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[Noble Digger]

Super awesome project, man It fits the dwarven bill of "mechanical and unnecessarily complicated" to a D.

[breadbocks]

wat would b evn better is if this was the space elevator map, hollow the whole thing out that's ur reservoir

The map is undiggable, you need a Linux, and it doesn't have a volcano.

[Scaraban]

no just a couple days ago after 2 years he can mine it

[Terisuke]

DISPATCH: PARCHEDPILLARS PROVING GROUND

PROJECT HAMMER OF ARMOK

5th Timber, 503

The military powers-that-are seem to be displeased with the stopping power of pure magma.  With the supplementary water stack for Project Stonespam still in progress, I've come up with an intermediate solution that might satisfy them.  I call it Armok's Hammer.  The schematics are as follows:


   |   ____
   | | X__X
   | |  I
____ _________
X~~~~~~~~~~~~X
X~~~~~~~~~~~~X
______________


As you can see, the weapon consists of a large reservoir of magma, suspended by a feeder tube that hooks on to the magma flow conduit for the local hex of the DOMAIN network.  Once the reservoir is filled, the tube is disconnected and the reservoir hangs only by the support connecting it to the bottom of the conduit.  At this point, it would normally wait for some invader to wander beneath it, but we have decided to go ahead with an effectiveness test despite the lack of enemy activity.

Some pictures of the apparatus immediately pre-test are posted below:



We're throwing the lever in...  3...  2...  1...   

As the lever is pulled, the world seems to stand still. (My computer stalled out for a bit)



Astoundingly, the stones seem to drop straight through the magma, which emits a cloud of magma mist and slowly begins its fall to the ground.  The stones land in a perfect square below the drop site, followed almost 100 frames later by a tirade of magma covering the drop zone.  From this we can derive one undeniable conclusion:

The Parchedpillars Law of Object Interaction
-Whereas; the fall speed of objects is finite AND,
-Whereas; the fall speed of living rock and constructs is infinite,
   WHEN COMBINED ABSENT SUPPORT
The slower of the two (objects, fluids) is essentially STATIC and behaves as if being caved in on,
Whereupon it then falls as it is wont to do normally. 

The goal of the project is somewhat set back, as we had hoped for a large cloud of magma mist filling the drop site.  We may have to wait for the aqueduct to be complete after all.  The military may flog me to death with my own mittens, but dwarven science can only do so much. 

[Urist Imiknorris]

Beautiful. May I suggest a number of smaller Hammers fired concurrently?

[Terisuke]

Beautiful. May I suggest a number of smaller Hammers fired concurrently?

After this, I've pretty much decided that Project Stonespam (i.e., my cave-in gun) is the only way to efficiently augment the network's firepower.  Magma mist is generated when a falling wall or floor strikes magma, and given that falling rock has infinite velocity the magma has to be on the ground for that to work.  The cave-in gun would create a column of falling obsidian, magma mist and dust that would pretty much cock up anything in the vicinity. 

[breadbocks]

  The cave-in gun would create a column of falling obsidian, magma mist and dust that would pretty much cock up anything in the vicinity.

Hehe. Dick jokes.

[Terisuke]

July 27 - I'm putting the magma network on hold while I throw together a complementary water network to supply my reservoirs for the cave-in gun.  I'm going to do this a bit differently than the magma networks - because water has a faster flow rate, and because of the intricacies of building a "non-stick" dispenser for the water (i.e., one that won't support the obsidian as it forms, blocking the pipe) I'm going to be using a very large reservoir in the center of the hex with small feeder tubes going to each of the magma reservoirs.  The end of the tubes will look as follows:


X|~|
X|~|
X|~|
 |~|
  ~|
 ---


Where the X is the existing magma reservoir, the | denotes the sides of the tube.  I'm hoping the downward tubing gives the water a bit of horizontal momentum when it exits through the opening.  Regardless, it will impact the side of the magma flow and form obsidian.  To prevent aggregations of formed obsidian on the end of the pipe, I'm considering composing it mostly of bridges.  The z-level of the pump opening will look as follows, tentatively. 


.....
XXXXX
.=~=.
.===.
.....


Equals signs denote bridges, three of them together.  All use the back wall as an anchor.  The sides of the tubes will open to the left and right as is appropriate, and will be closed during operation to form the side walls.  The middle bridge will extend from the back across the center of the tube and under the opening to form the bottom of the chute, and will remain open during operation.  As a general precaution, I'm going to make them all magma-safe, because that seems like just the sort of thing that might happen this close to a magma dispenser. 

It'll be a bit before I have it up and running - my water source is a brook on the edge of the map, and I"m only half done with the 46-pump stack needed to bring it up to the right z level.  The ducting is made easier by the ability to build over top of my existing magma network.  All water piping is done in stylish microcline. 

Hopefully sometime next week I'll have gotten things to the point where I can test out a single reservoir and work out the kinks in the system.  After that, I'll deploy it to hexes radiating out from the central hex, and will expand the network as it seems appropriate. 

[Osmosis Jones]

If it's under pump-pressure, water flows exactly the same as magma; under normal circumstances, magma cannot path through itself (which is basically how pressure works) but pumps bypass this restriction. Since any water you have up there will have to be pumped, well...

Also, you can't give liquids momentum in this game; the second they're over open space, they'll start to fall.

[Urist McTaverish]

  The cave-in gun would create a column of falling obsidian, magma mist and dust that would pretty much cock up anything in the vicinity.

Hehe. Dick jokes.

I vote we rename the cave in gun "Armok's Dick."

[Terisuke]

If it's under pump-pressure, water flows exactly the same as magma; under normal circumstances, magma cannot path through itself (which is basically how pressure works) but pumps bypass this restriction. Since any water you have up there will have to be pumped, well...

Also, you can't give liquids momentum in this game; the second they're over open space, they'll start to fall.

Balls.  The pressure thing isn't a big deal, but lack of momentum would really limit the gun's effectiveness - or at least its area of effect.  I'm thinking what I should do now is to actually run the feeder tube under the flow of magma and dispense the water down from there. With proper flow and bridge use, it shouldn't be any less possible.

Also, McTaverish, I'm fully up for making the end of the dispenser in the rough shape of a cock and balls.  It seems so appropriate. 

[techno65535]

Why not have the water fall onto a floor tile surrounded by walls on all but one side, forcing it to splash out that one side?

[Terisuke]

Why not have the water fall onto a floor tile surrounded by walls on all but one side, forcing it to splash out that one side?

Well, I'm not sure how splash dynamics work in DF.  If previous experience holds true, the tile would generate mist and displace the water so that it flowed around the tile, but would do nothing to convey untoward horizontal momentum.  This generally agrees with what osmosis jones said earlier, as well.  Unsupported liquids only move down. 

[numerobis]

Could you rig up a mechanism to make the stone drop onto the already-fallen magma?

[Osmosis Jones]

That would actually work quite well. From your magma only drops, you observed that the magma took some time to flatten; dropping liquid water onto that will cause obsidian to form a z-level or two above the ground. This means you will get a cave-in, with the added advantage of having an easy to deploy liquid, rather than trying to sync up drop rates and construct non-stick nozzles.


Also, one other thing; the repeated magma dropping is gonna leave you with little pillars of obsidian in the middle that will eventually render the cave-in gun useless. I'd suggest you get around this by digging out a 2 or so z-level shaft beneath the cave-in site, leaving the floortile at the top in place. The cave-in will punch through this, and your new obsidian tiles will fill up the emptied shaft, which can then be safely re-excavated.