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[Girlinhat]

150 to 170 years.  Most migrants are on the order of 50 to 80.

[Musashi]

I must've missed it, but why exactly do you periodically flood the city in magma? I mean.. its awesome.. but I'm just curious why?

Why not?

[DS]

I must've missed it, but why exactly do you periodically flood the city in magma? I mean.. its awesome.. but I'm just curious why?

Why not?

This man has the right of it.

Originally, it was to get rid of all the non-magma stone in a manner quicker than dumping. Now, it seems like a waste to have all these perfectly operational screw pumps and never use them.

If I had to give an answer: aesthetics. It's like Venice, except with magma instead of water.

[Girlinhat]

You can set up a water timer if you wish, there's designs on the wiki for a 100 step increment repeater.  If you made it 12 step, with the last step adding to a binary counter, then you could link up some AND gates and end up with a calendar.  It might not actually be specific on the time of day, but it'll flip over every day.  Link this to your flooding mechanisms, and you can reliably release magma at the start of every winter season, or such.  If any part of your embark freezes, then you can use that to jump-start the timer to be extremely precise, by toggling temperature to abuse the freezing and timing.

It's a megaproject in itself, but the capacity for automated magma bathing is enormous.  Added to this, that it won't care what's happening.  Your dwarves could be all dead, or they could be loitering in the overflow channels, and it'll perform as systematic as ever.

[Crustypeanut]

XD Nice.. nice, well, I figured you had some particular use for the magma, rather than aesthetics.  Like purging the area of everything thats not magma proof just for the shits of it. 

How long does it take (in game) to fill and empty the fortress of magma?

[DS]

Concerning the filling of the dome with magma, it's hard to say. Let's check my journal:

1st Galena, 149, Late Summer - PULL THE LEVER

15th Malachite, 150, Mid-Summer - The volcano has drained to the lowest pump level, filling the dome nearly up to the pumps themselves. Only 45,000 stones listed in the stocks menu, a lot of the dome was dug out of magma-safe rock, apparently.

Keeping mind that when the dome was first filled, its volume was smaller (I hadn't connected it to the top cavern layer), and there were a number of leaks (it actually was connected to the top cavern layer), so it might take more or less than a year to fill now. In any case, the flooding was a success, when compared to the amount of time it would have taken to merely dump all the stone by hand:

1st Galena, 156, Late Summer - Mass dumping of all remaining stone (besides stockpiles of obsidian and marble) continues, with about 23,000 stone left to be dumped. In the same time (approximately 5-6 years) that it took to construct the pump and windmill system (which liquefied approximately 60,000 stone), the dwarves have dumped approximately 20,000 stone - of course, additional areas have been excavated and stone added to that total in the meantime.

To give an idea of just how much magma we're talking about here, this is a very zoomed out profile of the fortress, showing the points to which the dome fills and the caldera drains.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I've had long-term plans to mechanize certain parts of the fort - including flooding of the dome - since excavation began. It is a relatively low priority at the moment, that's all.

[DS]

A tragic, yet unsurprising update while I continue to finish the dome's seal (this is nearly done).

19th Moonstone, 184, Early Winter - I returned to the fort after dinner to find that Monom Bistökasob, a weaver, had died of thirst while trapped on top of a single tile of land amidst 6-7 deep water. How he got there is a mystery. The lake's drain has been closed off, to prevent further dwarves from somehow pathing into the area. Current population: 93.

[DS]

The dome is finally complete!

I have been working on this project since early June, and about six decades have passed in-game. The amount of time and effort I have invested are hopefully evident in the scope of this project. Not in sheer size, of course; Undergrotto, which was a great inspiration to me for this project, surpasses it by far, not to mention many other megaprojects of such vastness. Instead, I aimed to create a city that was defined by the layout of the cavern layer below, and that would develop organically as the dwarves carved it out of the rock and eventually made it their home. In this goal, I feel I have had great success, and I would like to share it with all of you.

So, for those who are interested in taking a look at Weatherwires, here is the save file on DFFD. I've also added this to the first post in the thread.

At the time of this save, the dome has been completely sealed off from the surrounding caverns with walls, doors, and floodgates, but has not yet been flooded with magma - I figured I'd share the save BEFORE a possible catastrophe. These are the last 93 dwarves in their entire civilization, after all.

I plan on continuing the story of Weatherwires (I have a few new goals, as discussed previously in this thread, muahahaha), but I look forward to hearing your guys' reactions to the fort. Please let me know what you think of it! 

[Crustypeanut]

I have one question - what fps do you get? This is such a massive fort (both in actual size and awesomeness), I can't see it being very high..

[DS]

Remarkably good, actually! When none of the pumps are active, I usually run about 25-30, sometimes as high as 40. Once the pumps activate, however, things drop to around 2 or 3... at best.

[NRDL]

Looks awesome.  Can't wait to see how these dwarves survive ( if they do so at all ). 

[DS]

17th Galena, 185, Late Summer - In the final stages of beautifying the fortress, five blue peacocks and Reg Violencedoor, a stonecrafter, were flushed over the edge of a causeway and fell to their deaths. The fortress population is now 92, and all that remains before the magma pumps can be activated is for the water to dry.

[DS]

So a dwarven caravan came through - the first in years. I used Runesmith to switch two merchants to my side, and one of them promptly dragged the one-humped camel it was leading to a cage, stuffed it inside (along with all its goods) and is now hauling it down to the animal stockpile within the dome. Strange.

[Girlinhat]

...was the camel carrying any caged animals?

[DS]

It was, I'm pretty sure. Also, I can't enable labors on the merchants, except through Runesmith. Is this normal?