Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kanddak]

Back in February I discovered ( http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=31244 ) that a flammable object in a magma-safe bin can be submerged in magma to ignite the object, which is then shielded by the bin from any extinguishment by water. This has become famous because it was quickly recognized as an easy way to drain an ocean and is a cool trick in general.

It has become immortalized in popular imagination as the "lignite block in an iron bin" trick, and I'm posting just to clarify that although I happened to be playing around with a lignite block at the time (it was an experiment to see if you could melt blocks and then cool them into usable stones, which would make the blocks caravans bring useful, but it didn't work), any long-burning object will do. (Wood and cloth catch fire, but burn away too quickly to be useful)

If your caravan brings lignite or b-coal blocks, by all means use them, since they're no good for anything else.
But if you have lignite (or b-coal), please don't think it's the only thing you can do this with and carve it into blocks; you can smelt it to get two (or three) blocks of coke, each of which is just as good for your pyromaniacal schemes. Charcoal works too, so you can piss off the mer-people and the elves.
Graphite should be even better for this, if you happen to have it, because it doesn't have any economic use (steelmaking) -- though I haven't tried.

Today I had the revelation that there's no reason this should even need to be done with a block. It could probably be any item made out of a long-burning material that can be stockpiled in a bin.
I hypothesize that if you really wanted to drain the ocean in style, you could probably use a diamond.
But the main point of this realization is that you ought to be able to do it with finished goods, too. Since you get three mugs for every one unit of stone, the most efficient way to fuel burning bins might be to make graphite mugs. You could also, if pressed into wasting lignite, carve that into mugs (no point with b-coal, since it makes three cokes).

I haven't tried that, but someone should; if it works, then this really ought to be thought of as the "graphite mug in a bin trick", with lignite recognized as a last-resort substitute -- unless, of course, you get the otherwise-useless blocks from a caravan.

[Skorpion]

How do you get it specifically stockpiled in a magma-proof bin, though? I'm sitting on a whole load of nickel and iron ones, but also wood and copper. Wood burns, and I've just seen copper melt in the magma moat when the caravan guards threw a kobold in.

[darkflagrance]

To get the stuff in the magma proof bin, create a small room that you can prevent access to with a workshop that can make the Dwarven Fire fuel, set up a stockpile that only accepts bins and forbid non-magma proof bins and wait for someone to put one there, then remove the stockpile, replace with a stockpile for the fuel, task the fuel item(s), and lock the door until the items are placed in the bin.

The process of setting it on fire in an appropriate place while minimizing Fun is altogether different and equally complicated.

[XSI]

Alternatively, I suggest just dumping the bin and burning object to a dump zone, then lock in a single dwarf by locked door and reclaim the dumped goods.

Stockpile them where you want them, it's fairly easy to guide dwarves using doors that lock because some invisible power the dwarves never seen or heard of says so(The player)

As for graphite, I've found it once, and still have the save. There are a few(Artificial) bodies of water, so I could just go try it out soon enough.

[Gergination]

I wish Bridgeapults were a bit more forceful and predictable in how they throw things.  Throwing a couple bins radiating death at invaders or really anything would be quite fun.

[denito]

Will these burning bins melt ice?

[Crossroads Inc.]

So in my current fortress Im building a "Spaceship" and I want to use a solid block 9x9 of these burning blocks in a bin as a "Fusion Reactor" to power my starship, Any advice on if its even possible to "build" an object out of these Thermonuclear burning bins?

[Skorpion]

Items don't stack in terms of Z-levels. You're probably best off using 1x1 dump zones.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

You can build stuff out of the burning blocks but you have to designate the building first or it won't let you select it. also while in a wall form a block of burning lignite will not actually burn stuff. here is a video of me deconstructing a wall made of burning lignite block. as you can see I have a good setup for setting the block on fire using a magma proof pump, grate and door.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Well heres what my plan is... Im "building" the starship Heart of Gold, from HHGTG, What Im planning on is building a Core of burning Bins, and then around that build a Steel wall around the core with space.  Into the space Im going to dump gold bricks.  The plan is for the bricks to melt, and slowly fill the space inside with bubbling liquid Gold, thus making the 'Heart of gold' for the ship.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

sadly the system does not work that way and all you will end up with is a lot of gold puddles. nothing more nothing less.

[Kanddak]

Also, fire doesn't burn hot enough to melt things. You need to use magma directly for that.

edited for being wrong, see below

[NFossil]

I wonder what would happen if one tries to encase the bin in obsidian, providing you flood it with magma first. Would all the water dumped on it just evaporate before even reaching the bin?

[Kanddak]

I wish Bridgeapults were a bit more forceful and predictable in how they throw things.  Throwing a couple bins radiating death at invaders or really anything would be quite fun.

I recently tested a trap based on this idea. Invaders had to pass though a 5-wide hallway with a pit full of charcoal in the middle. I actually kept it in wooden bins so that I could efficiently load the trap by ordering one bin dumped, then burn away the bin and leave 10 separate charcoal blocks to be ignited.
When the lever was pulled, thirty flaming pieces of charcoal flew out and covered the area around the bridge (special thanks to Sphalerite and winner for their bridgeapult research), dealing certain death to all passers-by.
I intentionally did not do this trick with magma-proof bins because the other feature of the trap was that I would then flood the hallway with water in order to extinguish the fire, which allowed me to reuse the charcoal ammunition.

This adds one more item to my original point ("it's not just for lignite"):
The only purpose of the bin is to shield the flaming object from water. The amazing destructive power of fire is not magically activated by being inside a bin and can be used for many fun things outside of a bin. Sometimes it is preferable to deliberately avoid a magma-safe bin because you want to be able to put the fire out with water.

Also, fire does burn hot enough to melt things when you put 30 pieces of flaming charcoal in the same tile, and I was wrong when I said earlier that it didn't. I lost a door and a hatch when I test-fired my trap.