Landing on the magma world

[psusi]

I don't understand how you can build tiles down through the magma and push it out of the way.

 

[blakemw]

On 3/25/2024 at 3:33 PM, psusi said:

I don't understand how you can build tiles down through the magma and push it out of the way.

You build tiles down through the magma and push it out of the way.

This is easiest done with Rovers, made of Steel or Wolframite as they can operate freely in the magma. Downside: they can't dig obsidian or build a lot of things. But they can build obsidian tiles, so you can make columns through the magma then hollow out the column. If you want Insulated Tiles (which Rovers can't build), you can either double-wall with an inner lining of Insulated Tiles, or replace the Obsidian Tiles in place and let the little drips of Magma through, which can be frozen by building Tiles.

 

Steel Rover building columns which can be hollowed out 

A larger area of magma being removed, with a Mechanical Airlock magma crusher

It can also be done without Rovers, by building from above or with quick dips into the magma. There are a number of different approaches, but one is to do something like this:

The basic idea is to build about 3 tiles down into the magma, which dupes can do from above, then the easiest way to get rid of the magma is to push it into corners and build tiles on top of it via "diagonal building". You can also freeze it into Igneous Rock by building Igneous Rock Tiles* which enter existence at 45 C (if going with freezing, better to make the walls Insulated Tile rather than Tile). Once the magma has been removed, open up the bottom and extend the column a few tiles deeper into the magma, close off the bottom and remove the magma again. You can penetrate the magma fairly quickly this way. (If you want to remove the Magma more honestly, you can make the column 3 tiles wide and have a Pitcher Pump to pump out the magma into a Bottle Emptier.)

This sort of penetration approach, whether using dupes or rovers, tends to be a lot faster than other methods of getting through the magma.

* You can build all sorts of things to freeze Magma, an obvious choice might be Tempshift Plates, but all "Buildings" have their thermal mass divided by 5, so a TSP has a thermal mass of only 160 kg, less than the 200 kg of a Tile, and it takes much longer to build. Tiles are basically the best choice in terms of thermal mass per construction time.

Edited March 26 by blakemw