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[Sergius]

Central staircases are perfectly fine security-wise.  The only problem is if you make the top of it your fort entrance.....

Dig down one or two layers, make storage areas that can later be turned to defensive rooms, and then at the back of those areas start your staircases down.  Also don't dig rooms on the z-level under your defensive level - you'll probably want to have space to make pits and falling traps.

Even if you make it your fort entrance, you can just build on the surface, around it, make sure it has a ceiling, etc. So, you'd be making an outside fort around your main staircase, which goes down to your main, underground fort.

But yeah, I'm starting to think main staircases are annoying, and not to mention ugly. They're great at making your dorfs go up and down wherever they want. But it's more efficient to have a central hub that expands horizontally to different kinds of sections, specially if you want to keep bedrooms on one side and workshops in another to avoid noise, building 15 levels up/down is way more annoying than 15 tiles away in the same level.

EDIT: What I mean by efficient, I mean as a way to not have dorfs walk around over each other trampling each other all the time, not distance-wise.

[johnny_cat]

Okay, I fixed the problem. I dug a 2 z level deep pit across the hallway spanned by a drawbridge, if I pull the lever to raise the drawbridge, entrance to the undercity becomes impossible for enemies if they can't dig. Also, on the bottom of the pit, I've set some spike traps that are always active. The z level below that hallway is my barracks/armory, and it's directly connected to the lever, so if the castle ever falls, I can just have one of the dwarves down below walk up and pull the lever, sealing off my fort from the rest of the world and live off mushrooms and booze and my reservoir indefinitely.

[NW_Kohaku]

specially if you want to keep bedrooms on one side and workshops in another to avoid noise, building 15 levels up/down is way more annoying than 15 tiles away in the same level.

While I do tend to make housing seperate from most industry, you should probably be aware:

Workshops do not produce noise in this version.

I've had dwarves sleep through a metalsmith making chainmail armor at a metalsmith's forge directly next to their bed, and they did not complain about the noise at all.

Noise is created by "constructing" things, which ironically includes re-arranging furniture.  Your dwarves are more likely to be interrupted by noise because you put another piece of furniture in your noble's bedroom or another box for dwarves to store more stupid rings than you are to disturb them with industry.

[Sergius]

Interesting, because in a typical medieval town (human, I mean) nearly every single workshop has the owner and apprentices living in the upper floors of the same building, with the workshop in the first level. They probably have some sort of work schedule tho (no hammering iron at 3 in the morning!)

[mikefictiti0us]

But yeah, I'm starting to think main staircases are annoying, and not to mention ugly. They're great at making your dorfs go up and down wherever they want. But it's more efficient to have a central hub that expands horizontally to different kinds of sections, specially if you want to keep bedrooms on one side and workshops in another to avoid noise, building 15 levels up/down is way more annoying than 15 tiles away in the same level.

I don't really have a problem with noise. I almost always build a four tile central staircase that spans each level of the fortress, with the workshops only a few levels below the living areas. The bad thoughts that the dwarves receive due to noise are more than balanced out by having high quality bedrooms, dining rooms, lavish food and such.

[Misterstone]

Lately I always use a central stairway design- it's just easier for my limited organization skills to do things this way.  I use a 3x3 well, and channel out the central column so that it is an empty shaft that goes straight down to my refinery above the magma sea.  On the ground level I have a large barricade made from fortifications in a square that runs around the shaft, and a few heavily trapped bottleneck entrances into this fortification area.

Generally speaking, the only disadvantage to this design (admittedly it's a big one) is that underworld critters and forgotten beasts can go up the stairs and run amok.  HOWEVER if you keep a good security perimeter in the underworld (wall off a large area around the stairs and trap the bottlenecks down there) then you can take care of the mundane animals.  The forgotten beasts are a bit more problem.  I got lucky last time we had an invasion, because my war elephants tusseled with it on the stairway as it way headed right toward the drinking hall, and made it dodge into the shaft, where it fell about 20 z levels to its doom. 

We got lucky there, that beast was pretty nasty- it was a giant scorpion with poison.  I didn't have a strong military (really just one guy with a bunch of war beasts assigned to him, a bunch of soldiers got wasted by kobold ambushers with bows), and the elephants weren't really hurting it.  It managed to poison one elephant, which died from suffocation some time later after the beast had fallen to it's death.  Could have been a lot worse...

[Hyndis]

Stairs are fine, you just need to keep a security barrier outside of the stair system. Armed guards, drawbridges, traps, anything really.

If the main stairwell falls your entire fortress is probably doomed. Just make sure you're not fighting on the stairs, but instead fighting in the above ground fortress that guards the stairs.

Have the stairs lead up to a fortress, then you can put your traps, crossbows, and axedwaves in and around that fortress. Rig up the fortress in such a way that the only way in would involve slaughtering all of your soldiers and getting through all of your traps. If the above ground military is failing be sure to rig in a drawbridge and lever to seal off the surface from the stairs.

Its always a good idea to be able to seal off sections of the fortress in an emergency. A lockdown can prevent the fortress from being taken by a siege as well as isolating tantrum spirals and containing plagues.