Dwarf Fortress - Magma Piston

The Magma Piston
This guide teaches you to:

• Finding the right spot using Dwarven Sonar
  
• Induce multi floor cave-in (to channel multiple floors very fast)
  
• Magma Tapping (breaking into the magma sea to get a source of magma for magma reservoir)
  
• Using portable drain ( For draining magma )
  
• Using Supports to drop the piston ( massive pillar of rock, 120 blocks high )
  
• Using water to reload the piston

Dwarven Sonar

I would mention before hand that the dwarven sonar is an exploit

Now, how to do it? it is mentioned as follows :

• Go to build -> farming -> farm plot
  
• Drag and drop a square at any plot that is suitable for farming, but make sure to only select the starter tile and not the placement click.
  
• Now drag a big square, do not end the placement, max size plot, now scroll to lower tiles
  
• When you drag the mouse wheel and go below, the places where farm plot is place-able is visible
  
• underground in undiscovered regions, where there is farm plot, there is a cavern
  
• I have shown a gif of how to do it below, it shows what is written here applied, in full.
  
• We have discovered 3 caverns in the mentioned manner.
  
• Where ever there is a cavern, it is visible by a different manner in placement pop-up
  
• Now when you discover the caverns, note the levels where you discover them and dig carefully.
  
• Cancel the placement option

Here is the big Gif, I have cropped the empty frames in the GIf. The relevant frames are kept in here.

Detailed Video :

5th April 2023:

Youtube video:

https://youtu.be/fnVPvjCLXvA

Making a Portable Drain

A portable drain is a mine-cart dumping infinite amounts of water in a wall .
A quick TL;DR

• Make a track stop dumping into wall
  
• Place (Magma-safe material for magma) mine-cart on it with empty conditions/give or take stockpiles/
  
• Make sure the set-up is made one floor below the region to be drained
  
• one can place a pump, pumping fluid in to the mine-cart but then that needs automation

1. What you need is:

• A mine-cart -> Material depends on what you intend it for.
  
• A proper track stop - that - dumps - in to - a - wall, (maximum friction )

2. This is my portable magma drain design:



Water -> Any mine-cart
Magma -> Magma-safe material for cart
The location of the drain is important.
I usually channel a room and make it 1-Z level low, so the entire magma goes to the cart and drains
up, leaving the upper floor totally empty when needed.
This will clear it up.



3. Now we set the IRON drain dump stop:



4. Now we set the drain dump mine-cart
Go to set mine-cart hauling routes, add a new route, then look at the index described below:

Now we do this:

• Set track stop to the Iron track stop we made
  
• Set an IRON mine-cart to the stop
  
• delete every single conditions and leave it empty
  
• We do not want any conditions in it, we do not want it to take or give from any stockpile, nor do we want it to take any specific item. So we leave the below tab empty, except for the names
  
• So I will re-cap this :
  
  • Add new track stop,
    
  • Click on iron track stop and name it
    
  • Click on add mine-cart and add iron mine-cart
    
  • Name the track-stop if you will
    
  • Remove all conditions
    
  • Let the items to be placed in be empty
• That should do it

5. Now if the dumping into a wall and mine-cart with all empty and normal placement is there then it will work absolutely fine. There is only one way to test, fill it up with water or magma, it will drain the floors above its current floors, it will drain up to only 6/7 of the floor it is placed on. So the reason for its one floor lower placement. It is very important that you don't place the dump on the same floor as your desired draining floor.

Magma Tapping

Magma Tapping has various methods, I will try to depict a very simple method:
But before hand, there is a section in-game:

• Under Labour Tab
  
• Go to Stone use

This list gives you the list of magma safe materials, so in my case, I had a lot of dolomite, so I selected ( Allow dolomite to be used in normal stone jobs ). So I could make some magma safe grates and stuff. Another good idea is to use iron for all these magma operations.

So this is an approximate list of materials you'd want ready before going for magma pump

• Iron Pipe Section X 1
  
• Iron Blocks X 4 or 8
  
• Enormous Iron Cork-Screw X 1
  
• Iron Flood Gate X 2
  
• Iron Grates X 1
  
• Iron Mechanisms X as per need, because later on, we are going to need these a lot
  
• Iron Mine-cart
  
• A Portable Drain ( I will teach this )

This is what you are looking forward to


This is my Pump :

This is magma below the Pump, the tile of magma has been channelled.


Place the pump such that it is one tile ahead of the tile it is sucking from and place the direction of pumping carefully. We place the iron bars so that creatures don't come from underneath the magma into the fortress. The materials are made of iron so that the pump doesn't burn. The Door is placed as a precaution in case things don't work out as intended.
This is the concept of the pump with things mentioned.


This is how it is intended to work, don't mind the burning trash, it just shows how non-fire proof materials melt to magma, whereas the pump, operator, grate, door and bars are safe, even the floodgate is safe and sound.


Now you know how to do it hopefully, good luck with the tapping. Some tips, when you hit warm rock, be exceptionally careful with it. Dig little little upwards and sideways to discover from what z level the warm rocks start, above that layer will be the pump. Also, better to have all materials ready before a magma man pays a visit through the hole you made in the magma sea. Yes, that will be the best I can explain it to you my dear reader.

Cave-in organising and executing

This is how a multi-floor cave-in is organised.

This is the youtube video describing what is to be explained below now :

https://youtu.be/pW1CrP_IgWI

This image explains the concept of the video as to how to do it, and all.

We dig out the piston but the floors... 100 or perhaps 120.. 120 floor channelling? nah dude... This is a better alternative, a 100 or 120 floor digging itself takes an in-game year or so. So what we do is, above all these floors, make a support. on this support is a 5x5 square floor. This 5x5 square has a 3x3 hole in the centre. Attach the support to a lever, when all 100 or 120 floors are dug out, you just make sure all dwarves and creatures are away from these floors or it is instant death. So when you pull the lever, this 5x5 drops exactly on similar 5x5 floors supporting the piston. Every single floor below is destroyed. But the oiston is intact. Why? because it is supported by a support. So all that is left here is the piston alone, clean and beautiful. Now in our case, why is a piston shown? Why is this example describing a piston? Why a piston in a cave in? Because, that video shows the magma piston that is to be used in our guide and that video is a great example of how to clean multiple floors. Yes, even TwistedLogicgaming destroyed an entire island with a floor collapse. So now enough chit chat, lets go to a small summary.

What have we learnt so far and why?

We have learnt

• To find the caverns to suitably dig for the piston.
  
• To cause a massive cave-in to dig the circumference of the magma piston.
  
• To carefully pump magma in a designated place.
  
• And then to drain it very effectively.

Magma Piston

Video is right here :

https://youtu.be/OBEot6PJUYI

GIF's -
Piston Top :
Piston Bottom :
Combined :

Let us get into this, this below image is just for reference: a general understanding of the entire process:


This is the top level : The Obsidian Regenerator
An obsidian Regenerator servers one purpose,
to recreate the blocks we dig at the base at the piston
The way this works is, we have a retracting bridge on exactly top of the magma piston head. This retractable bridge will have water on top of it 7/7. This draw bridge is covered on all sides. Water inlet and outlet is floodgate controlled. When we retract, the water 7/7 exactly falls down on the piston head creating 2/7 (minimum magma to be present) magma to obsidian. This completes the regeneration.


This is the level where magma forges will be build:
When magma is pumped here, there needs to be micro-management else this magma that is being pumped will freely flow and become cold. If this magma entirely becomes cold, then the obsidian regenerator won't work. This causes the entire project to be fu(k3d because the absence of magma makes the entire repeatability of the project to fail. So a save before first pump is always advised.
In this image, there are series of channels and slots dug out for the Forge placement. There are several levers controlling <Magma-Safe> draw-bridges below.


This is where the magma floods in:
The bridges control the magma flow. Every single draw bridge is retracted before the first pump. The floodgate is a critical part and a grate installation is highly advised. Sequential opening and repeating of pumping further opening the bridges to allow more and more magma flow to make it minimum 4/4. In the first three piston drops, one magma forge will be running. Took me 3 pumps and mirco-management to get it running honestly.


This is how it looks post piston drop:
The support has been pulled by the lever, the entire pillar/piston falls down. Upon falling down the area occupied by magma which is replaced by the piston is instantly teleported on top of it, hence the name " Magma Piston " also depicted in the fan-art posted before.


This is how the bottom design is:
This is the drain design, all materials magma safe.


This is how it looks when flooded with magma and piston drops down:


Magma Piston types -
magma pistons are of two types specifically :

• Re-usable
  one such as ours with only a single z-level dropping into magma. This single z-level can be easily regenerated with water drop on magma at the piston top surface as shown in video
  
• Non-re-usable
  the one which is made for a single time use, use like a magma moat... what happens in this is, the piston literally drops in a massive tank full of magma, multiple z-levels deep. Such as 10 Length x 10 Breadth x 5 Levels, so 3,500 units of magma to be transferred. The upper surface must be prepared well to hold this magma as well to use else it can flood the fort leading massive Fun.
  multiple z-level regeneration is not possible so this is a single use massive piston. Does the trick though.

To add :
The explaination video on this is recorded, live streamed and tried and tested, work is in progress.
- done
Guide notes completed.
1. Video Pre Drop, Post Drop, During Drop - uploaded a video to youtube regarding this step by step with small notes - to be added when executed on live stream 18 Mar 2023
2. To explain individually the process parts and functions - updated
3. Types of Magma Pistons - updated
4. Re-use and fatal errors - re-use in video, fatal errors can only be avoided by multiple game saves properly.
5. The significance of magma proof retracting bridges - 18 Mar 2023
6. The problem of cavern in between piston - 18 Mar 2023

Cavern between piston

The Problem of Cavern occurring in between the piston parts.
Firstly, for a project like this, exploration of caverns is primarily advised. Radar isn't sufficient to pull off the direct exploration. The problem occurs when there is a small cavern and there ain't no perfect spot without cavern occurring in between the piston. So this is the method to solve that problem.

1. Make the top and bottom piston. The bottom piston is held by a support. The top piston is to be dropped but not directly. keep top and bottom ready.

2. Every single thing in between the top and bottom of pistons to be dug clean. Nothing but air between the top and bottom.

3. Now the top side piston column may have un-even bottom and the top-surface of the bottom piston can be un-even. We make it smooth 3x3 on top and bottom so that the mating surfaces are clean and 3x3 with nothing in between.

4. Drop top piston on bottom piston.

5. Now the part where the piston top is there , 1z level below is your magma pumping chamber and obsidian retainer tank is to be on its top and so on...

6. Now during your pumping process, somehow using the retainer and a very well thought out process you can increase the piston length but it is tedious.

7. So TLDR; clean the area between top and bottom surfaces between piston. Make mating faces clean 3x3 / 10 x 10 or whatever. drop topside and make the surfaces connect. Make arrangements and start pumping.

Significance of retracting magma safe bridges

The Significance of retracting bridge:

in the room where magma is teleported above the piston when it drops is because the magma doesn't drip below. What is the use of teleporting massive amounts of magma and it legit drips down to where it was pumped from... One more factor is, if water were to fall in alone the pillar and connect to a piece of magma, it will attach the piston with the channel around leading to process disruption. Floor grates, flood gates didn't work in my case. Magma safe retractable bridges work excellently.

Mega Piston Regnerator

Compound Magma Piston

Very advanced stuff, basically, you make pump stack in between and place a gigantic piston at the top. If there is a huge gap in between two caverns, the design can be implemented in between them. You can use reducer pistons or something like that as well.

[Sniper(+)]

Guide Icon updated with ASCII Gif

[Sniper(+)]

Guide updated with 3 new Gif's in Magma Piston Section :) :D

[Sniper(+)]

Slowly updating the entire guide on wikipedia :D

[Sniper(+)]

Nah, not yet. I'm working on more advanced designs. I wish it got more recognition to pump more magma up easily. I'll be home soon so I'll make more art works then. I'm on cargo ships for work so... You know... No time and always moving ship, no internet and all... I'll be there soon

[Cultist]

Has this paper been peer reviewed already?

[shtosh02]

this community is insane

[Sniper(+)]

Compound Magma Piston Section added, Custom Page

[Sniper(+)]

Added Mega Magma Piston Custom written pages for layouts and designs. Now you can take a long shot at regenerating 30x30 or 10x10 or 20x20 pistons using the magma recirculation design.

[Sniper(+)]

Guide thumbnail edited to a small gif file

[Sniper(+)]

Guide updated:
https://youtu.be/fnVPvjCLXvA