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[Asteranx]

Short version:
Stone/items/stuff which melt in magma generates additional magma.

Expository version:
All that melting mass has to go somewhere... And it _is_ melting, so why not?  Set up a magma cistern as a pit, put one layer in, then toss in all your extra stone and watch it fill up.  Not entirely copacetic with the laws of thermodynamics, but when has that stopped DF?

A single stone probably wouldn't generate a whole 7/7 square, but it could at least spawn 3 or 4 additional units.  Furniture would be less, items made of stone or metal would be even less, and 'organic' things such as goblins/wood/food/goblins/etc would burn rather than melt.  The magma would be added to the general flow somewhere near where you threw it in, and you'd likely want it to spawn 'on top' of existing magma if the layer was full... Better undesignate that pit when things start topping off.

This would give you something dwarfy to do with all your extra stone, and make it possible to generate additional magma on maps with limited supplies.

[lucusLoC]

i would be for implementing this, but i would be more for it if it included some form of cooling mechanism as well. i always though it was silly that magma never cools to rock, and would it would take us one step closer to real volcanic fun.

[Hyndis]

There's still the issue of heat.

Magma is molten rock + heat. Assuming the magma is not connected to the planet's core, there is only a finite amount of heat to go around. Eventually magma will cool to solid rock, but if you keep dumping stuff in there that will reduce the temperature of the magma faster.

This is abstracted away with a magma pipe, which apparently will be plentiful in the new release with the greatly enhanced underground features. The magma pipe connects to the core and so has an unlimited supply of both heat and rock, albeit replenishment is at a limited rate.

[Darkond2100]

There's still the issue of heat.

Magma is molten rock + heat. Assuming the magma is not connected to the planet's core, there is only a finite amount of heat to go around. Eventually magma will cool to solid rock, but if you keep dumping stuff in there that will reduce the temperature of the magma faster.

This is abstracted away with a magma pipe, which apparently will be plentiful in the new release with the greatly enhanced underground features. The magma pipe connects to the core and so has an unlimited supply of both heat and rock, albeit replenishment is at a limited rate.

Are forgetting that this is DWARF FORTRESS! Magma = Hot. That's one of the rules, rules aren't broken. Fire = mysterious deaths. Another Law. HFS = Awesome. DOU YOU HAVE AN EFFING PROBLEM WITH THE LAWS OF DF?!?! MAGMA STAYS HOT!

[Asteranx]

I had another dwarfy thought about this last night.  Picture if you will, a retractable bridge over a single tile magma cistern.

On that bridge, a quantum stockpile containing all your fortress' waste stone.

We'll call it 'Revenge of the Microcline'.

[nutzy]

All that melting mass has to go somewhere...

But, conservation of mass and energy aren't respected in DF. 

I had another dwarfy thought about this last night.  Picture if you will, a retractable bridge over a single tile magma cistern.

On that bridge, a quantum stockpile containing all your fortress' waste stone.

i.e., the dwarven equivalent of the coke+mentos experiment 

[lucusLoC]

along those lines: what happens if, before all that rock melts and magmafies, you seal up the space with constructions?

i think that following this line of thought you would have to eliminate the quantum stockpile bug exploit feature before this is implemented.

i also firmly feel that is we are going to implement conservation of mass, we need to respect conservation of energy too. also 1 rock in that case would be equal to 7/7 magma, not 1/7.

also also, i am pretty much against this idea unless a cpu friendly way can be though of to implement it. we would need a breakthrough over in the fluid dynamics tread for it to really work, and be able to apply it somehow to temperature variation.

[DennyTom]

Heat conservation problem - could be resolved by need of using more fuel.

Theoretically this could be hackable in right now (not exactly as described, but...). I am pretty sure there was a plugin for DFHack (or similar program) that spawned a unit of magma wherever you wished.

[Malrin]

I had another dwarfy thought about this last night.  Picture if you will, a retractable bridge over a single tile magma cistern.

On that bridge, a quantum stockpile containing all your fortress' waste stone.

i.e., the dwarven equivalent of the coke+mentos experiment 

More like the dwarven equivalent of the trinity tests.

Hey guys, check out my noble room setup! *pulls lever*

[Darkond2100]

along those lines: what happens if, before all that rock melts and magmafies, you seal up the space with constructions?

i think that following this line of thought you would have to eliminate the quantum stockpile bug exploit feature before this is implemented.

Get rid of Quantum Stockpiles!?!? This would be dwarven madness! Imagine; making an easy way to kill your nobles/enemies in a trap/room.

[Geb]

along those lines: what happens if, before all that rock melts and magmafies, you seal up the space with constructions?

One way to deal with fluid being created in a space that doesn't have any spare volume left would be to have the liquid teleport out to a random nearby empty tile. Have this represent it leaking through cracks. It has the potential to make this concept even more ludicrously dangerous.

[yuriatayde]

I'm 100% behind this idea if only because it would finally make magma pools useful. I avoid magma pools like the plague, the last thing I need is for my ridiculously over-sized and over-complicated workshop full of magma forges to run out of fuel, never to see use again. The very idea of eventually running out of wonderful magma is just too depressing to bear!

With this idea, when I start to run a little low? Throw in some more fuel and wait for it to melt! I'm not going to argue thermodynamics, after all; what kept the magma pool hot until I found it? I'm too busy enjoying the cooking experiment, brewing myself the biggest pot of rock-soup ever.

If I run out of area to mine rocks from I could then import some stones to keep the pot brewing, but that's the point of magma pools I guess, to inevitably leave you with just charcoal and a tearful memory of better times.

Even though it would be Fun in every meaning of the word, though, I would also agree that this should wait until the 1-tile-dump-site problem is resolved.

[Niveras]

I had another dwarfy thought about this last night.  Picture if you will, a retractable bridge over a single tile magma cistern.

On that bridge, a quantum stockpile containing all your fortress' waste stone.

We'll call it 'Revenge of the Microcline'.

I must admit, that'd be a pretty awesome "dead man's fortress" switch. Quantum stockpile, a single tile of magma, hordes of orcs converging on you with your champions dead... Assuming a couple thousand stone creates a couple hundred tiles of magma, with all the pressure that results: your fortress entrance is now a magma vent.

[Malrin]

I'm 100% behind this idea if only because it would finally make magma pools useful. I avoid magma pools like the plague, the last thing I need is for my ridiculously over-sized and over-complicated workshop full of magma forges to run out of fuel, never to see use again. The very idea of eventually running out of wonderful magma is just too depressing to bear!

YES.

I always need magma on my map, but sometimes it's too hard to find a pipe or it's unnecessarily big or full of magma men or something. Having alternate infinite sources of magma would be win.

[irmo]

All that melting mass has to go somewhere...

But, conservation of mass and energy aren't respected in DF. 

They should be, to the extent possible, and this means not introducing features that explicitly violate conservation of mass or energy.

So, on the one hand, the melting mass has to go somewhere.

On the other hand, if it turns into more magma, then it's cooling off the rest of the magma like ice cubes in a glass of water. The whole mixture ought to equilibrate right at the melting point of whatever the predominant kind of stone is (with conversion of some of the stone to magma), and then slowly cool and solidify to basalt, rhyolite, etc. (not obsidian!). Under no circumstance should this produce infinite magma.

I had another dwarfy thought about this last night.  Picture if you will, a retractable bridge over a single tile magma cistern.

On that bridge, a quantum stockpile containing all your fortress' waste stone.

Here's an example: Quantum stockpiles. They're a bug exploit. They should be fixed in the future. They shouldn't influence the development of new features, because that will just make them harder to remove.