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Author Topic: Magma Pumping Questions  (Read 775 times)

Xofrevlis

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Magma Pumping Questions
« on: April 17, 2009, 01:53:49 am »

I'm planning on making a large plate of dwarf made obsidian in the sky of my map, so I was wondering what the maximum radius could be, what with evaporation and all (I'd prefer to keep the number of pumping towers to a minimum, so that it's easier to make the whole thing collapsible :D ) .

Some advice on moving a sufficient amount of magma and water would be nice too, since I haven't messed around with moving either around to higher Z levels and I tend to run out of magma for big projects like this with my usual methods.
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Marko

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Re: Magma Pumping Questions
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2009, 02:36:27 am »

You're biggest problem is going to be the pipe running out of magma really. The best thing to do is start pumping from the bottom of the magma pipe, and go straight up. You'll have a much better flow coming, which should get you a bigger spread...
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Hm.
WHERE IS THE SAVE?
AN HOUR LATE?
OFF WITH HIS HEAD

Albedo

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Re: Magma Pumping Questions
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2009, 03:05:35 am »

Yeah, even magma will "evaporate" if it sits around too long at 1/7.  But do the math - the number of tiles your map is X times Y, vs the volume (X times Y times Z) of your pipe.

If the result is not at least 2 deep, you'll first need to build a reservoir to "save up" enough to make it happen, emptying the pipe a couple times first into that if necessary. (Note that this "pour" will take a short while, and the pipe will do ~some~ re-filling, but not much.)  But you'll then want to pump from the bottom of that reservoir too, so you could put it close to the pipe, and then once it's full, cut a new feeder channel to your existing pumps so they both flow in to the same source area without changing that part of your pumping system.

Then it's a matter of getting the magma to spread out - do some tests in your reservoir, observe and gauge.  And then some water delivery one z-level above that - if you're going to collapse it, you don't care about perfect proportions, and can flood the magma a bit with a constant flow to get the job done without worrying about excess.

Here's the basics of standard obsidian farming - your situation will have to be customized, but I think most of the changes are in your favor since it's a "one time" thing.

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=26805.0
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