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[Shoku]

Ok, this leaves me with only one reason for draining magma pipes- building pumps midway down that have an almost sheer wall of magma at their intake so there's no air sucking.

[peterix]

And magma flows are floors for everything except for things that already fall.

Can you clarify that?

Well, I'm basing this on the fact that a dwarf successfully pathed through a magma flow tile, entered it and didn't fall. I don't know what would happen if the dwarf dropped something directly on top of a magma flow (like, for example, his burning corpse). Maybe it would stay there just like when you mix water and magma on the bottom level and it leaves 'floating' obsidian walls. Anything already falling does disappear without a trace though - just like with a bottomless  pit.

The difference between a bottomless pit and a magma flow is that you can't step on bottomless pits and magma flows generate magma in columns directly above them. If magma pipes behaved like bottomless pits and not like floors, all the magma would quickly disappear right after embark along with any nasties living there.

I'm extrapolating here from a single event, so there's certainly some room for more experiments. Their usefulness is doubtful though. Unless you want to do something incredibly crazy dwarven

Another thing that needs to be clarified: I was building that final pump on Z-15, not Z-14. It's certainly possible to reduce the pipe to a single level... just not 'no level' like I hoped for. I wonder how would it refill though.

Here's a nice video:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1373-magmaflowisawalkablefloor

I lower the drawbridges blocking the machinery part, draft a dwarf and station him on top of the magma flow. He goes there, hurts his foot thanks to the 1/7 magma that appears and runs away.

[RoboCicero]

So is a magma flow an infinite source of magma, or is it just considered a magma generator?

[Shaostoul]

If I were to say put this in tile terms... This is how I view the whole subject. Magma Flow tile being at the very bottom representing where the magma spawns. If you open up gibbed dwarf tweak you make countless magma flow tiles. However!!! They produce no magma, no matter what you try. The space between the magma flow and the top level is just open space. The top tile is the one that spawns the magma. If you don't have this special tile that isn't just open space, but a trigger for a magma flow tile, it will cause the magma flow to not work.

I now have something to test unless someone else gets to it first. Using Dtil and Gibbed Dwarf Tweak I'm going to try to recreate a magma spawing top tile at least 3 z-levels above the magma flow.

[zchris13]

I think it is a part of the magma flow tile that generates the pit above the magma pipe, during creation.

Also, there is most likely a variable set (or something) that has the information on how tall the magma pipe is.

[peterix]

Whatever causes the game to generate magma, its behavior is certain. I've capped the lowest level (built floors on Z-14, over Z-15) The steady state of alternating 4-5 magma depth went down to 2-3 and remained stable over several hours. It seems the magma generates, but doesn't have enough space to refill at full speed. 7/7 magma tiles are spawned at the same level as the 2-3 level base magma, resulting in less than 7 magma levels. Therefore I conclude that to get the maximal throughput out of a magma pipe, you have to make the second level from bottom the same as the bottom one and build a cap and pumps over that.
I haven't yet thought about an optimal pump layout but it should involve many pumps and huge magma vats acting as a buffer. You could still use the magma pipe for storage by keeping just the pumping system at Z-13 and removing any caps/floors.

Unless I missed something, there's no need for further basic magma research in +this+ version of DF

Now that I think of it... maybe those magma flow tiles generate magma only in the 48x48 tile with the magma pipe. I'm not equipped to test this... I don't have any Windows machines around anymore.

Peterix cancels research, interrupted by his birthday.

[Eagle]

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=30325.0

More research here. Dig UNDER the pipe.