Someone is planning to entrap fire imps and use them as a defensive mechanism, huh?
I am rather hesitant to defile Armok's crater by paving it over, but if I did I could leave a hole in the middle, drop some rocks into it and watch them climb out a few months later. I'd line the edges with cage traps and then put them in a turret. Smoothing the crater walls is definitely a plan though.
I am also planning a properly industrialized mining operation to provide us with a supply of iron, using the trusted process of
dump leaching.
The
raw minerals are first brought into a long chamber which is sealed off at both ends at the appropriate time by the pull of a lever in the control room.
When the ore is contained a second lever is pulled, releasing magma from hatches in the ceiling of the containment chamber. The hatches are placed so that the magma will flow from the corners and toward the center, concentrating the ore there and purifying it. When the ore has been purified the lever is retracted, closing the hatches and restarting the screw pump that fills the magma reservoir above.
A third lever is pulled, opening drawbridges in the floor of the containment chamber. The magma will fall down, pushing the now purified ore into a funnel-shaped chute below. There it will drain through floor grates in the bottom of the chute, leaving the ore behind.
A fourth lever is pulled repeatedly, atomsmashing the magma in the chamber below the grates until it is gone. A small part of the magma is allowed to flow through holes in the floor, powering the magma smelters in the next room.
The fifth and final lever will open the grates and dump the ore onto the dry floor of the atomsmasher, which is designated as an armor, weapons and ammo stockpile. It also lowers the barrier between the stockpile and the smelters, so that the furnace operator can access the stockpile.
The levers are set to their initial position, and the system is ready for another batch of ore as soon as the stockpile has been emptied and the magma reservoir has been refilled.