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[DizzyCrash]

Okay so ya see here, iv got this Volcano and its a pretty night Volcano, but I think I want a magma waterfall and or moat... but my past experiences with DF have told me that this is not always as easy as you might think. And almost always is a suicide mission for the unfortunate miners you send to craft it.
What would be the safest way to penetrate this bubbling lava tube turn my base into a series of warm channels of pretty red death rivers.

[Loci]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Magma#Working_with_magma

In particular, "Exploit From Below" is 100% miner-safe if you do it right.

[Starver]

Top-lip tapping is fairly easy. Just channel away the edge between the magma-top and your pre-prepared spillway (with/without safety-magmasafe-floodgate) down into the rest of the magma-ready dug-out you've prepared. But it's a flow that may have too little imperative (as you get 6,5,4,3,2,1/7^ths).

In the old-old-days, it used to be easy (once a magmatube had been found) to use the differing Z-level border-rings to find a place where an access could be safely dug to 'overlook' a more projected bit of tube, for the same effect. (Now the tubes are generally straight-up-and-down, at least until their entry to the Magma Sea 'voids', which is where I tap for magma, generally.

But a trick I use for water (prevents drowning, usually prevents getting wet) may work sufficiently with magma (keeping burns away).

Down from a higher level, dig a zig-zag (and/or diagonal) up to the edge of the magma-area, with a two-wide part just before the one-wide 'last before the wall' tile you dig, and smooth (at least) the wall you are going to choose to tap, e.g.:

Code: [Select]

######~~
#.#.##~~
.#...s#~  (s=smoothed)
#######~
That extra space lets you construct a magmasafe floodgate into that penultimate spot, to link (magmasafely) to a lever. Once constructed, build a pillar in that space. (It's even better if you dig out an even larger checkerboard, or a full cistern and fill back in with pillars to checkerboard, but there's far more effort involved, so I'm not going into that for now.)  Now you have:

Code: [Select]

######~~
#.#.##~~
.#.Ofs#~  (O=pillar,f=floodgate)
#######~
Now, after ensuring there's no more working dwarves in this area, and perhaps arranging for just one suitable 'least unexpendible' dwarf to accept the task (burrows and tasklist manipulation can be used in conjunction) to be your patsy, open that Floodgate and set a Fortification-Carve on that specifically-smoothed separating wall, pulling the floodgate's lever to close it after they stand in that spot (it won't close until the dwarf moves away) but before the task is finished.  I tend to err on the safe side and pull the lever as they are approaching the task (with lever-pullers well within range) and if the job isn't imminently fulfilled before the fortifier gets within range I cancel that and try for another time round where it might better fall into place as I wish.

Once the gate is 'primed' and the fortifier is fortifying (hmm, I can't seem to decide which spelling rules apply), make sure there are excessive jobs (simplest is a whole lot of other smooth-jobs, away from the area, and what burrow-shuffling as necessary to allow those to be within 'range') and with a fair wind and no gremlins (literal or figurative) the fortifier moves off through the zig-zag immediately, whilst the magma drips first into the new fortifications. Even if the floodgate is delayed (which, if it is done correctly, it shouldn't be), the magma's entry into the zig-zags slows the magma more than enough to not bother the heals of any the dwarf not prone to standing around in fatal contemplation.

Assuming everything went well (or not too badly!), any magma your side of the closed floodgate will spread to 1/7th-levels and evaporate.

Code: [Select]

######~~
#.#3##~~
.#1OfH#~  (H=fortification, digits=possible maximum extent to partial magma(/water)-depths)
#######~
Around the evaporation, you can arrange to open the zigzag/checkerboard area into a proper cistern/spillway route by de-columning and digging out the additional space (and feed/exit-drain areas with floodgate/hatch-control) according to your requirements.  I recommend setting recesses up (singly dug tiles at various suitable points around the walls of the spillway/cistern that you are creating), putting a levered floodgate up in this gap-to-nowhere and then leaving.  Later on, you can engineer a 'somewhere' for the gate to lead to, in perfect safety, before pulling the gate open to make use of the feed accordingly.

Then clear the area out again, get all dwarves out and seal up properly (or, if this is a water-tapping, make your bathing/well-bucket/etc arrangements accordingly; and I suppose minecart-dipping infrastructure if it is to that purpose (water or magma) that you are setting it) and re-open the floodgate.   Or floodgates, because parallel-but-separate taps, joined up in the safe cisterngfinishing phase, makes for better supply if you need more than just to fill a system up, but also need to supply a continually draining one (obsidian industry, flooding caverns/overworld, edge-draining a magmafall rather than recycling it) with enough flow.


Needs to be experimented with, I imagine. Savescum if you want, at least for 'practice'. Slight differences between game versions might change your chances of pulling this off, but it's a method I've employed often enough.  An alternate/additional safety mechanism is to have a ready channel to the side (which the working dwarf does not have reason to 'escape' into) into which the first splash of magma may tend to flow, but the geometry of the situation has to be quite specific.

(And if that page just linked to has a better method, all that I wrote might be superfluous, but here you are, anyway...  )

[GhostDwemer]

I almost always use the "exploit from below" trick if the magma is already close to where I want it, otherwise I use a pump.

[Montieth]

Why not channel at the level below the surface and get your routes, flow control all set with a gate (stronger) and not a floodgate ?

Then, once done, dig out to the 1 level above surface and have your minor dig a channel below from above that last tile keeping the magma out of your spillway?



_____H
__g__||~~~~~~



G is the gate in the spill way
~~~ magma surface
Channel at the H.

[Fearless Son]

My method is a bit simple, and not completely without risk, but I find it works well enough.

Pre-build your magmaduct (obviously) up to the edge of the volcanic magma-tube.  At the edge of the tube, construct an enclosed chamber above the magmaduct that is narrow and has a magma-safe door on one end.  Channel the tile right next to the magma-tube and place a grate over it.  Then send a miner in, and have them channel the warm stone in the magma tube.  This will open a two-tile entrance in the tube.  The miner in question should be able to jump back from the magma flow before it sets their pants on fire, and the grate will let excess magma through.  The miner ought to beat a hasty retreat out through the magma-safe door. 

Set the magma safe door to stay tightly closed and locked, then construct some walls around it for good measure to ensure it is never opened. 

[Dunamisdeos]

yes you should.

[muldrake]

yes you should.

When the question is "should I magma" the answer is always yes.

[They Got Leader]

I would recommend that you do all the above methods and make sure to relieve pressure of the magma so that it does NOT spill everywhere and burn everything.


Unless that is the point.


Which case, carry on.

[Mostali]

I would recommend that you do all the above methods and make sure to relieve pressure of the magma so that it does NOT spill everywhere and burn everything.

Got 99 problems but [pressure from] a [volcano] breach ain't one.

[Dunamisdeos]

I would recommend that you do all the above methods and make sure to relieve pressure of the magma so that it does NOT spill everywhere and burn everything.

Got 99 problems but [pressure from] a [volcano] breach ain't one.

Sadly, magma does not pressurize as water does.

Drill it anyway though. Absolutely.

[kingsableye]

Dunamisdeos is doing what I did to my wife when I introduced her to the game, "yeah, make sure you take care of your dwarfs that just got bit by that werepanda"

[Dunamisdeos]

I would absolutely intentionally tell someone to do something amusing that would end in the inevitable death of their fortress.

However, I am not doing that now. 

Magma actually does not follow the same rules of pressure in fort mode. I would definitely take steps to contain the eventual leakage, ideally into some kind of magma forge setup or awesome megaproject.

To prove my good will, here is my method for safe piercing of a volcano from the side. I recommend drilling right up the side of the tube in a 3x3 tunnel. Immediately underneath your intended breach point, build a WIDER (5x5 should suffice) chamber that is also flush up against the side of the tube. Make sure that your under-chamber is also more than 1z deep (2z should suffice).

When you breach, CHANNEL instead of mine. This instantly creates a DOWNWARD path for the magma to take instead of a FORWARD path. Your miner has a much, much higher (though not 100%) chance of fleeing alive. I have even managed to safely channel out all three blocks to make a 3x3 magma tunnel using this method.

Spoiler: Here's a diagram thing (click to show/hide)

[Mostali]

A quote from the very page that is linked in this thread when pressure was brought up:

"Magma does not exert pressure when it falls downward."

[They Got Leader]

A quote from the very page that is linked in this thread when pressure was brought up:

"Magma does not exert pressure when it falls downward."

I always forget about this, and so I plan ahead as if it does in the event that everything I know is wrong.