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[Aidan Pryde]

I've got a question about using a brook in a freezing biome.  It's currently frozen, but I'm going to be pumping magma up to the surface to start thawing parts of it.  I was curious about how the infinite water works.  In the middle of the map I'm going to create a river of magma that will be flowing perpendicular to the brook like so:

       I I I 
       I I I   Water flows south, but frozen
       I I I
MMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMM -> Direction of flow
MMMMMMMMMM

My plan is to have the water that gets close to the magma (there will be a wall) will melt then flow down below the magma river to its final destination like this:

IIIW>MMM
      <WWW

My question is this: if I'm only melting the 'front' part of the brook, will water continue to flow ad infinitum, or would I only be limited to the water that gets initially melted right next to the magma?  I hope this question makes sense.  Thank you!

[Sphalerite]

Only the tiles on the edge of the map create infinite water.  The rest of the brook tiles will only give you that water that happens to be frozen into those tiles when you thaw it.

[AdeleneDawner]

Unless things have changed since I last played with magma, it only heats the six squares adjacent to it (n-s-e-w-u-d, no diagonals and nothing farther away), so this won't work as planned - you need the magma either above or below the water to thaw it, with a floor in between.

Also, magma doesn't heat anything around it unless it's flowing.

[Aidan Pryde]

Hmm.  That's what I thought.  Thanks for the information!

[CapnUrist]

I had a river that froze in winter, which was annoying as I used it to source waterfalls and such, so I made a duplicate river of magma beneath it, running in the opposite direction.

I would not suggest using this on a brook or river that doesn't freeze all the time however, because when it froze in winter, the top layer still SLOWLY froze in places, and occasionally a tile of ice would form without orthogonal support, crash down through the magma river and continue down through my dining hall, flooding it with magma.

[Vehudur]

I had a river that froze in winter, which was annoying as I used it to source waterfalls and such, so I made a duplicate river of magma beneath it, running in the opposite direction.

I would not suggest using this on a brook or river that doesn't freeze all the time however, because when it froze in winter, the top layer still SLOWLY froze in places, and occasionally a tile of ice would form without orthogonal support, crash down through the magma river and continue down through my dining hall, flooding it with magma.

What do you mean?  That's epic!

Also, totally your fault for having the floor under the magma anything other than solid stone.

[CapnUrist]

In my defense, it was the first time I'd used magma to melt ice, and I have never seen anything else about the partial freezing of a magma-warmed river. The dining hall and the rest of the fortress at large had already been constructed; the waterfall was a new addition, and thus the magma-river was routed through existing architecture.

But it was a fairly awesome event in and of itself, and the breaks were repaired fairly easily with stone walls constructed under the holes. I haven't tried to reproduce or weaponize it, but now that I remember it I might see if it still occurs in .25 (when I did it it was still v.31.16)