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[GavJ]

I made this in well under one evening, and it can direct lava at a rate of about one layer of volcano per 2 or 3 seconds @ 300 FPS.  Enough to launch lava 8-10 blocks out off a flat cliff face.

It's pretty easy to set up.  All there is to it is what you see here for the main level (which can all be dug out first, including those channels).  Then on the level below, there is simply a series of rooms going all around, with a door in between where each pump is above.  The channels from above break into each of those rooms.  Then I simply used Dwarf therapist to assign only one miner job in the fortress to a peasant, and had him dig into the volcano in Room #1.  Then assign a miner job to peasant #2 and have him dig into the volcano in room #2.  Forbid the doors each time as they dig, so they dont run around and open the doors while on fire.

The room above this one just has gears and axles to power the pumps (from a few water wheels elsewhere).

This is also really good at draining the volcano if you want to build stuff in it (make sure you have a lot of fortifications in a row on the edge of the map, because I think stuff has to drain at a natural pace off the map, it can't be forced out)

If I were to build it again now that I have the design, it could probably be done in about 1.5 hours.  Hopefully that is useful to some people.


In image:
LEFT: Drain off edge of map.  If you want to drain the volcano.  Next to that is the stairway and water stack (unrelated) and power line from elsewhere.
MIDDLE LEFT: a bunch of switches and floodgates already built in, which can later on be hooked up safely to whatever project you desire.
RIGHT: Obviously, a volcano, with 20 pumps tapping into it.

[Loud Whispers]

Your magma cannon appears to be haunted.

[Eoganachta]

Your magma cannon appears to be haunted.

He's trying to stop !!progress!!

[Urist Da Vinci]

It's not the most powerful magma cannon that I've seen, but it's still rather cool and a step in the right direction.

[ivanthe8th]

The simple solution is to build it bigger.
The complex solution is to help brainstorm how to make it both more efficient and more powerful.
The dorfy solution is to figure out how to satisfy the complex solution conditions, and use it to kill something.

If I recall correctly, the general idea behind magma cannons is having as many pumps as possible feeding into a single pressurized reservoir. The traditional design is z-levels with 4 pumps going into a single tile duplicated vertically. A design like this allows for more pumps per z-level. It might be useful if you're cramped for vertical space and still need a lot of pressure.

[GavJ]

Well the main use is for draining the volcano, really.

It is also a great base for an arbitrarily powerful magma cannon, however.  Basically it gives you a primary filling reservoir as tall and as huge as you want, which can be made very quickly and easily (<-main idea).

go dig out a big rectangular reservoir filled with 40 pumps on each z level and 2 or 3 blocks back * (however many deep) for the actual cannon, and then fill it from this.  That's like another hour of time, max.  This portion here would have the job of reloading the cannon very quickly (under 10 seconds probably) as long as the volcano was full.  Also, a volcano at a low level fills much more quickly than, say, the surface of the magma sea does.

A big rectangle full of pumps that you can build dry at your own leisure isn't terribly innovative sounding to me, though, so I stopped after I had done the part that wasn't obvious to me.  That's what I find interesting, not always following through with going through the motions after.  I can throw one on there if you want though, to test the idea.

[gchristopher]

Don't forget that you can use the same trick with bridges that is used to drain oceans to breach the volcano without incinerating the miner. (Build a bridge over an upward ramp, and a miner standing on the ramp, under the bridge, can dig squares adjacent to the bridge, one level above the miner and blocked from liquid flow.) I like building the bridge out of a non-magma safe material, which will melt the bridge and flow down after the miner has plenty of time to evacuate.

[GavJ]

Don't forget that you can use the same trick with bridges that is used to drain oceans to breach the volcano without incinerating the miner. (Build a bridge over an upward ramp, and a miner standing on the ramp, under the bridge, can dig squares adjacent to the bridge, one level above the miner and blocked from liquid flow.) I like building the bridge out of a non-magma safe material, which will melt the bridge and flow down after the miner has plenty of time to evacuate.

Wow that's a really good idea, thanks.  I've always just used floor grates and a drainage area when I don't want to kill miners (which is rare, hehe), but the bridge is wayyy less work, especially a non-magma safe one where you dont even need to link any mechanism.  Bravo.



Anyway, I'm kinda new here, and don't know that much about what is impressive or useful or done yet.  I know there's been talk of it, but has anybody ever actually built a fully gridded, aimable lava delivery system (orbital or from underneath) that would let you flood, for example, Point C-7 on the map with pressurized lava if goblins are near C-7?  I would be interested in doing that.  Especially if it would be new and innovative to execute.

Something like this:


I like this design MUCH more than an orbital one, because it is much more realistic, and I can make it much much prettier.  I can't stand making big blocky ugly things, and spindles of pipes criss crossing around impossibly in the air sounds gross.  This would take advantage of U-curve pressured liquid teleportation and could follow the land and be very elegant looking. (obviously the water tower would not be a big blocky cylinder either.  It would probably reside in a natural hollowed out mountain peak)

[jcnorris00]

Someone did magma land mines.  They were pretty cool.   Invaders would step on a pressure plate, which opened an adjacent floor hatch, which allowed pressurized magma to shoot up and spread out.

[GavJ]

Oh.. okay yeah that's a lot cooler.

Next question: if I were to mod dwarves' heat damage point to be more realistic (like, making their various tissues take damage even lower than the boiling temperature of water, like real life humans), would steam hurt them again in the current version?  Crazy steam traps sound not only very fun and difficult, but practical and efficient (reset very quickly, etc.)

[NW_Kohaku]

One of my favorites, however, was a recycling "magma chamber" where the whole entry hallway 50 tiles long was rigged to dump magma out of the ceiling (from retracting bridges) onto the hallway, and then it would almost immediately drain out from underneath, where pumps would carry the magma back up and reset the whole trap. 

In fact, with the water clock, you can actually automate passages opening or closing to different trade depots, and time your magma flooding chambers to when the elves are scheduled to arrive, as well.

Of course, it's all your own aesthetic choice, but I'd prefer to completely alter the face of the countriside to have a network of screaming mouths leading to the entrance proper of my fortress and have them each equipped with a magma shower before I called my magma defenses complete.  (Don't forget an obsidian caster in the caverns!)  Then, inside my artificial enclosures, I'd loose (figurative) Hell upon the goblin hordes.  It also has the advantage of giving you the chance to completely seal off the chambers so the cleanup crew can go to work. 

[GavJ]

One of my favorites, however, was a recycling "magma chamber" where the whole entry hallway 50 tiles long was rigged to dump magma out of the ceiling (from retracting bridges) onto the hallway, and then it would almost immediately drain out from underneath, where pumps would carry the magma back up and reset the whole trap. 

In fact, with the water clock, you can actually automate passages opening or closing to different trade depots, and time your magma flooding chambers to when the elves are scheduled to arrive, as well.

Of course, it's all your own aesthetic choice, but I'd prefer to completely alter the face of the countriside to have a network of screaming mouths leading to the entrance proper of my fortress and have them each equipped with a magma shower before I called my magma defenses complete.  (Don't forget an obsidian caster in the caverns!)  Then, inside my artificial enclosures, I'd loose (figurative) Hell upon the goblin hordes.  It also has the advantage of giving you the chance to completely seal off the chambers so the cleanup crew can go to work.

Eh, I already made what I consider to be a maximum utility single location trap: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=107421.msg3194936#msg3194936

With a couple minor modifications like moving the marksdwarves up, it can kill with magma, water, or arrows in quick succession, no wait times for evaporation, ability to process remains even while the next wave is being killed, convenient atom smashing for unwanted stuff at the bottom, etc.

A map-wide OFFENSIVE defense sounds more exciting and challenging.  But the magma landmines sound hard to top. Targetable and/or automated, pattern-"bombing" steam vents around the countryside is what I'm thinking sounds most fun now, if steam can be modded to lethal.

If not, then I will think up some way to have syndrome laced vapor vents instead.

[i2amroy]

Oh.. okay yeah that's a lot cooler.

Next question: if I were to mod dwarves' heat damage point to be more realistic (like, making their various tissues take damage even lower than the boiling temperature of water, like real life humans), would steam hurt them again in the current version?  Crazy steam traps sound not only very fun and difficult, but practical and efficient (reset very quickly, etc.)

No. Steam is just pretty but doesn't really carry any temperature information with it IIRC. All you will succeed in doing is making it impossible to embark in deserts because all of your dwarves will burn to death.

[NW_Kohaku]

Eh, I already made what I consider to be a maximum utility single location trap: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=107421.msg3194936#msg3194936

With a couple minor modifications like moving the marksdwarves up, it can kill with magma, water, or arrows in quick succession, no wait times for evaporation, ability to process remains even while the next wave is being killed, convenient atom smashing for unwanted stuff at the bottom, etc.

A map-wide OFFENSIVE defense sounds more exciting and challenging.  But the magma landmines sound hard to top. Targetable and/or automated, pattern-"bombing" steam vents around the countryside is what I'm thinking sounds most fun now, if steam can be modded to lethal.

If not, then I will think up some way to have syndrome laced vapor vents instead.

It's all a matter of how you play the terrain.

A "magma vent" that just pumps magma into an open field is serviceable, but it's just as much a "static defense" as a magma chamber. 

I just prefer to have a bit more flair with it, so it's an aesthetic choice.

Imagine an artificial stone mountain or just a tower, with flying buttresses filled with magma going to some sort of "gazebo" structures out in the fields with cliffs carved to control the flow of traffic into the central tower so that they must walk through those chambers to enter the tower proper (being able to lock off all entrances besides one totally covered entrance should allow for fliers), and you can set up the magma chambers just as strategically (and more aesthetically pleasingly, at least from my perspective) as a magma vent strategy. 

[zach123b]

wait... magma can be pressurized? like moved up a cylinder with multiple pumps?
or does it only move faster on the 1z layer it uses, but then how would magma mines work?