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[Cromage]

Explore for a bit (or reveal the map) and see if you can find a decent magma pipe somewhere. You might be able to halve the distance of your pumpstack from 100 to 50. 50 z-levels isn't bad at all; if you dedicate your miners/engineers/glassmakers/haulers to the project, working bi-directionally, it'll probably take around one in-game year.

[darthbob88]

Expensive? How so?

I believe some people's thoughts is regarding the magma workforce wandering up and down 100 levels for food/etc, although I personally find that manageable.  Other people explicitly provide everything from the dining and drinking experience to accommodation down much nearer the scene so that they needn't (or, with burrows, can't) go anywhere near the surface.

That's it, plus the difficulty of defending such a long connection between the two outposts. Building on the magma sea requires you to effectively run two forts, which seems a trifle daunting to me. By using a pump stack, I have one fort, easily defended, easy to keep fed, and much more space-efficient.

[Sutremaine]

Ah right. I just put the whole fort down there. Digging is digging whatever level you start at, and the merchants don't have any extra overland ground to cover. It does take a little while to pick out a path through the cavern(s), but I keep a low profile until I have enough dwarves to kickstart the fortress proper.

[wuphonsreach]

(shrugs) My forts always end up strung out between the surface farms and the magma sea forges.  Treat the main stairs like you would a main hallway and it's really no different then a spread out surface fort.  But I generally embark on a surface in the Z145-ish range with the magma sea found down around Z80-Z100.

And yes it would suck if a FB / Titan got into my main stairwell.  But unless you do a lot of advanced scout digging, you probably end up with a few bends in the main stairs where you can put drawbridges to at least contain the damage.

[Zeranamu]

...

Embark next to volcano.

[Psieye]

(shrugs) My forts always end up strung out between the surface farms and the magma sea forges.

My 'surface' farms are down near the magma sea along with the rest of my fort.

[Oliolli]

I have pretty much divided my fort in three: magma forges down below, pretty much everything else near the surface, one lone dorf living in the 2nd cavern. I am getting ready to get some magma closer to the surface for faster smelting/forging etc. Or I could simply make some forges near a magma pipe, in a hollowed out space near it (ends in 1st cavern,full of FBs). But still, the distance from magma to surface is manageable, 42 z-levels. And the viiew won't pan under z-100 O_O

[Squirrelloid]

Why am i imagining a map-wide magma-piston now?  Sure, it'd be ridiculously hard to set up, especially with caverns in the way, but sooo epic.

[Starver]

Sorry, long delay between writing and posting because my connection went flaky last night.  Anticipating ninjaing.

[...]plus the difficulty of defending such a long connection between the two outposts.

The way I see that point is that if something gets into my surface-entrance (i.e. within the central keep's stairwell, which is well within the outer defensive wall) then there's a lot of death and destruction going on in the easily-travelled innards that I dig out immediately sub-surface (and/or build on top, skywards).  I already make precautions against invasions from magma-creatures, but if I have attacks from either there or above that actively break in, I always have the option of severing contact between the "two forts" (although I don't treat them as such), to save such dwarves as are currently in the safer place.  At least until the food or other supplies begins to run out, if it wasn't the top end that survived, by which time I should be able to work something out.

Are you perhaps thinking about the link between the two being 'cavern-creature invaded' and swarming both directions?  My current playing style involves no route-creation at all between fort and caverns.  There's wells that could be flown up (perhaps, so far never have), as well as where the exploratory shafts dug down that punctured the cavern ceilings to reveal them, but I've got no walkable entry into them.  And, if I did, I'd have one of my patented ditch-mediated protection system in place almost as quick as I went in there.

Of course, there's the problem of !!FUN!!, but that can hardly ever happen without being at least aware of the need to have planned for it.

[Reelyanoob]

Why am i imagining a map-wide magma-piston now?  Sure, it'd be ridiculously hard to set up, especially with caverns in the way, but sooo epic.

Use Hell as the cistern for the piston, or maybe not (SMR in way). You can "tame" SMR by flooring it over after pumping the magma away. Even channel holes down into unrevealed SMR (even without the flooring), or dig stairs up into it from below.

Hey I just thought of something to totally get rid of SMR. If I channel holes into SMR, hen the adjacent tiles are now "revealed" so not diggable. So i can dig a grid of holes in 2 x 2 pattern (taking out 1/4 of the SMR). Flooring over the holes is necessary to "punch through" the SMR tile with a cave-in, filling the tile with normal rock. But if you abandon fortress and reclaim, the SMR layer will be unrevealed again, so you can channel different locations, eventually breaching the entire roof of hell.

[Oliolli]

The next step in dwarfiness would of course be to remove EVERYTHING above hell.

The hell would be considered "outside". Start growing valley herbs and sun berries there