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[Razin]

If the magma is going to pass through the hatch or door at any point, it and the mechanism in it do need to be magma safe, but if it's just going to stay closed forever, any rock will do.

[Slogo]

Ahh ok that makes sense (in a dwarven kind of way) thanks.

[Shoku]

As far as the magma fall goes, I think you'll still have at least 1/7 Magma on the ground once the fall stops which will hurt the dwarves.

I like the idea though. I have a similar plan in my head based off the magma/water falls in "The Incredibles" where the fall is "split" to allow entrance.

I saw one fort that had some permanent magma falls but he would let some bridges down to umbrella a particular couple of tiles and then stack his goblin cages under the bridge and flip the lever again to incinerate them.

One thing to bear in mind - what happens when two dwarves use the system at once?

* Dwarf A steps on a plate, disables the trap, and walks on to the bridge.
* Dwarf B steps on a plate, re-enables the trap while Dwarf A is still on the bridge, and then walks on himself.
* i_population = i_population - 2; 

Plates don't normally work like that. It sends an "on" message when something meeting the conditions steps on it and an "off" when they step off.

Floodgates and bridges have a delay so it's very easy to get them mixed up by sending signals too quickly- thus this whole idea needs some big revision to work very well.

However I can say that creatures will pretty much try to path through water or magmafalls- this will be extremely deadly to invaders walking over some steel (or whatever) bars but just as deadly to any dwarves. The liquid is only for a very brief time present on the tile they want to walk through and even if it is with a two or three tile wide waterfall they'll think one of the other tiles is open when they check.

A more complicated toggle is required do deal with these behaviors, and probably with some more instant toggle mechanisms like mechanisms, doors, or floor hatches.
There are a number of ways in which you can have the pressure plates link of to some water flow related device elsewhere and then have it result in a more on-off triggering of another plate so as to open and close the waterfall for a longer duration.

However as with most waterfalls the perils of overflow should not be underestimated. Sending a constant stream of magma about will be quite hazardous if it backs up thanks to magma's lack of pressure without a pump driving it. I would recommend a two level drop below the bars and to have always active pumps situated to suck it right out of those low tiles and into the other vent or into a reservoir for the magmafalls.

-

If you like complex contraptions you could make sure that the magmafall would only trigger for ambushes and sieges by having a small field of pressure plates each hooked up to a different mechanism that connected a power source to a pump for another plate and that it took at least four inputs at any one time to drive the pump thanks to other junk connected to the same gear-axle complex.

Things can only take damage from magma if magma is sitting on the same tile as them. So a closed door will hold magma back but as soon as the door opens if it's not magma safe it might as well be made of tinder.
There are a few weird exceptions to this.
Wooden pumps will slowly or rapidly take damage from pumping magma- it varies.
Also glass buildings seem to have a higher melting temperature than glass. While a glass block, giant corkscrew, and tube will all melt when exposed to magma a glass pump doesn't deconstruct with magma sitting on it. If I recall the test correctly a built glass statue will survive magma while the item version will not.

I guess I should try and find it so I can find out if glass grates stand magma...

[Slogo]

However as with most waterfalls the perils of overflow should not be underestimated. Sending a constant stream of magma about will be quite hazardous if it backs up thanks to magma's lack of pressure without a pump driving it. I would recommend a two level drop below the bars and to have always active pumps situated to suck it right out of those low tiles and into the other vent or into a reservoir for the magmafalls.

Well that part isn't an issue for my fort as I have two magma vents, one which caps at a lower z-height. If I'm not mistaken it'll act like dumping water back into a river where it will never overflow.

I'm desperately short on iron and bauxite to implement too much magma machinery though. I think my current (traded for) stocks are 8 bauxite and 4-6 iron/steel bars.

[Shoku]

Magma doesn't have pressure so if you dug a ditch with a tunnel over to that vent the magma would have to slowly flow through the tunnel. Input magma faster than that and it would pile up on top of the ditch tiles until it started to overflow, all of this before the first tiles of magma had made their way into that other vent.

-

You can control magma without magma safe materials. Rock pumps with a metal corckscrew (since you can't make rock corckscrews,) are fine if lava doesn't touch that front tile. If your design doesn't allow you to connect a mechanism to a lever so you can shut the pumps off you can still control a pump stack by putting a hatch connected to a lever right in front of the pump- magma is only below that instead of ever being on top of it and the pump spits it out the back. These are the main ways I control my pumps as I don't like bothering with bauxite when I don't have to.

-

And I don't know what a vent would just soak up magma for you. They make more if you empty them but I've never heard of them removing magma.

[decius]

Instead of raining magma down, try putting in in from the side: Find a spot on your entrance at least a few tiles long, at least nine wide, and several up. Cut a three-wide caravan trail through it, channel down through the center tile and put magma safe grates for drainage. Leave a tile of wall, and carve out the one behind it, then carve fortifications into the tile you left. Arrange the magma to fall by whatever means convienient from the resovior above.


Top view:
(*= empty space, W= Natural rock wall, F=Natural rock carved fortification, G=Magma-proof grate over adequate drainage.)

Code: [Select]

123456789
W*F*G*F*W
W*F*G*F*W
W*F*G*F*W
W*F*G*F*W
W*F*G*F*W
Channel out the floor over rows 2 and 8 for supply , and the floor under 5 for drainage.

Problems: Engineering a big enough supply of magma is a challenge. I once did it by using bridges as valves. Somehow I confused nickel silver and aluminum while building the bridges. The drainage was not yet completed when I started filling the resovior fortress with magma.

[Shoku]

The big problem with that is how long it takes to clean up. The lesser problem with that is that the invaders won't march into it like a lavacurtain

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1234-lavacurtain

[Jim Groovester]

The big problem with that is how long it takes to clean up. The lesser problem with that is that the invaders won't march into it like a lavacurtain

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1234-lavacurtain

That lava curtain works fine. The goblins' morale failed, that's all. There's nothing intrinsic about the lava curtain that made them turn away, aside from its squad leader killing potential.

[Slogo]

Ooooo that gives me a pretty good amount of hope in somehow getting mine to work. I'm still trying to optimize the problem of turning off the flow though.

Some my recently 'optimized' plan would be this:
+ = door
W = Wall
, = floor
. = hole
p = pressure plates
% = pump

Code: [Select]

W+++W
W,W,W
WWpWW (p1, 0-2)
WWpWW (p2, 2-7)
WW%WW
WW%WW (in reality the pump would be a z-level up but I simplified it for the diagram)
WW.WW (drainage)
Stepping on a plate will open the doors shown above. p1 will control the flow for the waterfall. p2 will engage/disengage the pump. When a dwarf steps on the pressure plate they will flood the chamber with lava (3 doors should flood the 4 accessible tiles in enough time) before the dwarf makes it off the tile stopping the flow. The flow will only continue when the chamber is emptied by the pump. Any additional dwarves stepping on a plate will flood more lava into the chamber extending the time it takes to drain away. In total the project would require...

3 Magma Proof Doors
3 Magma proof hatches
11 magma proof mechanics (3 for the doors, 2 for making the plates, 6 for linking the plate to the hatches stopping the waterfall)
1 pump with metal components (in reality the pump would be a z-level up but I simplified it for the diagram) will not need to be magma proof?
1 power source
1 gear assembly
25 Mechanics not magma proof (for the pressure plates in the hallway and the gear assembly).
3 magma proof floor grates
1 prayer that a goblin on fire does not start a fortress consuming fire.
1 small part in the back of my mind that a goblin DOES start an epic fortress consuming fire.

[Shoku]

No, if you want dwarves to be able to charge the magmafall without ending up as crispy as invaders you should just use water logic behind the scenes.

If you have a plate take 2-7 water to set it of and have a pump throw water on it for just a second it will take a little while for the water to drop below that value, moreso if the plate is in a narrow hallway instead of an open area. If you keep pumping water onto it it will stay just as "on" so it would be fine to have dwarves repeatedly turning that pump on and off.

*you'd want a hole in the floor for it to drain into so it couldn't get stuck full.

With some complicated pumps you could have this stop all magma flow immediately but with the set up most people would use you're going to need several frames so you need a dwarf to be able to turn the falls off maybe ten tiles before the falls and for them to stay off for that long.


And even with the best set up I can picture you'll still get one burnt once in awhile (like if they get past the falls and then see some scary creature and run away from it.)

[Slogo]

No, if you want dwarves to be able to charge the magmafall without ending up as crispy as invaders you should just use water logic behind the scenes.

That's not really an option. I lack a good source of water + power to work with. All I have is 2 very small murky pools and another pool buried too deep underground to use any sort of powered mechanics.

Also I'd imagine that you would need to stop the falls a few tiles in advance anyways. All of the falling magma has to 'finish' falling and clear the way.

[Shoku]

Murky pools fill back up though so you can pump the water out of them into a cistern and get a decent supply of water.
But the underground pool will be easier to work with. Mechanisms don't care how far away a thing is so you can have all of the water-logic going on right next to the pool while the pressure plates there trigger things on the other side of the map.

Or you could do both- just dig some shafts next to the pools for water to fall down and once you've got a decent amount pump it into the pool. If they're so tiny and far from the pool that you would get a lot of evaporation you can make that shaft very deep and then have a pump take most of the water up just one level in a small area and then another pump move it up another and so on. It will give your dwarves something to do unless you've got a seriously huge number of windmills-
But anyway you should be able to effectively get the water from the murky pools into the underground one to keep it full.

[Slogo]

The murky pools are literally about 15 tiles combined. The underground pool is about 40-80 units away from any surface so it'd require at least 2 windmills to even get 10 units of power to any contraption I needed.  On top of that the windmill for the underground pool would have to be build into the very steep mountain which would also be a bit of engineering.

All that or I can wait 1-2 seasons for a little more bauxite/iron/steel for the additional mechanisms and doors that using magma would require and have an infinite source of magma that's relatively close to the surface for powering it.

[Hyndis]

You probably don't need any magma safe mechanisms at all if you use a lot of pumps. Just rig pumps to turn on or off by either lever or pressure plate. This triggers the flow of magma. So long as no magma gets on the pump itself you will be just fine, and you can ensure this by using Z levels creatively.

Probably the simplest way to do this will be to have screw pumps drop magma onto grates. Definitely grates so no leftover 1/7 magma puddles will cause all of your dwarves to burst into flames.

A few Z levels below the grates have the magma cistern, and then a simple pump tower to move the magma from the cistern back up into the system. You can create pretty much unlimited power anywhere by building large, elevated windmill farms. Sure, it may take 20-30 windmills, but then you can have fun with building a windmill tower that OSHA would not approve of. 

[Raoul Duke]

My only problem at the moment is my mason seems to refuse to make a bauxite Grate If I forbid all stone but bauxite and queue up "Make Grate" he refuses to work at the workship even with no other tasks.

I was having this problem too.  Then I read a tip from another player that if the workshop itself is made of a forbidden stone type, the workshop/building will be invisible to the dwarfs.  Just use 't' to manually unforbid the stones that the shop is made from.
Was pulling my hair out before I read that...