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[Chaine Maile]

Is it possible to put a tunnel horizontally through a volcano? Only way I can think to do it would be to drain the volcano, build the tunnel, and let it refill itself. Can this be done without completely draining the main volcano to the level of intended tunnel?

Okay, another possibility would be miners standing in 3/7 water while breaching. I feel the chance is greater that the miner would get turned to obsidian, rather then the exposed magma square.

[khearn]

There are two ways I know:

1) Use a sacrificial miner. Pick some immigrant cheesemaker with no friends or relatives in your fort, hand him a pick and tell him "Congratulations! You're a miner now! Your first job is to dig out that wall over there. The one marked with a big red X. Yeah, it's kind of warm, that's normal. It's, uh, cause by the friction from drawing the big X." Also make sure to give your other miners a vacation at this time, just to make sure it's the new guy that does the digging. It's actually possible that he will survive. Having a down stairs in the tile he's working from might give him a better chance. Also designate something else to be dug once he is started, so he'll have another job to head for immediately after breaching the volcano, rather than having him stand around for a bit trying to figure out what to do.

2) Use a bit of an exploit. Dig up to the point where you would breach the volcano. Then dig a channel across in front of the volcano wall. Then build a bridge covering the channel. The bridge must be built from magma-safe material. Have an alternate exit from the channel. Now lock up any access to the area above the bridge, so the only way your miners can get to it is from below. Now designate the wall of the volcano above the bridge to be dug. The miners will go into the channel under the bridge and somehow reach up through the bridge to do the digging in complete safety.

The first method can only be used to make a 1 tile wide opening to the volcano. The second one can be used to make the opening as wide as you want. The first method will usually end up with your miner getting burnt a bit, and possibly killed. The second one is perfectly safe, if executed properly. The second one is pretty certainly exploiting a bug, though. The choice is yours.

   Keith

[Chaine Maile]

To clarify, I am talking about constructing a tunnel completely through an active volcano from one side to the other. Kind of like Aquifer breaching, but turned 90 degrees. Putting a hole in the side of the volcano is the easy part.

Sorry for the confusion.

[LordUbik]

Well, surely an interesting project! Unfortunatelly, i can't think another way to do it beside draining the volcano itself... but i'm really intrigued with the idea! Let us know your progress!

[blue sam3]

The only alternative that I can think of is to do something weird with obsidian casting, but I can't even think offhand how you'd do it. Draining it's probably the easiest way.

[arbarbonif]

What happens when you pump magma into a volcano?  You might be able to at least drain it into a cistern, that might avoid having to wait for natural filling at least.  Assuming that you can refill it via pumps without any problems.

[khearn]

I recall someone a while back who built a whole fortress inside a volcano. I think he drained the volcano and built a floor to stop the magma level from coming back up, then built what he wanted, then drained it again and removed the floor to let the magma come back up around his construction.

I don't recall exactly how he drained it, but it probably was just dig a tunnel to the map edge with fortifications carved.

   Keith

[Chaine Maile]

I'm thinking of something similar to that. I would really like to try to obsidian cast my way through rather then pump the magma out though. That's why I was thinking have the miner in 3/7 water. However, I am going to go ahead and guess that 7/7 magma would become 6/7 flowing into the 3/7 water, rather then the water becoming 2/7 and going to the magma. Also, best case it would probably just reseal the single mined tile, rather then go 1/7, 1/7, and hit the magma to gain any ground

Maybe have the miner on a preasure plate hooked to some kind of pressurized water release? Even so, you would probably throw the poor miner into the obsidian being cast, or even blast him into the volcano.

[khearn]

I suspect that even in the best case, he'd dig into the obsidian wall of the volcano, the water and magma would both rush in and hit in the now-empty spot, and they'd just turn into obsidian, leaving you exactly like it started.

Hmmm, if you did the dig from below a bridge trick, but had pressurized water above the bridge, maybe the water would insta-fill the hole and then push past it to turn the magma inside the volcano into obsidian. But going farther into the volcano would be tough.

[Chaine Maile]

GENIUS!

[Chaine Maile]

You would have to start from both sides, realistically, and create a sort of arch through the volcano....

[khearn]

Well, it's an untested, off the cuff theory. As described, it might create one chunk of obsidian, unconnected to anything else, which would then collapse into the volcano. Hmmm, at that point I guess more water might flow in, creating another unconnected chunk, which would collapse, et cetera. Each time it would pause and recenter to let you know that something had collapsed. Imagine having it pause once per tick, hundreds of times before you could get the water shut off to stop the cycle.

But even if it somehow created obsidian around the center so it was attached to the wall of the volcano, you'd have a pretty hard time going deeper, since you wouldn't have any place to dig your channel for a bridge to dig out the next row inward.

And if I had to bet on it, I'd bet on the obsidian being created in the spot that was just dug out, getting you nowhere at all.

But someone should give it a try, just to see what happens.

   Keith

Edit: speeling fix

[Chaine Maile]

I'm not talking about going deeper though, but higher. Assuming it is attached (and it should be considering how you can overhang walls) you move up a level, and repeat, again and again. From there you move in one tile, starting one tile higher... so you slowly close in.