It powers nothing since it's not even collecting water. It's going in the opposite direction than it should. I don't get it. It can't drop anything since it's not collecting anything.

One can say, that you trying to find logic in a FANTASY game. Sometimes I want to beat up people saying this with a sturdy stick... I mean, you are absolutely right, comrade, such mistakes shouldn't be tolerated.

Definitely backwards:

https://gfycat.com/calculatingjoyousglowworm

logarifmik wrote: »

One can say, that you trying to find logic in a FANTASY game. Sometimes I want to beat up people saying this with a sturdy stick... I mean, you are absolutely right, comrade, such mistakes shouldn't be tolerated.

Stuff like an watermill should still behave pretty much like in real world, yes it might be supersize or OP but behave the same way. The sawmill in Skyrim is actually a lot like an recreation of an 1700 sawmill close to my place. Main difference is that the carrier return is not automatic but require you to use an handle however I thought the carrier return was game mechanics.

And yes it mounted wrong.

Davor wrote: »

Siohwenoeht wrote: »

Davor wrote: »

It powers nothing since it's not even collecting water. It's going in the opposite direction than it should. I don't get it. It can't drop anything since it's not collecting anything.

I stared at this for a long time just the other day and at first thought it was going against the flow of the stream. It is actually running the correct way, but the design does make it confusing lol. The buckets on the wheel are being pushed by the water, it is not collecting water. Rather, I assume, it is powering the bellows for the forge.

Never noticed about the stream pushing the water in. Will have to check that next time I am there. Thank you for that. Thing is where or how is the water being released? You would think we would see the water exiting the buckets then. This is more puzzling now lol.

sedi wrote: »

Definitely backwards:

https://gfycat.com/calculatingjoyousglowworm

LOL I love how the water is dripping off the buckets.

@Davor It wasn't until I saw the direction of the stream. Look at the bottom of the wheel and you'll see that the water would enter the bucket at stream level then would be released immediately after the bucket resurfaces.

Davor wrote: »

So where does the water go? Back into the stream? I guess that would be unlimited resource and not be wasted.

Yep! Instead of raising water to a different level (would require energy input) the water serves to simply make the wheel rotate (providing energy to the forge).

Think it powers the undo button on pts as it is not collecting water they will never be reversed

I've seen water wheels like that in real life. As other people have said the point isn't to fill the buckets and use them to move the water from one place to another - it's to push the wheel around and use that to run something inside the forge.

The water will be 'caught' by the bucket at the bottom of the right side and the force of the stream will push the bucket 'backwards' (left) and with it the wheel. The water is tipped out as the bucket reaches the left side and starts to go up (at which point it's upside down) - that individual bucket is then useless until it gets around to the bottom of the right side again and fills with water again, but that's ok because other buckets on the wheel will be in the water when that one isn't and as a whole they keep it turning. All the ones I've seen are on mills so they turn a grindstone (like a windmill) but with pulleys or something similar it could also be used to run the bellows in the forge.

Here's one of the clearest examples I could find of a horizontal mill wheel in real life, although I can't see what it's attached to:


I did a google search for mill wheels to find a real example for this post and I get the impression this type - using a relatively flat stream where the water is only at the bottom of the wheel - was more common in Europe and ones where the water goes in at the top and is tipped out at the bottom are more common in America, so whether it looks strange to you might depend on where you live and/or where you've seen water wheels.

It also makes me think the 'top loading' version might be more effective because most of them seem to be newer than the horizontal versions. The other possibility is that the change was because mill streams are notoriously dangerous - they tend to be much deeper and faster that other similarly sized streams and with unpredictable currents so drowning was much more likely, even for strong swimmers. But the change seems to have been long before health and safety was a serious concern, so I suspect it's more to do with efficiency or simply regional differences.