In the liquid demo shown before, it was already demonstrated that liquids could be put under pressure and essentially explode out of whatever was containing the liquid and fill a room. Shouldn't lava contained in the planet's core be under pressure, and essentially rise to the surface once breached like a volcano? Because currently, breaching into the core has no repercussions.
Might cause some lag, but if that's not a problem I wouldn't mind seeing a moderate amount of this. Not too much, though. One little breach shouldn't cause an entire cave system to be flooded with magma, for example.
There are some problems with this such as there are randomly generated holes into the core, with caves leading to the surface. Also if the magma flows up from the core to the surface, does the surface fill with lava infinitely, or does the core run out and it all fall back in? Also as the guy above stated, lag will be a HUGE issue. I just don't see this happening without a major physics overhaul.
Well I wouldn't want it to go all the way to the surface and flood the whole planet, but I have noticed moving magma eventually "clots" and seals itself in, which even if it did reach the surface it would stem the flow fairly quickly. Maybe on certain planet types? Some sort of unstable or crumbling planet? Example would be Jupiter's moon, Io. If I remember right, it's rotating in the opposite direction of its core (or something like that) so there's constant volcanic and shifting plates. Maybe this could happen only on the Volcanic Planets in the later tiers?
Maybe this could be an "event" on a special type of planet. Like other events(rain...) the game will choose a path from the core to the top(the game simply cuts a tunnel, all connected tunnels will be flooded,too. Maybe the game could always choose a path with a little amount of connected tunnel systems) and flood this with lava, for a couple of time the lava came out of a "volcano" and flood a small part of the surface. In this scenario the lava should not move as fast as water and maybe become steady after a certain time.
Could be a part of the terrain generation. A set of erupt-able blocks are set in the very bottom of the long tube, connecting to a large magma lake. After a randomly determined amount of time, the blocks holding back the lake initiate the event, causing the lava to rise up and pour out the top, until the lake is half-depleted. This could cause localized quakes and possible cave-ins. It's not a planet's core under pressure, but it is an idea for volcanic activity on non-volcanic planets. The core under pressure would be a neat idea, but I imagine it'd be hard to balance. Not that everything else isn't. Hm.. I also posted something about cores. I suggested introducing core 'biomes' which are relative to the planet. The core's lava is randomly determined, or replaced with another fluid, or completely removed in favor for a more appropriate core. Tentacle planets would have writhing mini-boss cores, and blood lakes. Snow planets could have icy cores, filled with unique ores. So on, so fourth.
