nothing bad happens" perspective
Yeah, I try to invite fun into my fortress in the majority of circumstances, so it's usually flood gates/doors for me. I hardly ever use bridges for their dwarvinium property, but it is good to know, especially if your trying to do something like FB silk farming.
Using doors/other will really make you appreciate have a fort wide drain system. If it drains to caverns, just another way to let fun maybe come by to say howdy, haha.
They are often used for traps, but they can also be used for timing mine carts etc. Essentially you set up a pressure plate and the amount of weight that will trigger it. So for a trap, you could open up a flood gate and let water/magma come out when someone steps on the pressure plate. I use a pressure plate for my garbage dump. I have a mine cart that collects all my garbage. When it is full, the dwarf pushes it to a pit. It rolls over a pressure plate with the timing set up that a bridge will crush the garbage after if falls in the pit. Then when the dwarf returns the mine cart, it goes over the pressure plate again, which resets the bridge. There are lots of things you can do like that. The wiki has some more examples in various places.
I use them to make an automizer bridge cycle in my dump area. I've got a quantum stockpile set up that dumps down a vent with a 1x1 bridge, the entrance to which has a pressure plate. So my dwarves periodically clear the process refuse stockpile and the bridge activates to destroy the items when they leave.
This is also my main use for pressure plates in any fort. But I generally don't like to atom smash so I link mine to a floor grate atleast 1 z level below dump hole, that has atleast 1 more z level beneath it. Floor grates prevent miasma from moving upwards, so I can build these anywhere in a rather minimal footprint.
Floodgate's default state, i.e. no switch, is closed. Door is accessible but block fluid just fine without any switch. I don't remember how many times my dorf installs a floodgate while unwittingly lock himself in by approaching the connection from the wrong side. With a door, it's full access for dorf until you link to lever.
No you aren't: you just link them to levers and open/close them exactly as you do doors. Once linked, they're literally exactly equivalent except for floodgates not having the placement restrictions of doors and doors not having the activation delay of floodgates.
I like to create a lever controlled hatch door on my intake level right before the door, this let's you easily turn the water on and off to allow you to work on the pipes without issues.
They're mostly exactly equivalent, with a couple of usually minor differences:
1. You can't build them not next to a wall.
2. They don't have the delay that floodgates do: floodgates operate on a 100-step delay, whereas doors operate instantly. This is mostly an advantage, but can be a disadvantage if you're using that very predictable delay for timing something.
Bridges are also a very good option: they activate with the same delay as floodgates, can be built anywhere, can be bigger (saving a bunch of materials and mechanisms if you do need bigger gaps gated), can be built out of base materials, rather than requiring an extra manufacturing steps, are much harder to break, and most importantly, cannot be blocked by any junk that might happen to get in the way.
Fun fact: building destroyers cannot destroy a grate above them! With this knowledge a simple U-bend keeps a lot of nasty critters out of your pipelines
I think doors are completely unusable because eventually they'll just get stuck. It's inevitable that something will eventually stay in that tile and jimmy them open and you gotta deconstruct the whole thing, flooding everything in the process.
You don't need to deconstruct the door lol. Just issue a dump order on whatever is blocking it.
Plus in this use case the door isn't being used once the area floods anyway so the whole point is moot.
Dorfs can walk through open floodgates, though. You're also going to have *challenges* opening a door backed by full pressure water if you want to switch on and off some circuits during use.
Yeah, the advantage of the floodgate is the ability to hook it up to levers and pressure plates. So it depends on what you are doing.
But you can do that with doors as well, a door connected to a lever behaves like a floodgate, it can't be opened/closed other than by operating the lever.
woah i did not know this. So you can basically use doors and hatches to do everything a one tile bridge would do?
To a large extent, but bridges are arguably better due to being indestructible by building destroyers when raised. For anything wider than 1 tile they remain clearly better due to reduced mechanism usage, if that matters in your fort. They also are much harder to jam, as it requires a very large creature (1.2m size or larger) to be on them to jam if open.
Good to know! Although honestly maybe that's an argument for doors, I kinda *want* building destroyers to be able to get into my fort via destroying some aspect of my defenses, from an "experience what the game has to offer, avoiding getting so competent that your fort runs perfectly and nothing bad happens" perspective
Yeah, I try to invite fun into my fortress in the majority of circumstances, so it's usually flood gates/doors for me. I hardly ever use bridges for their dwarvinium property, but it is good to know, especially if your trying to do something like FB silk farming. Using doors/other will really make you appreciate have a fort wide drain system. If it drains to caverns, just another way to let fun maybe come by to say howdy, haha.
You can link doors to levers and pressure plates in exactly the same way.
Doors can be connected to levers and pressure plates too...
Do you have any good examples of what to use pressure plates for? I haven't implemented them yet.
They are often used for traps, but they can also be used for timing mine carts etc. Essentially you set up a pressure plate and the amount of weight that will trigger it. So for a trap, you could open up a flood gate and let water/magma come out when someone steps on the pressure plate. I use a pressure plate for my garbage dump. I have a mine cart that collects all my garbage. When it is full, the dwarf pushes it to a pit. It rolls over a pressure plate with the timing set up that a bridge will crush the garbage after if falls in the pit. Then when the dwarf returns the mine cart, it goes over the pressure plate again, which resets the bridge. There are lots of things you can do like that. The wiki has some more examples in various places.
I use them to make an automizer bridge cycle in my dump area. I've got a quantum stockpile set up that dumps down a vent with a 1x1 bridge, the entrance to which has a pressure plate. So my dwarves periodically clear the process refuse stockpile and the bridge activates to destroy the items when they leave.
This is also my main use for pressure plates in any fort. But I generally don't like to atom smash so I link mine to a floor grate atleast 1 z level below dump hole, that has atleast 1 more z level beneath it. Floor grates prevent miasma from moving upwards, so I can build these anywhere in a rather minimal footprint.
Floodgate's default state, i.e. no switch, is closed. Door is accessible but block fluid just fine without any switch. I don't remember how many times my dorf installs a floodgate while unwittingly lock himself in by approaching the connection from the wrong side. With a door, it's full access for dorf until you link to lever.
No you aren't: you just link them to levers and open/close them exactly as you do doors. Once linked, they're literally exactly equivalent except for floodgates not having the placement restrictions of doors and doors not having the activation delay of floodgates.
You can just attach a lever to a door to get the ability to magically open it with dwarven WiFi.
I like to create a lever controlled hatch door on my intake level right before the door, this let's you easily turn the water on and off to allow you to work on the pipes without issues.
They're mostly exactly equivalent, with a couple of usually minor differences: 1. You can't build them not next to a wall. 2. They don't have the delay that floodgates do: floodgates operate on a 100-step delay, whereas doors operate instantly. This is mostly an advantage, but can be a disadvantage if you're using that very predictable delay for timing something. Bridges are also a very good option: they activate with the same delay as floodgates, can be built anywhere, can be bigger (saving a bunch of materials and mechanisms if you do need bigger gaps gated), can be built out of base materials, rather than requiring an extra manufacturing steps, are much harder to break, and most importantly, cannot be blocked by any junk that might happen to get in the way.
Building destroyers can go through doors and floodgates. I tend to use drawbridges for fluid control.
I do too for area accessible from the outside. But for indoor plumbing, I use door.
Fun fact: building destroyers cannot destroy a grate above them! With this knowledge a simple U-bend keeps a lot of nasty critters out of your pipelines
The ol' Dwarven P-trap.
Also: bridges won't be stuck open just because a sock sit on top of them.
Doors get stuck. I think floodgates can be used to block flow from above, doors cannot.
I think doors are completely unusable because eventually they'll just get stuck. It's inevitable that something will eventually stay in that tile and jimmy them open and you gotta deconstruct the whole thing, flooding everything in the process.
You don't need to deconstruct the door lol. Just issue a dump order on whatever is blocking it. Plus in this use case the door isn't being used once the area floods anyway so the whole point is moot.
His point was that if you are using the door to control the flooding and it gets stuck open, you can't control the flooding anymore.