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[Sutremaine]

Lots of pumps. They go right up against the edge of the map, pumping the magma through fortifications and back off the map, and may be supplemented by drains leading to fortifications or by dumping cavern water into the SMR. A single layer of magma can be drained fairly easily, but multiple layers will need something else. I didn't get that far, but I think you'd need a second layer of pumps in the space where the upper layer's magma used to be.

[edgefigaro]

Wow. Another marvel of dwarven engineering.

[Anathema]

[ X ]  Mind-bogglingly massive yet truly pointless
[ X ]  Excessive dwarven casualties
[ X ]  Involves magma (all of the magma, in fact)

Yeah, I would say this project is the epitome of Dwarfliness. Well done.

What the next project would be digging out semi-molten rock and slade, and building so long chute that there would come sunlight to the hell. Then you could farm aboveground plants down there.

I like that idea. Sunberries in Hell! I did the slade mining/candy duplication trick in an old fort (I think I wrote a post describing an easier way to do it, too), and while it was fun, I don't really plan to do it again.

Better than Sunberries: if you exposed hell to the surface in a freezing biome and flooded it, you could freeze hell over (at least, the parts of it exposed to sunlight).

[Mapleguy555]

PTW, and just wondering, that's a nice graphics pack you have there.

(aka, what pack is it?)

[Lexx]

Good luck in this endeavor!

[laularukyrumo]

Interesting fact. Apparently, if you have no materials with [DEEP_SURFACE], the fallback material is.... ice.

Frozen Hell.

I'm not sure if you have to nuke all the inorganics or just slade, but that's the effect we got in the DF From Scratch thread.

[itg]

[ X ]  Mind-bogglingly massive yet truly pointless
[ X ]  Excessive dwarven casualties
[ X ]  Involves magma (all of the magma, in fact)

Yeah, I would say this project is the epitome of Dwarfliness. Well done.

What the next project would be digging out semi-molten rock and slade, and building so long chute that there would come sunlight to the hell. Then you could farm aboveground plants down there.

I like that idea. Sunberries in Hell! I did the slade mining/candy duplication trick in an old fort (I think I wrote a post describing an easier way to do it, too), and while it was fun, I don't really plan to do it again.

Better than Sunberries: if you exposed hell to the surface in a freezing biome and flooded it, you could freeze hell over (at least, the parts of it exposed to sunlight).

1) Thanks!
2) Great idea! Unfortunately, my map doesn't freeze in winter, but that's a worthy project for someone else.

PTW, and just wondering, that's a nice graphics pack you have there.

(aka, what pack is it?)

It's the Obsidian graphics set.

[itg]

I lost a little bit of work due to a crash, but here's the sunberry farm inside the circus tent:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's just four tiles, but I've already got enough food and drink stocked up for the next 10-20 years, so I really don't want anything bigger. Above the farm you can see half of my demon spawnbusting system. I discovered that there can be only one "herd" of demons per biome on your site at any one time. By preventing a member of those herds from leaving the map (cages don't work for this, btw), you prevent any new demons from spawning. It's been 100% effective for about 30 years now, and in a past fort I used the system to wall off all the map edges in hell.

[itg]

Minor update: I've been working on the magma sea colony. It's been slow going because I decided to build the entire thing out of clear glass blocks (What else would you build a sub-magma dome out of?) For the first time in my dwarf fortress career, potash makers are in high demand. I'm trying to find a balance between making the colony big enough to be impressive yet not so big as to overwhelm the magma sea itself. Below is a sample of my work so far. The big dome in the middle contains 2 z-levels of living space. I'd go taller, but I want to leave a full layer of undisturbed magma on top, and the ceiling is low here. This dome will probably contain the dining hall. On the right is a smaller dome, which I may use for the roc hatchery. On the left is a sub-magma tower, 4 levels high. Its purpose is undetermined, but it serves as a connection point to a higher portion of the sea floor. The bridges on either side are temporary scaffolding. Eventually, the only entrance or exit to the colony will be on a minecart skipped over magma and through fortifications. Thoughts? Feedback? Suggestions?

[Sergarr]

This looks so futuristic.

[MadeOfStarDust]

So...beautiful and dwarfy... *wipes tear*
Bravo good sir!

[PepeTequila]

Been done plenty of times if I remember correctly, definitely did it myself with the help of a couple of others before I moved on to mods. Anyways welcome to the club if you are successful.

[itg]

Been done plenty of times if I remember correctly, definitely did it myself with the help of a couple of others before I moved on to mods. Anyways welcome to the club if you are successful.

Would you care to share some pics? Maybe a link another thread detailing the process? I've looked and I was unable to find anything more than a suggested method for draining the sea which doesn't actually work, at least in 0.34.11 (Edit: didn't mean to leave out Crashmaster's room on the sea floor, posted earlier in this thread). There were plenty of posts asking whether this has been done or expressing desire to do it, but no one claiming to have actually done it. It's possible I missed something, of course, since the forum's search function is pretty wonky. I should note that draining the top levels of the magma sea is not that hard, and I have no doubt that's been done before, but draining the very bottom layer of the sea is extremely difficult because the magma flow tiles eat cast obsidian and cave-ins, and I think that has generally been assumed to be impossible before now.

BTW, As I hoped the pictures in the OP would imply, I've already succeeded in draining the magma sea. Now I'm just building stuff on the magma sea floor. It's an architecture project at this point.

[itg]

I've finished the outer structure of the sub-magma arcology. I said I was doing a subfort earlier, but I went ahead and built it with the capacity to hold all ~110 dwarves. I've got 74 common bedrooms plus space for a few noble bedrooms. Most of the space in the colony is still unallocated, so I'll post another update once I've furnished more of it. I could do some detail shots at that time, if any of you would like to see them.

Pictures posted below show the colony from the bottom up. The little rooms in the top left are the bedrooms. They are arranged into mini-towers accessible by a maze-like walkway on the top level. The ring-shaped bit nearby is a water source hooked up to the aquifer. Magma will fill the inside of the ring and serve to power magma forges. The dining room should be pretty obvious near the center of the picture. The irregularly shaped rooms are the remnants of the adamantine spires. They will be isolated from the colony once construction is finished. In the bottom left, fourth layer, you may notice a minecart track. That is where the entrance will go. I plan to force dwarves to ride a cart which skips over the magma to enter the colony, but that part hasn't been built yet.

So, what do you think? Any suggestions?

[Tevish Szat]

I am in awe.  I thought getting enough clear glass blocks to make a solid 15z smooth-sided pyramid was tough, but those domes alone put my work to shame, never mind the engineering marvel of conquering the Magma Sea in the first place.  To the best of my knowledge, this is a first-of-its-kind engineering feat.  I have two questions

What is your estimated dwarven death toll for the whole of the colony project?
and
Do you mind if I utilize the outlay of your magma colony in a D&D game?