Print

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

[Misterstone]

I was thinking about creating a structure by filling a very large mold with ice, on a freezing map (I am building on top of a frozen arctic ocean).  I imagine there are problems that will come up, to name a couple:

1)  If I channel water from the top, many Z levels up, to fill the mold, the water will freeze before it hits the bottom of the mould, either creating a series of CPU-killing  cave-in events, or perhaps the ice will not fill the mold one level at a time, but rather start to mushroom.

So what I would need to do to prevent the water from freezing before it is where I want it, I would need to put a roof over it, I believe.  That brings me problem 2:

2)  If I try to solve this by putting a roof on the mold, I would have to deconstruct the roof every time I want to fill in a new Z-level.

So I am wondering, if I were to put a retractable bridge, or several, on top of the mold, would that count as a roof and prevent the water from freezing?

The mold I am talking about here is a large cylindar, may 25 tiles in diameter or so, going up as many Z levels as I think I can manage.

The idea here is to have a massive Ice Tower that can be engraved on the inside.  But now it occurs to me that if I were to actually do this, would not the interior floors/walls no longer be considered outside, and then melt?

Ice is kind of confusing...

[a404notfound]

Make a mold out of WMW where magma is M and Walls are W so the water will not freeze drain off the magma and tada you have an ice sculpture with a creamy center.

[Eric Blank]

Unfortunately putting a floor over the roof will not prevent freezing, it will still be considered light and above-ground, and thus be at the mercy of the climate.

If you're trying to build a natural ice-wall building, you need to fill the mold with water while it's under a natural stone or soil floor. It absolutely has to be done from scratch entirely underground, then channel out the natural floor on top.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you're trying to get an ice-machine to make blocks of ice, then what you need to do is this;
dig 2 identical chambers under your water chamber. All 3 should be 1 z-level tall. The topmost should contain the water, the next will contain MAGMA And the third will be empty in the beginning. The floor of the second chamber needs to be dug out and replace with magma-safe retracting bridge(s), the first and third must be natural stone floors. You will need pumps and a source of extra magma to bring magma back up to the second chamber, and a pump to pump water into the top chamber at the same level, it must not be dropped from above or pressure will allow it to be multiple levels deep and it will also instantly freeze, creating cave-ins or floor over the chamber (it will still be above-ground and freezing though.) Link the retracting bridge(s) to a lever.
Now fill the middle with magma, then the upper chamber with water, and make sure the lower is clear. When you're ready to make ice, pull the lever that controls the retracting bridges under the second level, dropping the magma into the third. The top-most level should instantly freeze into ice as soon as the magma has fallen to the lower level.
Voila, instant dwarven ice machine. You can't transport it underground though or it will melt again

Supporting evidence: rain-of-doomy-ice machine, used to be on the list here; http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54532.0
This all depends on temperatures still being wonky normal enough in the latest version for the magma to keep the water warm while directly underneath it, and let it freeze when not directly underneath it (which makes perfect sense in reality. How did you think geysers work? land whales? It's water contacting super-heated, but not molten, rock.)

[HatfieldCW]

I like the idea of the liquid center.

[Patchy]

I've done something similiar to this before, back when I was playing 40d. Built an ice fort in a 2 biome tundra, 1 with aquifer for water the other half was dry. I dug out a 60x60x10 cavern in the dry half with jus a soil floor over the whole thing. Pumped in water from the aquifer till it was full, and channeled the soil roof out. Insta ice fort, and then use bucket brigades to pretty up the entrance and construct a few ice pillboxes.

I did want to actually make a natural ice-palace above the ground at one point, but never got around to it. Didn't want to use init file fiddling to keep water liquid while filling a mold, and most definately didn't want to bucket brigade an entire above ground palace lol. So I did concoct a plan for it, but like I said it never put in motion so I dunno if it'd work. Maybe you can give it some thought, and maybe even solve the problem I encountered in my planning phase that I never quite worked out hehe.

So without further ado, my crazy scrapped plan from back then for an above ground natural ice structure.

Build a mold as normal with an extra lvl below what you want frozen, with whatever material you have handy, but take time to place retracting bridges on every floor of the mold. After you get that all done, pump magma into the 2nd floor from the top, essentially right under the top floor you want frozen. Don't pump in too much though, you want the magma to be moving about so that it keeps water liquid above it. Now you pump in your water onto the top floor, and because the magma is moving about below it, it won't flash freeze yet. Once you got the top floor full, retract the bridges under the magma in the lower room. The magma falls 1z lvl to the next floor down, and the water on the top freezes and the mold walls support it. Now re-extend your bridges and pump water into the room that was jus vacated by the magma, followed by dropping the magma again and flash freezing the next floor. You work your way from top to the bottom like that. Finally you get to the bottom level, you did build that extra basement floor right? Dump your magma there flash freeze your last floor, and the ice should now be touching the ground and supported by that. You can now deconstruct the mold.

The big problem I ran into though, was the pump stack to get the water up there. Was the water gonna flash freeze in my pump stack or not. I had started to try and work out an extra complicated stack with magma in it to keep the water liquid as I pumped it up to the top of the mold, but never got past that part cause I sorta moved on to 2010 at that juncture hehe.

Just in case you missed it the first time though, this is completely untested and I did hit a snag in the planning phase with the pump stack for the whole thing. I may revisit this crazy plan at some point in the future, I dunno yet. Also sorry for the wall'o'text, if you can figure out what in the world I was thinking with this project back then, let me know how it goes XP

Though in all honesty it'd probably be easier if less dwarfy to use the init file "temp OFF" to keep the water liquid till you're ready to freeze it in your mold. Cheers and have fun.

[Reese]

The big problem I ran into though, was the pump stack to get the water up there. Was the water gonna flash freeze in my pump stack or not. I had started to try and work out an extra complicated stack with magma in it to keep the water liquid as I pumped it up to the top of the mold, but never got past that part cause I sorta moved on to 2010 at that juncture hehe.

I was bored...

Code: [Select]

########## z +3
###+#o####
###+######
#+++######
#%########
#%###*--*#
#.#+%%.###
#####|####
#####*####
##########

########## Z +2
#####*####
#####|####
#####|.###
#o###*%-*#
######%###
#+++##+###
###+######
###+%%.###
##########

########## Z +1
####*#####
####|#####
###.%%+#.#
#*--*###%#
########%#
######+++#
######+###
####o#+###
##########

########## Z +0
###.%%+###
######+###
###+##+++#
###%######
#*-%*#####
###.|#####
####|#####
####*#####
##########

spiral design, outer spiral is for magma, inner for water, 39 power per z-level

I have no idea if this would actually work, though.

[Misterstone]

You know what I just discovered?  You can make your dwarves create above-ground ice easily if you have a water source; simply designate a pit and have them dump water onto the space.  If it is in a freezing zone, an ice wall will form immediately after the dump the water.  Moreover, you can designate a large area and as the ice walls form they will continue to move towards the empty spaces and pour water onto them.  It's actually fairly fast; I did this with just a crew of seven dwarves. I think that if you had a huge fortress with lots of buckets and surplus labor it would be pretty quick.  And you wouldn't even need a mold; you could just build a 1 level stairwell, go up 1 z level, designate a large area as a pool, and as the space turns to ice they will walk out onto it to pour into the border. 

The only trick is to get a convenient water source, which means it has to be underground (or it freezes); possibly from an aquifer.

Surely someone has done this before?

[Patchy]

Yes, I have on a very small scale. And I did mention it in my above post, though I didn't exactly explain out what I meant by bucket brigading it, which is my bad.

Though creating pond zones to build an entire decent sized above ground ice fort would be a bit... well a bit something, not sure I have a good word for it. It'd be a test of one's patience to be sure. And hence why I started planning out that operation I described.