User:Vattic/Orcsicle maker Explained

Introduction

Imagine the scene: you're charging headlong into a dwarven fortress alongside your brother orcs when both the entrance and the exit are sealed, water rushes in from the openings on your left, after it reaches waist height it flash freezes killing you all instantly.

All of the above at the pull of a few levers. When the freezing is complete pull the same levers in a different order to remelt the water, drain it, and open the corridor for further use.

The Working Machine

On my map I dug down to the rock to build my machine in so I'll leave out pictures of the top few z-levels as its just ramps. Here is the first working floor. The big room on the left is the evaporation chamber, it deals with the excess water generated by the trap. On the right there are pumps that pump water out of the killing floor through fortifications with grates on top. You'll notice there is an ice floor/roof over the killing floor, this is what is left behind when melting unsmoothed ice walls with magma.

The smooth ice floor is the killing floor where all the freezing takes place. On the left you can see the water reservoir and the floodgates that hold it's water back until necessary. There are fortifications to protect the floodgates from building destroyers and another load of fortifications on the right which are the source tiles for the pumps above. They might seem unnecessary but I can't let the water freeze under the pumps without it breaking the system so the pump source tiles have to be subterranean to stop them freezing. On the far right there is some plumbing, the pumps above pump water down through these tiles.

The magma defrosting room. On the far left there is some plumbing which feeds the water reservoir above from bellow and on the far right some plumbing which is fed from above. In the middle you have mainly open space with two bridges and some pumps, when turned on it allows the magma to cycle through this chamber heating the one above. I used bridges because I can drop all the 1/7 magma into the chamber bellow when I'm done using it which saves on magma through stopping it evaporate.

Main magma chamber. This room is two z-levels deep as I thought 1/7 magma wouldn't evaporate when on top of 7/7 magma but was wrong. I'll only post the one z-level of this to save on space. Once again there is the plumbing on both sides of the main chamber, on the left pressure forces it up and on the right pressure forces it down.

Where the plumbing finally meets. This room completes the circle.

The most complex part is probably the water plumbing. I made it far too complex and if I ever did this again I wouldn't dig down and feed it under the magma chamber like I have.

Plumbing Cross-secion

Here is a simple cross-sectional image explaining the water and magma plumbing. The black line above the magma chamber is a retracting bridge, I stop the pump and raise the bridge to freeze the ice, the bridge could be replaced by floors but then when I turn the pumps on magma lingers there for too long stopping the freeze and wasting magma which will evaporate on it's surface.

Caveats

Most of these have been mentioned throughout the working machine section but deserve their own section.

• This trap will produce water through it's use so adequate drainage must be provided.
• Magma only seems to melt ice while flowing (in motion) so I have it cycling constantly while I want the corridor heated.
• The magma will slowly run out as any 1/7 depth magma has a chance to evaporate and while I'm not sure where in the system it reaches 1/7 depth for long enough to evaporate I notice the levels dropping over a few years of use. This means an infinite source of magma is needed for longevity.

Improved Design

The following improved design goes untested but I thought someone might appreciate seeing it. It's a large image so follow this link if your internet connection can handle it. Media:Freeze07.png