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[Musashi]

... combining magma and water during the fall? Now, there's potential. I'm feeling a fey mood coming right up...

[Sphalerite]

Anyway, water is the way to go about this. Arms made of cast obsidian, with water inside, would work flawlessly. They fall, the ceiling collapses, water is pushed up, combines with lava/magma to make obsidian. The arms/tunnels would have to be (long)x3x3 for this to work.

This will not work either.  As explained in the thread I linked previously, falling walls and falling water do not fall at the same speed.  When you trigger the collapse, the walls will travel downward as far as they can instantly, leaving the previously enclosed water hanging in midair.  The water will then fall downward considerably more slowly, eventually landing on the surface of the magma and making obsidian.  You might get a solid platform of water on top of the magma, but no enclosed pod.

Sphalerite: Magma pistons only work with solid constructions. Water should just displace to the sides, right? I know it teleports above a solid structure; but not an open-top one when there's space to the sides?

Water pistons work with solid natural (not constructed) walls.  It doesn't matter if the piston is solid or not, because all falling walls fall as individual blocks.  Falling structures of natural stone effectively don't have any physical cohesion - they are essentially treated as if each block was falling all by itself one at a time.  So the magma will teleport upwards regardless of whether you are dropping a solid piston or a hollow shell.

[Sting_Auer]

I will begin construction soon.


This could work very well if I do it right...

[Lectorog]

That's very helpful, Sphalerite; thanks for the corrections!

It looks like the only plausible way, right now, to do this is to create a spire of obsidian reaching down into the depths of the volcano, with a massive staircase carved down the middle. It would have to be cast layer-by-layer.

Unless I'm missing something here, there's no way to make a surviving pod, unless supports don't deconstruct.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try!

Oh, and Sting_Auer, I don't think strike tags work in titles. It's just showing the tags themselves.

[Frogwarrior]

I'm not even sure, since they can't see through obsidian, if your dwarves can actually discover anything through the capsule.

Well, dwarves can see through fortifications, so you can carve those into the walls and see out that way.

[Sting_Auer]

I'm not even sure, since they can't see through obsidian, if your dwarves can actually discover anything through the capsule.

Well, dwarves can see through fortifications, so you can carve those into the walls and see out that way.

Magma also flows through fortifications.

[Kromgar]

This could become interesting to say the least...

[monk12]

Bear in mind that Semi-Molten Rock destroys anything that falls onto it, and AFAIK this includes natural walls- this is why you can't just drip water into the centre of the volcano and tunnel down that spire. So this will only work if your volcano does not have SMR at the bottom, a prospect I very much doubt.

[Eddren]

And THAT, my friend, is why you do it slowly, one Z-level at a time, starting at the edges of the Pipe, and mining from the outside in.

[Carnes]

Ok, so i've never cast obsidian.  But i've heard you can encase items in it.  Could you use this method to move supplies down there safely?  Also, Dwarves don't have to stand in a "open space" and be smashed.  They can stand on up/down stairs carved into the obsidian.  This would create a structure with zero open spaces.  The dwarves would have to dig through the "cargo obsidian" to get materials to build with and to make empty space to make constructions in (after they've landed).

[Frogwarrior]

Ok, so i've never cast obsidian.  But i've heard you can encase items in it.  Could you use this method to move supplies down there safely?  Also, Dwarves don't have to stand in a "open space" and be smashed.  They can stand on up/down stairs carved into the obsidian.  This would create a structure with zero open spaces.  The dwarves would have to dig through the "cargo obsidian" to get materials to build with and to make empty space to make constructions in (after they've landed).

I don't know if encased items fall in cave-ins; that would be an interesting !!science!! experiment.
However, I DO know that stairs are not preserved in cave-ins; anything that falls through stairs completely destroys them.
Worse, dwarves do not fall with the cave-in; if you have dwarves on a floor and drop the floor, the floor will instantly hit the bottom and the dwarves will be stranded in mid-air, to subsequently fall down after (possibly to their deaths, depending on the height). And if you have a ceiling above your dwarves, they'll probably be obliterated before they have the chance to fall.