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[Xob Ludosmbax]

The Dwarven Submarine has been a dream of many.  I've discovered an important step in that process.  Unfortunately, I don't have the time to fully explore it, however, I'm hoping that by posting here, someone else can run with the idea.  I did a proof of concept using dfhack, and the idea works.  In my proof of concept, I dropped the submarine into a volcano.  I had to dfhack in a floor (and support for it) because the SMR ate my first attempt. 

The basic premise is:

• You cast your submersible out of obsidian.
• Then you carve out the inside with floors, leaving a natural stone outer shell.
• Now, this is the where the magic happens.  I was diving in magma, and my test submersible was 3 layers (not counting the all floor top), so I filled the three levels with 2/7 water.  2/7 means that your passengers won't drown, but the water does not evaporate.
• Finally, disconnect the submarine from its support, allowing it to cave in. 

What you get is a single level hollow chamber at the bottom of a huge spire of obsidian.  There is no liquid in the hollow chamber.  The obsidian spire reaches up to your starting point.  As a side effect of this process, you can obsidianize as many levels of magma as you desire with only a small amount of water.  If you are only after the obsidian, you should be able to use constructed walls. 

I would guess this idea can be modified for placing a chamber on the bottom of the ocean.  The bottom layer would be filled with 2/7 water and the levels above it would be filled with magma. It could also probably be used as a very quick way to pave the entire ocean.  I'm not sure if having more than 3 levels would allow you to have a multi-level hollow chamber.  I'm not sure if items underneath are crushed.  Maybe a constructed floor would be better in some situations, because it would deconstruct into blocks.

Some ideas for how to get a passenger to survive the trip:

• Cave-ins are instant; dropping objects is not.  You may need to drop your passengers and supplies first, then drop the submarine over them.
• If your passenger is travelling in a minecart, they would not take damage from the fall or from the magma while they are in the cart, and they can leave the minecart without further effort.  I'm not sure if they would leave the minecart early.
• If your passengers are travelling in a cage, they would not take damage from the fall or the magma while they are in the cage.  How can they exit the cage after the trip?  Would melting (non magma-safe metal) or burning (wood) work?  Maybe one passenger could be engineered to be released first and survive just long enough to release the other passengers?
• Finally, if necessary, you can remove the fat from your passengers, so that they survive in magma for a slightly longer period of time.

Any thoughts, comments or ideas are welcome, especially since most of this (past the initial proof of concept) is just conjecture.

Edit: IIRC, the bottom level must be a cast obsidian wall in order to "push" the magma out of the way during the cave-in.  When something caves in, any liquids directly below the cave in are instantly displaced directly above the cave-in.  I'm not sure of the exact mechanics behind the obsidian spire though.  It was unexpected.

Edit: Removed "Paving the Ocean from title".  Further research by Ravendarksky shows it doesn't work with magma over water.

[Urist McEngraver]

I'm no genius when it comes to this stuff, or DF in general, but this is well.. genius.

[Di]

This thread seems interesting. Though I wonder how one could carve the insides without breaching the natural stone outside layer. Does it require additional obsidianization as the last preparation?
Have anyone tried replicating it?

[Xob Ludosmbax]

No, the inside is obsidian too.  IIRC, the bottom layer was 7x7 and hollow (floor), and the layers above it were 5x5 and filled with obsidian (natural wall). 

[Midas]

How can they exit the cage after the trip?

Lever in the fortress, linked to the cages before the launch?

[zubb2]

Could you get a minecart in a loop with a dwarf in it and then cancel the job after the diving faze.

Or just drop an obsidian cave over a dwarf that was falling in some way?

[ImagoDeo]

A looping minecart seems to be the best idea in my opinion, but I'm not sure if any of these ideas would work. We need itg or someone else to test it.

Honestly, though, nobody could make this stuff up.

It's the instant obsidianization that really gets me interested. Imagine obsidianizing an entire magma tube and constructing a fortress inside it! ...or would it refill with lava when you started hollowing it out? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[hiroshi42]

It shouldn't refill as long as it is closed on the bottom, at least it does not when you build normally in a volcano.

[Xob Ludosmbax]

It shouldn't refill as long as it is closed on the bottom, at least it does not when you build normally in a volcano.

This was related to one of my problems, I had to use dfhack to close the bottom, otherwise everything would get swallowed up by the SMR.

[Ravendarksky]

See bottom for results/findings... First two paragraphs are just me making mistakes.I cast a 7x7x5 submarine
I dug out from the roof a tunnel straight down through floors 1,2,3,4 and hollowed out floors 2,3,4.
I then trapped a miner in floor 4 behind some walls , poured in some water and then recast the stairs square and retunneled it using the trapped miner.
repeated for floors 2 and 3.
I then recast the roof.

Finally i had my shell ready to drop into magma as you describe! I saved the game and deconstructed the support.

As expected the roof collapsed down the way crushing the floors and water, leaving no evidence of the brave trapped miner dwarfs or the submarine. I was left with a a 7x7x3 pile of obsidian at the bottom of the magma with a raised outer area another 2z levels up.

... What did I do wrong?

Some save scumming + dfhack experiments:
- I quit and reloaded and tried again using dfhack to replace my water with 5/7. This resulted in the same result but with a 1 tile wide obsidian column rising up to the surface.
- 7/7 water caused 2 1 tile columns in each corner to appear.
- I put SMR at the bottom and the whole thing was swallowed up with no remains (5/7) water.
- Replaced the diving area to be water instead of magma. Tried bottom floor water, top two floors magma, ended up with a 7x4 obsidian block at the 'ocean' floor.
- Removed my stone wall roof and replaced it with JUST a obsidian floor. Getting BETTER results, 6 pillars this time but still no enclosed area.
- Removed my stone wall floor and replaced it with JUST a obsidian floor. Got the desired result. using 2/7 water! finally!

For anyone trying this the submarine MUST BE like so:

• floors (can be made of anything, as long as it will deconstruct). No roof is needed, but 2/7 water is required on top floor
• Shell, must be CAST obsidian walls OR normal unmined stone (including edge of top and FLOOR of bottom level

List of my findings:

• Doesn't work if you replace magma with water (and use magma in the container instead)
• All items on top/in the submarine end up on top of it, and any dwarfs inside get insta gibbed as expected... A more cunning plan is needed
• Any items placed on the landing zone get crushed/encased in obsidian by the submarine and disappear.
• only works if you are dropping the submarine into magma above a floor... doesn't working over SMR.
• doesn't matter how much water you use, as long as there is at least 2/7 on THE TOP FLOOR
• you can make your tower hollow over multiple z levels... just make your submarine taller
• It doesnt matter how many z levels above the drop zone your submarine is, it can be 1 or any number higher
• NO roof is needed, just walls to contain the water

Based on my findings I don't believe there is any way to use this to get dwarfs to the bottom of the sea/magma sea. However it COULD create a great way to quickly make a fortress in the middle of a volcano. (Requires Dfhack to remove the SMR at the bottom? unless we can find a way around that)

Edit:
OKAY so after an afternoon actually doing my job rather than throwing dwarfs into magma trenches I've come up with some avenues for further exploration. We have three problems to solve in this field of science:

1. Can you make a dwarf survive a trip through several z levels of magma in any way?
2. Can you make a lever which times the dwarfs exit and then very specifically does another action after a series of ticks (collapses a support) OR can we predict how many ticks a miner at mining level X will take to channel a square they are next to?
3. Can you make a submarine land safely on the SMR.... I think the OP has already done this but I don't understand how.

The plan is to launch a dwarf down through the magma and 'capture' them mid flight inside our quantum submarine which can move between one location and the next in a single tick. I'm thinking it would be best to use minecarts as then hopefully (if they don't get destroyed by magma) you can also transport everything our dwarf is going to need for their adventure. Pickaxe, axe, seeds, booze, minecarts full of water, etc.

[Spitemaster]

AFAIK, built cages get disconnected from their levers when they fall, so caged dwarves isn't really a viable option unless there's some other way to get them out.

[Ruhn]

Nicely done, Ravendarksky.

Based on my findings I don't believe there is any way to use this to get dwarfs to the bottom of the sea/magma sea. However it COULD create a great way to quickly make a fortress in the middle of a volcano. (Requires Dfhack to remove the SMR at the bottom? unless we can find a way around that)

The only thing I can think of would be to cast a "handle" at the top of the submarine that would catch the edge of the volcano, preventing the sub from hitting the SMR.

[Laserhead]

I don't think a handle would work, for the same reason a simple hollowed shell wouldn't. When a cave in occurs, it is every tile for itself, so there would be nothing stopping the rest of the "submarine" from continuing down.

[Merendel]

Based on my findings I don't believe there is any way to use this to get dwarfs to the bottom of the sea/magma sea. However it COULD create a great way to quickly make a fortress in the middle of a volcano. (Requires Dfhack to remove the SMR at the bottom? unless we can find a way around that)

The only way I could see doing this without DF hack would be drop a sub just slightly smaller than the diameter of the volcano.  This would form the obsidian column that would then promptly dissapear into the SMR leaving a huge void in the magma which would all settle to the botem and start to refill.   Once the magma has settled and is filling do a controlled water drop that obsidianizes part of the volcano but still leaves a gap on one side for it to fill effectively making a floor down there.   wait for the refill and drop another sub to form your column of obsidian.

Look on the bright side you've probably discovered the fastest way to drain a volcano that does not involve obsurd amounts of water and thousands of caveins.

[Ravendarksky]

Based on my findings I don't believe there is any way to use this to get dwarfs to the bottom of the sea/magma sea. However it COULD create a great way to quickly make a fortress in the middle of a volcano. (Requires Dfhack to remove the SMR at the bottom? unless we can find a way around that)

The only way I could see doing this without DF hack would be drop a sub just slightly smaller than the diameter of the volcano.  This would form the obsidian column that would then promptly dissapear into the SMR leaving a huge void in the magma which would all settle to the botem and start to refill.   Once the magma has settled and is filling do a controlled water drop that obsidianizes part of the volcano but still leaves a gap on one side for it to fill effectively making a floor down there.   wait for the refill and drop another sub to form your column of obsidian.

Look on the bright side you've probably discovered the fastest way to drain a volcano that does not involve obsurd amounts of water and thousands of caveins.

Doesn't work... No spire is created without the base.... Unless I'm missing something... Hoping Op will post solution!