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[Flaede]

For lag resucing purposes I may or may not make my next fortress with only a magma POOL. but I am horrified by the though that I will have a finite, destroyable-by-a-screw-up magma supply.

Then I remembered hearing that magma at a certain depth at "end of season" will reset to 7. (And below that will fizzle off to nothing? make an obsidian block?)

is this true? can it be used to siphon off (ever so slowly) a separate discreet supply of magma to shuttle around the map?

[Danarca]

I've never heard such thing.
I wouldn't count on it..

[DeathOfRats]

I'll add my vote to the "First time I've heard of it" column. There's something similar with water, as in any tile with water in it freezes to an ice tile in winter (depending on climate) and every ice tile melts to 7/7 water, but I've never heard anything similar with magma.

AFAIK, the only replenishing source of magma are magma pipes.

[Gergination]

I haven't observed this phenomenon myself nor have I ever heard it.

[Grimlocke]

I dont have much experience with magma pools myself, the risk of running out of magma alone was enough for me to just find a site with a pipe

I dont think magma pipes themselves cause a loss in fps by the way. As long as you dont do anything like trying to drain it or using the magma to replace the boring water in your river.

Though draining it and dropping water on magma layer above the bottom layer would make it a good small but infinite source of magma... if you do it, do use pumps to pump it off the maps edge or into some chasm. Relying on it to flow away just doesnt work.

[Dorf3000]

Then I remembered hearing that magma at a certain depth at "end of season" will reset to 7. (And below that will fizzle off to nothing? make an obsidian block?)

is this true?

No.

A typical magma pool has enough magma in it for a huge number of furnaces, providing you don't have them on opposite sides of your map.  You only have to plan it properly before you dig.  The tunnels for your magma furnaces etc should be below the bottom of the pool, so they will fill completely without relying on the liquid spreading mechanism.  Count the size of the pool (roughly) and make tunnels with total length about 10% less than that.  If you're really paranoid, put in some floodgates and add them to levers, so you can fill by sections until the pool is empty.  The don't even have to be magma safe since you will only need to open them once.
When you finally channel into the pool side, it should fill the tunnels quickly and leave a little bit in the bottom of the pool which will evaporate, this is ok because you won't be touching the magma any more after that.  Also try to make sure when you channel down to access the tunnel for forges, you hit the tunnel directly and not one square to the side, otherwise you end up with 6s of magma running around (and I think a small FPS hit?)

If you want to use it for a lava moat or some kind of magma shower trap on the other side of your fortress, well, good luck with that.

[Neruz]

It's not true.

I've often embarked on magma pools when i wanted the magma for forging (sooo much superior to coal) but didn't want or need magma for whatever idea i was planning on trying. I usually just floor over the pool and build my workshops directly on top of it; you can get somewhere in the realm of 40 workshops on top of a pool, which is more than i ever need.

[Quietust]

Magma pools never replenish. End of story.

As explained above, pools of water don't replenish either, though they'll appear to refill due to an oddity in the way water freezes and melts.

[Derakon]

I'm not convinced that pools are better than pipes, FPS-wise. See, any fluid at 7/7 depth is considered to be static, and thus is ignored in the fluid sim. Anything less than that has to be simulated. With a magma pipe, the vast majority of the pipe is always at 7/7, and any magma you pull off will eventually be replaced. With a pool, though, since the supply is finite, as soon as you tap the pool for an access tunnel, you'll be running fluid sim for the entire top surface of the pool for the rest of the life of your fortress.

Now, maybe if you just built your entire magma industry right on top of the pool, you'd get better FPS than with a pipe. But that requires building your fortress around the magma, which most players don't really like doing.

[eerr]

Magma pools never replenish. End of story.

As explained above, pools of water don't replenish either, though they'll appear to refill due to an oddity in the way water freezes and melts.

pools of water will replenish if you get enough rainfall.

otherwise they just fill with 1/7 water and quickly dry out.

[Quietust]

Magma pools never replenish. End of story.

As explained above, pools of water don't replenish either, though they'll appear to refill due to an oddity in the way water freezes and melts.

pools of water will replenish if you get enough rainfall.

otherwise they just fill with 1/7 water and quickly dry out.

Perhaps I should rephrase that as "pools of water don't replenish on their own" - rainfall is completely different, and it isn't something you can rely on having (e.g. if you embark in a dry region).