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[Jude]

I'm building a pump stack to bring the contents of a magma pipe onto the top of a tower.

Incidentally, the purpose is for a variation on the standard Fuck the World system. I have an outdoor town, with houses, buildings for workshops, a mead hall, and then I'm building a keep which will house the nobles, the military and emergency supplies in case of apocalypse. On top of the keep will be a large tank, multiple z-levels deep, with floodgates in staggered patterns around the edges. That means I can open just the gates on one side, or certain sides, or just all of them, flooding whichever part of the map I like or the whole thing, in lava.

Anyway, I'm pumping magma to the top to dump it into the reservoir. I know I'll have to get bauxite for mechanisms if I don't want to have to rebuild the floodgates after each use, but that won't be an issue for a while. Right now I just want to know if the blocks used in building a screw pump have to be magma-safe. I.e. do I have to forge the blocks out of iron too or can they be stone other than bauxite?

If they do, I'm probably going to mod magma-safety so it's realistic and I can use other stones. My map is short on hematite.

Also, will pumping a huge amount of magma many z-levels into the air take horrendously long if I have dwarves do the work or would it be way quicker to use a windmill? (I wouldn't mind having dwarves beef up on pumping)

[Jim Groovester]

Fire-safe materials will suffice for pumping magma, so long as magma doesn't touch the passable tile of the pump. Wooden pumps may work, too, depending on your map. So you may want to try building a test wooden pump before building a giant pumping tower.

You should power your pumps with a windmill array or whatever, unless you want your magma to stop pumping because a dwarf decided to get a drink.

[Jude]

Fire-safe materials will suffice for pumping magma, so long as magma doesn't touch the passable tile of the pump. Wooden pumps may work, too, depending on your map. So you may want to try building a test wooden pump before building a giant pumping tower.

Fire-safe?

You should power your pumps with a windmill array or whatever, unless you want your magma to stop pumping because a dwarf decided to get a drink.

What would happen then? It wouldn't backfire or something would it?

[Quietust]

Fire-safe materials will suffice for pumping magma, so long as magma doesn't touch the passable tile of the pump. Wooden pumps may work, too, depending on your map. So you may want to try building a test wooden pump before building a giant pumping tower.

Fire-safe?

Corkscrew and pipe not made of wood, block not made of wood, bituminous coal, lignite, or graphite.

You should power your pumps with a windmill array or whatever, unless you want your magma to stop pumping because a dwarf decided to get a drink.

What would happen then? It wouldn't backfire or something would it?

No, it'll just stop pumping magma. The impassable tile acts as a wall, so a properly placed pump will serve to seal a magma channel and prevent any leaks, but if you need magma pumped quickly, it's best to use something that will never abruptly turn off.

[denito]

I think the floodgate and the mechanism both need to be made of bauxite.  When the floodgate is up there's no problem, but when I let magma go by a floodgate that was down, which has a bauxite mechanism and a non-bauxite floodgate, I found the bauxite mechanism laying by itself in the magma; the nonbauxite floodgate seems to have melted and decontructed, leaving the bauxite mechanism lying there.

Note:  making the floodgate out of metal is probably ok; by nonbauxite I mean nonbauxite rock.  I wish you could make mechanisms out of iron - that would seem to make more sense anyway.

[Quietust]

Rather than referring to floodgates as being "up" or "down" (it isn't explicitly stated if they lower into the floor, raise into the ceiling, or simply rotate out of the way), it's much simpler to state that a closed floodgate and mechanism can be made out of any material (except maybe wood?) and hold back magma, while an open floodgate must be made of magma-safe materials (either bauxite or an appropriate magma-safe metal) and use only magma-safe (i.e. bauxite) mechanisms on the gate itself (the mechanisms attached to the lever can still be made of anything) or the entire floodgate will deconstruct once part of it melts.

[Jude]

Yeah, I previously made a magma-flooding machine that, it turned out, could only be used once since I didn't use bauxite for the mechanisms that opened the floodgate.

As for the pumps - I was wasting all my iron ore making corkscrews and pipe sections and now it turns out I can make those out of glass! Well, that's awesome - now I can train my glassmaker on all those pump components and have my smiths focus on weapons and armor.

Also, my home civ imports bauxite

[mareck]

upload a pic of your town, would like to it.

[Jude]

Once the keep's done I'll upload some 3Dwarf (my computer's not good enough to run Visual Fortress) pics of the whole thing. I actually haven't looked at it in 3D yet and it probably looks like ass. For example, my mead hall is supposed to have a pointy roof, but because the main shape is only one z-level high, the proportions are gonna make it look really weird. My dwarves are all busy assembling the keep now so there's no time to go back and redo it.

Also, the keep is just about 3 stories high right now. I'm going to build it up to the max Z level and hopefully add some elaboration to its shape along the way, so things should look cool in a while...but they would look quite bland now.

I could upload the save file next time I get a chance if you want.

[Skorpion]

You should really make the pumps magma-safe in case of accidents. Quite a few times now mine have ended up submerged in magma.

[SquirrelWizard]

hey I'm currently working on a similar project, an artificial volcano.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7075-toolcrew

sorry about how the initial point is way the heck off in the middle of nowhere, this is my first map that I've put up, so you'll probably want to use the points of interest link I put in to zoom in on it.

[denito]

Rather than referring to floodgates as being "up" or "down" (it isn't explicitly stated if they lower into the floor, raise into the ceiling, or simply rotate out of the way), it's much simpler to state that a closed floodgate and mechanism can be made out of any material (except maybe wood?) and hold back magma, while an open floodgate must be made of magma-safe materials (either bauxite or an appropriate magma-safe metal) and use only magma-safe (i.e. bauxite) mechanisms on the gate itself (the mechanisms attached to the lever can still be made of anything) or the entire floodgate will deconstruct once part of it melts.

When it asks for the two mechanisms to  link the lever to the floodgate, how do you tell which one is going to end up on the lever and which one on the floodgate?  50/50 chance and I always guess wrong.

\As for the pumps - I was wasting all my iron ore making corkscrews and pipe sections and now it turns out I can make those out of glass!

I could never get my glass workshop to ever turn out corkscrews or tubes.  They'd gather the sand, and make raw green glass, but not construct anything else.  Of course, this was the same game where they suddenly stopped all digging jobs even though I had mining turned on on everyone and three picks.  I finally had to abandon because I couldn't get them to do anything except party.

[Sizik]

When it asks for the two mechanisms to  link the lever to the floodgate, how do you tell which one is going to end up on the lever and which one on the floodgate?  50/50 chance and I always guess wrong.

It tells you which one you're linking.

[Quietust]

I could never get my glass workshop to ever turn out corkscrews or tubes.  They'd gather the sand, and make raw green glass, but not construct anything else.  Of course, this was the same game where they suddenly stopped all digging jobs even though I had mining turned on on everyone and three picks.  I finally had to abandon because I couldn't get them to do anything except party.

Raw green glass is a rough gemstone which can't actually be made into anything (you can have your jewelers cut it and then encrust it onto your goods, a great way to train them up without using your valuable gemstones) - all green glass items are made directly from sand bags and fuel (and pearlash for clear glass, and rock crystals instead of sand bags for crystal glass). Don't worry, lots of people make that mistake the first time.

[DeathOfRats]

When it asks for the two mechanisms to  link the lever to the floodgate, how do you tell which one is going to end up on the lever and which one on the floodgate?  50/50 chance and I always guess wrong.

It tells you which one you're linking.

Not only that, but as far as I've seen, they always link in the same order: first the floodgate (or other triggered device) then the lever (or any other trigger, such as a pressure plate)