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[GhostDwemer]

How do you construct a pump stack from top to bottom? I thought pumps couldn't be built over empty space. Do you construct the pumps on solid floors and route the power down one side?

[runlvlzero]

I believe you don't channel out the middle portion of the pump stack, you don't need to as power will transfer down once you build the next stack underneath. Sorta like how a windmill works when directly above a millstone (you don't channel out the roof then either). The reason people channel out the middle is A. myth, B. you can do that instead of having an access stairwell. Making less designations.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Pump stacks will conduct power through any of their tiles.  It's not uncommon to construct them with single tile alternating floors, like so:

Code: [Select]


 # _  #
 #  _ #
 # _  #


[GoldenShadow]

Build a gear next to the top pump to anchor them. Since its all finished and the last bottom pump is in place, It will have 2 anchors, the bottom pump and the gear at the top. You can apply power to the gear directly or remove it to put something else..

[GavJ]

You just gave me a great idea for my next embark. Find a perfectly flat site. channel out a ring 1 tile wide, and 1 tile from the edge of the map on the surface and fill it with magma. Then make a 3 wide bridge on one spot for the caravan to arrive on. Concentrate your defenses on that spot and live in comfort that you will never be ambushed again.

Until the goblin general who happens to be a steel scorpion that can breath fire stops by.

who can fly or is mounted on something that flies. 

and dont forget the giant three eyed fly who shoots webs emerging from below.

He said "never be ambushed again" not "never be under threat of any kind."

Do ambushing squads ever even have war mounts?  I've never seen that happen.  Even if so, only the squads on those mounts would be able to get to you, thus a fairly weak surprise attack, probably.

Not a bad plan at all for how cheap it is.

[rtg593]

imo siegers should come with a builder that can place a ramp or a bridge, Just to make things... interesting.

Thay may happen during the army arc.

Ya, note the idea of siegers being able to dig, mentioned in the army arc section. DIG. As in, hello hall of traps. Oh look, there's a new tunnel leading into your LEGENDARY DINING HALL.

EDIT: And ya, 90 is pretty normal... If not a little shallow. Surface at z110 and magma sea at z-20 isn't uncommon, 130 z-levels to dig. At least for me anyway.

[GhostDwemer]

Nils: Yeah, I know pump stacks will transmit through any tile, but they need a hollow space to do so, right? And you can't build them hanging, right? I just checked, and no. You can not build a screw pump with any part of it hanging over empty space.

GavJ: just verified, yeah, if the pump is supported by an axle or gear you CAN built it with the solid portion hanging. Obviously, you can't have it with the non solid section hanging, because where would the dwarf building it stand?

Okay, so taken together, you need to build the alternating pump stack as Nils describes, while supporting the top pump with a gear or axle as GavJ suggests.

When enemies are able to dig people will just create hollow walls filled with magma around their fort. Want in to my fort? Keep digging, you're getting warmer...

Edit: one last sanity check, yes, a pump above will support a pump below, so you only need to support the top pump in the stack, as GavJ said.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Nils: Yeah, I know pump stacks will transmit through any tile, but they need a hollow space to do so, right? And you can't build them hanging, right? I just checked, and no. You can not build a screw pump with any part of it hanging over empty space.

Hey, you're right.  Sorry for being wrong-- I could have sworn you could build them with the passable tile hanging, but I was mistaken.  Been a while since I bothered building pumps without floors between them (I make a bazillion repeaters, very few pump stacks).  Guess you'd need two floors, and a gear stack on the side to transmit power.  (Don't want to build over a gear, because you need that gear space for the pump underneath it.)  Unless runlvlzero's right, and you don't even need to get rid of the floors to transmit power.

[Gizogin]

Hang on, how does the order in which I build the pumps change the speed at which the magma moves?  That doesn't seem right...

[GhostDwemer]

Hang on, how does the order in which I build the pumps change the speed at which the magma moves?  That doesn't seem right...

There's a HUGE amount of science on this, and it boils down to the order in which the game calculates things. Build in the wrong order, and it basically goes "pump one move magma to pump two, TICK, pump two move magma to pump three, TICK" and so on. But obviously the game calculates the effects of each pump, every tick, right? It has to. And it has to do it in a certain order. You can set the order the game calculates things in using the order you build things. If you build the pumps in the right sequence what happens is this: "pump one move magma to pump two, pump two move magma to pump three, and so on, THEN comes the tick. ONE tick for the whole stack, not one tick per pump as with the first set up.

Essentially if you do it right the magma teleports from the bottom to the top in a single tick.

[runlvlzero]

Not channeling below the impassable tile of an individual pump in a pump stack. This is how power is transmitted to the pump below.

So you do need to channel (or ramp) the impassible tile of the stack. That's were the power transfer happens. Herp I was manually powering them for aquifer breakage anyway so I didn't notice my error there =P

This is what confused me: You can just ramp out the impassible tile, giving your dwarves access. Apparently you can also attach a 'hanging pump' to an already constructed one above it. So you do not need floors, just access stairs, or a Ramp system.

Ramps can be used in place of channeling. Liquids will transmit through ramps, unlike stairs, and when pumps are constructed they annihilate the ramp they're built on much as walls do. Power will still be transmitted, so they don't need to be removed by miners prior to pump construction. Ramps make it virtually impossible to strand your miners and allow the stack to be dug out using only access doorways on the intake side of the pump, so no construction or doors are later needed to eliminate leaks. A pump stack can be very rapidly carved out with this method as even if a miner/builder is trapped on the containment side of a pump, they can walk up the ramp to the intake side of the pump above and walk out.

^Meaning they can walk diagonally through the passable tiles of pump stack, which is really neat =)

And ya the order you make them in is the order in which they pump from, in a stack they pump in the reverse of the order they were made =) see below quote. So if you make the bottom one last its the first one pumping.

Pumps operate in the reverse order in which they were built-- the most recently built will try to pump, then the next recent, and so on. You can use this to your advantage for mist generation, to maximize fluid throughput, or for advanced repeater design.

So they pump from last to first. So that makes allot of sense for this type of design as you want the bottom pumps pushing fluid first on up the stack, they will sync better.

The pitfall with most hanging designs I have observed is in order to get the initial power transfer to the stack they need to be attached to a gear assembly, and usually that's all the support they have is people start with that. So when they disengage that gear to turn the whole thing off, the top pump deconstructs, and all the rest go in order.

And last on the "Output side" you want 3x1 space for the magma for better temp calculations. That's probably the most important fort saving thing you can do. Not sure if that was already mentioned above.

For the OP, the pertinant links http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72296.0 (low lag pump stack)

For my personal promotion of my favorite method of magma retrieval http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59894.0, magma pistons just sound so much cooler.