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[Noble Digger]

DF boasts a very wide (often intimidating) variety of materials. It'd be easy to name Steel or Adamantine, or perhaps Giant Cave Spider Silk or Ant Brains as the coolest material. I have to be honest, though. While its practical uses are relatively few compared to Adamantine, and while it's nowhere near as high in protein as Ant Brains, Magma is definitely my favorite material. In fact, the only thing that can one-up Magma is Lava, that being because Lava is Magma's final scathing assault upon the mortal surface world before it is cooled in the everlasting icy womb of the atmosphere.

In this thread, I want to discuss all manner of devices that move magma and lava. That store it, that create it, that destroy it. Devices that fire magma at your enemies. Lakes and moats and channels to divert it. Foundries that feed on it. From Dwarf Fortress or real life, let's see the Magma and Lava Devices

Here's one of my old forts (September 2010) that was highly magma-centric: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/poi-26978-magmamoat

Beandagger was surrounded by a 3-tile wide, 3-tile-deep magma moat, fully mechanized and able to be filled to a desired depth independently in its three sections. All sections drain into an automated magma-crusher that destroys the magma as fast as it can enter the chamber with no dwarf's assistance. The gate entrances have a trapped, elevated palisade and can be flooded with water (but it freezes, even though there's magma beneath the flooring).

My old favorite though is Moonsyrups, it's a bit older (40d16) but I completed a truly legendary magma system in this fort: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/poi-21840-09magmazinetemplefullyloaded

Called the Magmazine, it was designed to store 29,988 units of magma (not counting the vast amounts caught up in all its pipes) in a series of 12 fully-powered, fully-mechanized, safety-lockable silos. Once it's full it acts as a circulator that creates a magma waterfall above the crater. At the base of each silo is a siphon that directs the stored magma to various other parts of the fort. I don't play this fort often these days but I'm building a glass-lined magma moat in the surface of the glacier and planning to send rivers throughout this mountain.

If this series hasn't been posted around here, check it out. It's a series of semi-science videos about magma and other geological phenomenon. http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science/magma-videos-playlist.htm#video-7168 It's nice to know that the earth could just puke and wipe out everything, isn't it? This should be able to happen in dwarf fortress, though, it shouldn't be a guarantee or even somewhat likely the way 2D DF endgame was.

[noodle0117]

I'm looking at this and going 
Pretty awesome stuff.
There's always the rumored orbital magma cannon of which smaller and lesser versions were created, although none of which were truly built to perfection.
I'm also thinking of a lever that would activate some kind of magma based force field (basically just a bunch of magma falls surrounding your fort) that would incinerate anything foolish enough to walk through the wall of liquid earth and fire.
But with all magma based defensive constructions, they are never truly complete unless you have some way of catching, draining, and reusing the magma, so good luck to whoever will attempt that.

[Dutchling]

Where have you been for thr past few beard-decades? (is that the unit for time or length?)
Badgers are the new Magma!

[Aramco]

Where have you been for thr past few beard-decades? (is that the unit for time or length?)
Badgers are the new Magma!

I would assume that a beard-decade is the length a Dwarf's beard grows in a decade, kind of like a light-year.

How long would that be, I wonder? Raw time!

Apparently... one, each day. So... 3650. What unit of measure one is? That bit is beyond me.

[Servu]

I made a fort with a magma lake, magmafall in dining room and below the front entrance, fortress wide magma flooding system and a big circular magmafall dropping down the edges of my sacrificial pit to a giant magma pentagram. It had a bouncing castle too.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7749-mafolzasitchamberknife

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Cruxador]

Where have you been for thr past few beard-decades? (is that the unit for time or length?)
Badgers are the new Magma!

I would assume that a beard-decade is the length a Dwarf's beard grows in a decade, kind of like a light-year.

How long would that be, I wonder? Raw time!

Apparently... one, each day. So... 3650. What unit of measure one is? That bit is beyond me.

I think it's cubic centimeters.