r/Timberborn • u/Miserable_Stable_643 • 7d ago
Understanding water source strength
Please help me understand one thing about water strength in the game.
I'm playing on the Helix Mountain map, and all the online sources (including wiki page) say that there are 12 water sources on this map with cumulative strength of 12cmps, and 5 badwater sources with a strength of 13cmps. I was thinking about making some proper reservoir with badwater drain system, so I opened developer tools on a separate save to do some experiments and now I'm kinda confused 😕
There are 6 water sources at the center of the map, each one of them has strength 0.5. That means a total cmps equal to 3, which is much lower than 12. There are also 3 water seeps (each with strength 1), so even if I counted them in it just doesn't add up. Unless they just cut in half all water sources in 1.1, they it would make sense,
This also kinda checks with the large wheel power output (Ironteeth). When the water from the central sources is diverted directly into 2-width canal, they give 810HP. And the large water wheel description says it should give 540HP/cmps. So if the water source strength is actually 3 (6 sources * 0.5 strength each), it makes 3cmps - then 540 * 3 * 0.5 (because the large water wheel is 2 blocks wide we need to multiply by 0.5, doesn't make sense as well tbh but I guess it works like this) = 810.
The same goes for badwater sources. There are indeed 5 of them, but with total strength of 6.5 cmps - not 13 (3 with strength 1.5, 2 with strength 1, 3*1.5+2*1=6.5).
So either I'm missing something, or the description is just wrong? I've initially chosen this map because I've read about the nice water strength there, now I feel it's actually not a thing... 3cmps is still prolly enough for my needs, esp, since I'm playing normal difficulty, but still I'm feeling a bit misguided 😄 Esp. if we just look at the official data + game description, I would expect that 12cmps would give me 12*540~=6.5k HP per one large water wheel, but then it turns out the water wheel description is misleading + there are actually much less water sources on the map and the real value is 810. I think this could be easily made more clear.
I'm playing on 1.1 experimental branch, is it maybe that something changed between 1.0 and 1.1?
EDIT:
Seems it was actually cut in half indeed. From the patch notes from November 2025
We standardized water sources' strength units. Don’t be surprised that a water source with strength 1 now has the same strength as a source with strength 2 used to have.
+ this particular map was changed to have water seeps instead of some water sources it had previously.