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[EspritFort]

I plan on flooding the surface with lava to make my fort entrance the only habitable place around. So does the magma sea always provide an infinite supply of magma I can use?

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Yes.

[EspritFort]

Cheers.
Yay for magma!

[gtmattz]

The only issue is that the edge of the map provides an infinte drain, so to pull it off properly you are going to have to do something creative like build raising bridges around the perimeter of your whole map then raise them before unleashing the magma.

[EspritFort]

The only issue is that the edge of the map provides an infinte drain, so to pull it off properly you are going to have to do something creative like build raising bridges around the perimeter of your whole map then raise them before unleashing the magma.

Will bridges from a magma-safe material desintegrate in magma if I link them with, say, a copper mechanism, or will I just not be able to lower them anymore?

[gtmattz]

The one time I this I used green glass blocks and alunite mechanisms, linked all the bridges to one lever, pulled the lever, then removed the lever so that the bridges remained raised for eternity.  I am not sure if non-magma safe stuff will work, as I have always used magma safe just in case.  In my mind I have the idea that if the bridges are raised then nothing can share the tile, so magma would not cause it to deconstruct, but I have never really done any !!SCIENCE!! on it.

[Jurph]

If you're building a world-flooding pump stack, you definitely want to look at A Better Magma Pump Stack, and also look for... dang, can't find it.  Anyway, remember the following concepts:

• Build in a way to drain the pump stack - ideally by closing the input line and diverting the output somewhere else.
• Consider starting the stack at the very bottom of the map, inside a hollow reservoir, and only allowing magma into the reservoir later. In a normal pump stack, you're waiting for the single input tile to fill with magma; in a "sipping straw" stack, 5-10 pumps at the bottom of the stack can all function as intakes.  This will greatly amplify the output flow rate and allow you to generate frankly ludicrous amounts of magma damage.
• Remember to build heat sink reservoirs around the output of each stack to save FPS.
• If you're using dwarven water reactors to power the pump stack, don't forget to protect your reactors' water supply from the magma...!

[Cotes]

The only issue is that the edge of the map provides an infinte drain

Unless this has changed recently... No, no it doesn't. It acts like a wall for liquids, and to actually drain off the edge you must first dig down a couple levels until you hit rock and carve fortifications out of the wall at the edge (which cannot be mined or channeled).

[gtmattz]

The only issue is that the edge of the map provides an infinte drain

Unless this has changed recently... No, no it doesn't. It acts like a wall for liquids, and to actually drain off the edge you must first dig down a couple levels until you hit rock and carve fortifications out of the wall at the edge (which cannot be mined or channeled).

This changed with 2010.  The edge of the map drains magma now, through fortifiactions and the surface.  In 40d magma would not leave the map, period.  This was the VERY first thing I tested in 2010, as in 40d all my forts had magma moats that went to the edge with only a 5 wide entrance on one side a-la Snaketributes.  Unfortunately this is not posible anymore, and has not been for OVER A YEAR...

[FuzzyZergling]

As far as I know, water will drain off the map but magma will not.
I could be wrong.

[gtmattz]

As far as I know, water will drain off the map but magma will not.
I could be wrong.

You ARE wrong.  Like I said, I have tested this extensively, and with the release of 'DF2010' last year, magma was given the ability to flow off the map like water.

Instead of simply telling me I am wrong (especially after I have already stated I have tested it), why not go try yourself THEN come and tell me I am wrong if I am...

[Thundercraft]

• Build in a way to drain the pump stack - ideally by closing the input line and diverting the output somewhere else.

I've read the A Better Magma Pump Stack thread, but I still do not understand why it is important to drain the pump stack after use.

I mean, does leaving magma in the stack cause an undesirable hit to FPS or something? I'm confused.

[NecroRebel]

• Build in a way to drain the pump stack - ideally by closing the input line and diverting the output somewhere else.

I've read the A Better Magma Pump Stack thread, but I still do not understand why it is important to drain the pump stack after use.

I mean, does leaving magma in the stack cause an undesirable hit to FPS or something? I'm confused.

It's important to have some means of draining a magma pump stack in case you need to add onto or otherwise modify it. It's more important with that design than with the older one because there's more magma present to be dangerous. If you're never going to have to modify your structure, it's not important.

[Jurph]

In my day job, I have a bunch of duties... one of them is that I'm the staff reliability/failure engineer.  Murphy is a close personal friend of mine -- which may be why I love Dwarf Fortress.  If you assume that you'll never need to modify your pump stack, you can pretty much guarantee that something will fail -- you accidentally used a wooden pipe section instead of glass, or you tracked water into one of the intake chambers and now it's obsidian, or-or-or.  Failure happens.

Building in a way to drain the pump stack is an apotropaic gesture - like bringing an umbrella to keep it from raining.