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[Snaake]

So basically, I was thinking of a 1-tile magma trench with something like:

2+.+.+.+.
which would then progress to e.g.
332+.+.+.
(used tt-tags because code-tags lose the color)

Where the tile with 2 magma was filled in, and will continue to get filled in, by minecarts bringing magma. My question is, will the doors burn and thus release the magma into the next gap, and then the next, in a controlled manner? Or do they burn so quickly that they don't appreciably slow down the spread of the magma? Or not burn at all? If that's so, would something else work, eg. doors that melt (the globs stay of course, but if it's a necessary evil), bridges, floodgates, other impassable furniture like statues, or maybe even wooden pumps?

The idea is to prevent the evaporation of just having the whole trench be open at once, and the micromanagement of setting multiple individual track stops. This could also work for filling other kinds of larger reservoirs, possibly using hatches or something to slow down z-level spread. If filling is too fast, overflow might of course happen, but I plan on making these systems so that dwarves don't have to go into the area while it's in process, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

On the other hand, if wooden doors don't burn, that would make for a cooldwarfy building destroyer trap

As a slightly separate question, do dwarves mine/carve fortifications while standing on a door tile, and could that be used to do a slightly more safe magma-tube breach, by slowing the outflow of the magma for some ticks after the breach (when using the "busy to leave" method on the wiki, for example). Ofc with water for the dwarf to run through on the way out, too.

[Sutremaine]

Usually magma doesn't affect a building or object until it's on the same tile, but I can't remember if wooden doors are an exception (wooden screwpumps are).

Wooden screw pumps will burn through as you like, but probably too quickly. Try stone and metal pumps instead.

It's a pity you can't use the impassable tiles of workshops, but those allow fluids through.

[Snaake]

So bridges or floodgates out of wood, with non-magmasafe mechanisms, are still possible, if more fiddly. I guess I'll check the door thing.

[Hans Lemurson]

What I've done is use non magma-safe floodgates and mechanism and open them one at a time to expand the magma pool.  From what I've seen, so long as the magma doesn't enter the tile, the building is safe, but once opened the magma does its work.

[cdombroski]

You could just channel out your trench a tile at a time; refill it every time the length doubles so that you don't have evaporation issues.

If you're just looking to power magma workshops, just make one tile pits to contain the magma.

[Snaake]

If the burning doors don't work, I'll probably go with hauling enough magma-filled minecarts into a minecart-only stockpile near the pits that their contents won't evaporate when emptied into the trench. Then fiddle around so they get loaded into a minecart on a track stop that just dumps them onto rollers which push them onto a track stop which dumps the magma into the trench. If that works. Really interested to see if it does (either system).

[Sutremaine]

Another option: make your trench vertical.

A 1x1 shaft won't evaporate at all while being filled*, and once you've got enough stored you can open the shaft at the bottom and let the magma pour into its final location.

*You might lose the odd bit when there's 1/7 magma over 7/7 magma, but it's not really significant.

[Snaake]

Holy necro-thread, Batman!
... well, it's only been 7 months. And this was my own thread originally, too.

Anyway, thought I'd post a new idea I had in here that would probably allow for this, because said idea is so amazingly dwarfy.

Step 1: dig out the trench and build doors in it on every second tile as in the original post. Fill the first tile with magma. Make sure all doors but the first are tightly closed (do you see where I'm going with this?!).
Step 2: pit a kitten in the open space between the first 2 doors
Step 3: PROFIT!!!

Horribly, horribly cruel outside of a DF context, but again, so amazingly dwarfy: the kitten/puppy/<insert flammable creature here> will path the only way it can, through the door holding back the magma. You can use captured goblin prisoners too, I guess? The magma should incinerate both the kitten and the magma, then you can fill up the trench a bit more with your magma-dumping minecarts or whatever, make the next door pet-passable, pit another pet, and so on. As a safety precaution, you probably don't want to have ramps out of the trench, or you might get a !!kitten!! running about and creating !!dwarves!!, if it doesn't die instantly. Of course, if you use creatures (modded or caught) that are not flammable and

BONUS: It's not possible to pit creatures that are already somebody's pet, but it IS possible to pasture them in.

BONUS2: I din't even need to change the thread title.


I need to test this.
edit: tested this.
result 1: adopted pets do not seem to be pittable. Edited the above for this.
result 2: the cat I'm using for the test is indeed stuck between a door and locked in from above at the end of my test trench by a floor hatch.
result 3: after letting the game run for 20 seconds or so at fps in the 40s, the ☼acacia door☼ blocking the magma is still unharmed (note that I had actually forgotten temperature off the first time round, but confirmed this later).
result 4: the cats I pitted do not seem to want to path through the door, not even if I make it fully allowed

Well, the results were disappointing so far. On to a 2nd test: what if the cats will only path through the door if it's their only way out?
result 5: thought about the possibility of pre-pitting all animals in before opening any doors. Realized that they could just be pastured in before the doors are shut, thus allowing disposal of pets in addition to generic stay animals.
result 6: Pastured cat in a 1x1 room with the only way out or even move in any direction being through a magma-releasing door. Setting door options to forbid passage/keep tightly closed not apparently necessary, cat is content in pasture.
result 7: SUCCESS! Once the door was set to pet-passable and passable, the cat traveled through it, opening it and letting magma through. Both the door and cat burned after a short while.


Final notes: I should note that I ended up being somewhat undwarfy (no burned cats or danger to dwarves) initially due to forgetting to check that temperature was on. Test 2 was done with temperature on. The method works, to an extent, even if it isn't quite as carefree as I'd hoped. Or maybe I was just impatient about the cats pathing through the door when it wasn't actually an escape route.


edit2: So, I changed the thread title slightly, thought I'd note it in this last post instead of making a new post purely about that. I'll probably do at least one more post showing the layout I actually used for test 2, and some ideas for other options, since that layout isn't that ideal for my original idea. Mostly because it's not a straight line  and thus doesn't satisfy my aesthetic requirements for fortress design.