Bay 12 Games Forum

Haha, thanks. I apologize for the flippant tone. Having done a project like that, mostly i remember how much time and tedium was involved, and didn't think it was difficult so much as long and involving a lot of details.

Anyway, my point was... actually I didn't have a point, really. Dwarfy stuff is good? Maybe that was the point?

Sky level really is a problem for projects like this, though. Forget to set it high enough and your whole space program just impacts the invisible ceiling instead of going where you want them.

Sadly, the obsidian parts were not made by parabolic ballistic casting. I wish. It's a traditional level-by-level casting with walls as the form and a pump stack up the middle. For a project of this type, when a collapse happens, it's often unrecoverable. Randomized falling obsidian tiles probably wouldn't have mixed well. Maybe next time?

Real dwarves launch the magma and water on a ballistic parabola towards the sky, timing it so the materials strike the top of the world and form obsidian mid-air, which then comes crashing down to build up their structure, which is located far, far, far below.

C'mon. Get it right.

Whoever said that magma casting isn't dwarfy is a filthy elf.

(For the record, my last megaproject was built of carved ice bricks and then covered in magma flooding a valley. It was a temple that launched clowns in upward parabolas to strike a target above a large grassy temple area built above the magma, which would then horrify the worshippers as exploded clown parts rained down from the impact onto them. There. Does that cover enough dwarfy bases?)

@PatrikLundell do you know offhand if there's a per-tile "valid map entrance"-type flag like there is for surface invaders and caravans? I know that there was a flag applied to surface-pathable edge tiles at the moment of embark to determine valid edge tiles for caravans/diplomats/invaders/etc.

I was wondering if you could you toggle on and off things entering the caravan by manipulating the edge tile flags with dfhack?

Nice! Way to go!

My criteria for moving necro towers was that it showed up on the neighbors list in the site finder and generated invasions for a player fortress. I didn't test anything beyond that.

But it definitely worked for getting every fortress in the world moved nearby to get more necro invasions.

Magma pistons are almost never the best, easiest, fastest answer. But I always see new people considering them alongside the much better pump stack and minecart options. I almost feel like that wiki page should be rewritten to give a warning that almost no one chooses the piston approach and it's mostly included for completeness.

I don't recall that particular design working before as a shotgun.

My reading of that design is that the cart traveling west would go airborne on the open space, and still be a projectile as it passes through the fortification. I think I've used that as an airlock before, where a dwarf riding the cart passes through the fortification without creating a path in from seriously dangerous embarks.

IIRC, The reason it doesn't work is that change from being a minecart (moving along tracks) to being a projectile (airborne). They're actually two totally different objects with different physics. The minecart stops being a minecart, and is briefly treated by the game as the same as an arrow or thrown object. When the it strikes something that stops a projectile, it turns back into a minecart and ejects its contents if going fast enough. Since fortifications don't block projectiles, the minecart will fly right through it the same as an arrow or bolt would. This is the same reason shotgun contents or creatures can be shot through fortifications. While in flight, they're actually in a special state of matter called "projectile." I don't know what state an object is in when it's skidding along the ground.

The cleanest design I can think of offhand that does what you want would be to move the fortification one space west, and put an empty minecart on the space currently occupied by the fortification. That will eject the shotgun contents without teleporting them up a z-level. The hole is optional in that setup. Larix showed you can get a higher firing rate by having the cart roll away sideways, and not paying that 11-tick delay for the cart to begin falling into the hole. I guess that only matters if your shotgun is also a machinegun or a squirt gun.

Let's start with the easiest to understand (though very high micromanagement) way to just get some magma for forges/furnaces. This is something that can be done in year 1 for most embarks so you can start any fortress off with magma forges anywhere on the map that you'd like.

1. Fill up a couple carts with magma
2. Get them up to your fort
3. Dump them into a 1x1 hole to later build a forge over.

This can all be done with only dwarf power and no rollers or even carving a minecart track up from the magma sea.

Step 1: Fill Carts with Magma

You need a way to put magma into the carts. I think the lowest-tech way to do this is to (d)ump the carts onto a horizontal grate, then pump magma over the carts, filling them. Then use a raising bridge to atom-smash the magma under the grate, draining it so the now-full-of magma carts can be retrieved.

Here's a text representation of the side view of how this setup might look. It takes two levels and you need somewhere you have dug down to magma from above. Obviously all materials need to be magma-safe. There's lots of easy variations on this idea.

   [      ] [  door] [ carts] [  pump] [  pump] [      ] [  WALL]
                     [ grate]                   [ grate]
   [  WALL] [BRIDGE] [bridge] [  WALL] [  WALL] [magma sea...                   ]

The procedure is:
1. Dump a couple carts on the tile labelled [carts].
2. Lock the door.
3. Have a dwarf work the pump. The carts and small space below them will fill very quickly.
4. Wave the bridge below (which raises to the tile marked [BRIDGE]) to destroy enough magma to clear the tile with the carts.
5. Now you have some Forbidden carts full of 2/7 magma each.


Step 2: Move the Carts

There is some debate about whether carrying hot carts full of magma will injure your dwarves. It's hard to tell because all you might see is random blood and maybe suddenly dead dwarves. (Who bled out through melted hands, maybe?) If you really care you can do your own mini-college-thesis on using dfhack to investigate injuries. Let's assume that's a risk and use a trick to get around it.

1. Create a stockpile very near the magma-filled carts and make sure that those carts are the ONLY ones eligible to be hauled to it.
2. Unlock the door and unforbid the carts. The dwarves can safely carry them very short distances and will bring them to the stockpile.
3. Set up a hauling route stop next to the stockpile so the dwarves place the magma filled carts into another cart at that route stop.
4. The hot carts are now inside another minecart which doesn't get hot and kill dwarves. Now you can move the whole hot mess safely by hauling the outer cart around.
4a. Hauling a minecart full of minecarts full of magma is extremely slow. Watch out for thirst/starvation of the dwarf doing it.


Step 3: Dump the magma into a hole.

1. Dig a 1x1 hole. Don't leave anything in it. Don't stand there when magma is dumped into it.
2. Construct a track stop adjacent to the hole, set to dump into the hole.
3. Construct a second track stop adjacent to the first, set to dump onto the first track stop that is next to the hole.
4. Somehow direct a dwarf to carry the cart full of carts full of magma to the second track stop. (I prefer (d)ump, but a hauling route stop can do that too.)
5. The outer cart will dump the magma-filled carts onto the first track stop, where they will immediately dump the magma into the hole.

If you just did two minecarts, now you have 4/7 magma in a 1x1 hole, perfect for a furnace or forge! Repeat as needed until you're ready to start exploring faster, more powerful, and more dangerous ways of bringing up lots of magma and flooding the world, starting with your fortress, usually.