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[Bryan Derksen]

So I'm just about nearing the end of my current project, draining a 50-Z-level volcano of all its magma, and pondering the details of what to do next. My first thought is to build a glass-walled self-sufficient fort suspended deep in the middle of its throat and then refill it with magma, of course. I've got plenty of bauxite I embarked with for the project. Alternately, I could fill it with water quite easily - there's a fragment of aquifer quite conveniently tucked at the top. That seems interesting too but not quite so dwarfish.

Anyone have experience with building forts inside active volcanoes they're interested in sharing? I'm anticipating that the odd way that lava refills vents might cause some problems when resubmerging the finished fort.

[Qloos]

Magma won't spawn on constructions you've erected inside the magma pipe.  So your fortress inside a volcano is safe from harm.

[Martin]

Enlarge the magma pipe from top to bottom and build a ring-shaped fortress with a large central cistern which you fill with water, with magma on the outside. Free opportunity for an obsidian factory there at the bottom of the cistern.

[RandomNumberGenerator]

Make sure you have a method to channel magma back into your fotress, so you can have magma forges and stuff.

Aside from that, a glass fortress inside the magma sounds awesome.

[Therapist]

Using a pipe-spanning vertical glass wall, make exactly half of the pipe surrounding the fortress contain magma, and the other half water.

Enlarge it to be a perfect circle beforehand, and none of that "bottom half magma/top half water" pussy stuff.  Alternatively, if you like them, make one floor look like the Grateful Dead logo.

[Bryan Derksen]

I like the central cistern idea. My long-term plan is to make the volcano fort completely self-sufficient from the outside world and seal it in such a way that you'd have to drain the volcano again to get in or out (and then wreck my volcano-draining system in a way that will make it hard to reuse). A large amount of water would be good to take inside to account for sparring accidents and temporary shortfalls in booze production. Plus it's just more realistic that way, and will make for nicer scenery for the dwarves inside. I'll criss-cross its depths with glass-walled walkways.

Oh, I came across a description on the wiki about how it was possible to exploit the water pressurization and pumping system to generate endless water. Anyone ever tried setting something like that up as a source of usable water before?

[Martin]

Well, if you are willing to seal yourself in, why not use the water regenerator, set up a self-powering system up by the surface and once you are sealed in, pull the lever, turn it on and flood the world. Dismantle the lever and you can never turn it off. Then you'd not only need to drain the pipe but deal with an uncontrollable flood as well.

[Rowanas]

If you're going to seal yourself off from the outside, why are you training military dwarves?

[yuhhaur]

Please take note:
Magma Pipe WILL fill themselves back FROM THE TOP of the pipe after sometime, although it is very slow.
Magma Pool doesn't

[Bryan Derksen]

I'm going to train military dwarves because what else am I going to do with them? I'll only need a handful of growers/brewers/cooks to keep the fort alive, and in the long term perhaps a weaver/clothier/tanner/leatherworker to replace worn clothing.

Also, it will make the tantrum spiral when those services ultimately fail all the more epic. 

As for magma spawning at the top of the vent, I thought that's what would happen too based on something I read long ago but it turns out that it's currently only spawning on the Z-level directly above the current level of the magma. I was expecting to have to pour water in to make a "ceiling" to block the rain of magma while I worked but fortunately that wasn't the case.

[Martin]

As for magma spawning at the top of the vent, I thought that's what would happen too based on something I read long ago but it turns out that it's currently only spawning on the Z-level directly above the current level of the magma. I was expecting to have to pour water in to make a "ceiling" to block the rain of magma while I worked but fortunately that wasn't the case.

Right, the magma just slowly rises up from the bottom. Be careful, however, because it sends up these little eruptions of magma. You'll get 1x1 columns of 7/7 magma about 2-3 levels above the surface of the magma which will spread out 1/7 or 2/7 magma. When building Morul's suite, the bottommost level was at the surface of the magma and these little eruptions were falling on the bridges and melting them, landing on the newly placed floors blocking passage, and so on. I'm pretty fortunate nobody got tagged by one, but it probably took 3x as long to build the bottom level as expected due to having to rebuild bridges and make temporary structures around the splashed magma to continue building.