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[Scott Cee]

'allo.

I had a look at the wiki, but I am a simple fellow and couldn't really follow it very well.

I have struck the magma sea, and admantine nearby but that's coincidental. I know I need to use pumps(a big ass stack of pumps) and possibly pipes to get it up the 140-odd levels to the surface. I have the space, I have the dorfpower, all I lack is the knowledge.
Somebody kind please run me though how to mine into the magma sea without getting it all down my shirt, and how to build a stack of pumps to get it into my moat.

I plan to wait until the river freezes in the winter, channel it out, divert the course with walls and block water from getting into what will be my fiery hell pits. Also, this will give me a proper reason to replace my old wooden bridges and fortifications with hopefully magma-safe metal ones. I'm currently thinking bronze, since this is the Bronzemark.

[orfax]

You can channel down from the top and then pump out of the hole. If you cover it with a grate then nothing can climb out. Use the FPS efficient magma stack design:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72296.0

[Scott Cee]

So, if I have understood this correctly, what I want is basically a stack of alternating north and south (or east and west) facing pumps with the intakes in T-shaped reservoirs, that goes up 140 levels.

How hard could that be?

[orfax]

The entire stack of pumps will be hanging, so build some mechanisms that can support them in several points in the stack to speed up construction of the stack. If a hanging pump is unsupported it will deconstruct. You can remove the excess mechanisms when the entire thing is built.

Also, you will want to power it in some way.

[Scott Cee]

I got windmills that give 40 urists of power, I can use those, right?

[orfax]

You certainly can. However, you would need a lot of windmills and they are quite big, and you need to connect them all in some way, wasting power. You may want to look into a waterwheel powerplant (each wheel can produce 100 power, and does not vary by embark). There are several designs around.

Rough estimate of the windmill farm size:
140 pumps = 1400 power.
33 power per windmill (40 - 1 gear and 2 axle to connect)
42 windmills, which is a 6 x 7 block of windmills.

[Triaxx2]

If you're playing 34.11, you've got an option now. You can now pump it a short distance and run a mine cart through it, using automated rollers to move it where dorfs can't survive and then run it up a track to the top. It's not only more power efficient, but also easier on the FPS. It's also easier on resources, needing only one magma safe mechanism and chain for each roller, and proper design can get you away with just one or two of those.

[Snaake]

If you're playing 34.11, you've got an option now. You can now pump it a short distance and run a mine cart through it, using automated rollers to move it where dorfs can't survive and then run it up a track to the top. It's not only more power efficient, but also easier on the FPS. It's also easier on resources, needing only one magma safe mechanism and chain for each roller, and proper design can get you away with just one or two of those.

Or with a bit more micro, you can:
1. make magma-safe minecarts (iron, probably)
2. build an area you can flood with magma, and drain, at will (1 pump, 1 floodgate/hatch attached to lever that opens up to a large evaporation area or drains somewhere)
3. place #1 in #2 (by stockpiling them there, or setting hauling routes and stops in #2 and assigning the carts there)
4. fill with magma
5. drain
6. assign the magma-filled minecarts to hauling routes equipped with track stops that dump to 1-tile channels in your new, close-to-the-surface magma industries. 2 carts per 1-tile channel are necessary, for 4/7 magma.
7. get the carts back to the bottom (assigning works here too), and repeat.

Upside is you don't need to make tracks down to the magma sea area, or transfer power 150+ z-levels. Downside is those iron minecarts filled with magma do take a while to haul, and it's not very automatic. You do need to do some micro even if you use tracks though, mainly to avoid overfilling of wherever you're dumping the magma near the surface.

[Triaxx2]

If you use a guided move order you could have a pressure plate set to manipulate bridges to break the track around the dump stop when the Magma reaches the correct level. That way you won't over fill if you don't see it. Basically guided from the #1 stop to the #2 stop, push from #2 to #3 so the rollers will take it through the magma, then it gets picked up from #3 and taken back to #1.

With the bridges it will keep you from over flowing. And you don't need to run power forever, Just a small water reactor is enough to push the cart from the roller through the magma and up into the next stop.

[Snaake]

Yea I wouldn't be too worried about the overfilling, it's pretty harmless unless it keeps on happening forever, but that's not too likely, as you'd probably be pretty anxious to get those magma smelters running, and so would watch it at least somewhat.

Even without making mechanisms to make pressure plates and link them, you could just set the hauling route so that once your dwarf has guided the cart all the way up to the level you're taking the magma to, he pushes the cart, and it goes around the dumping section of the track under it's own speed (lowest track stops don't slow down carts any more than basic track does, but can still dump), then rolls down to the magma sea on it's own afterwards (or is stopped, then guided down, if you're more safety-minded). At least my magma smelter rooms tend to be fairly large, so you'd at least avoid burning dwarves; at worst it'd melt the track stop, if that's not magma-safe.

Then again, that's practically an in-built fail-safe, since a melted stop won't overfill it any more. For the lazy, you could even take advantage of this. Make the track loop next to all the 1-tile channels you want for magma industry, have a dumping lowest friction track stop deliberately made out of non-magma-safe material at each, then just set the track to operate, preferably keeping dwarves out of that room. Once one channel fills to 1/7, it'll eventually melt away it's track stop, which will cause the cart to dump it's contents at the next stop instead, etc.

The pressure plate idea is great for something one would use repeatedly, for example filling a (small) reservoir of a non-recycling magma trap. Or even if it does recycle most of the magma, this would be useful to keep the reservoir topped up. Have your track fill 1 tile, once that hits 6/7, it opens the reservoir to be 3 tiles (small risk of evaporation causing delays here, but you can't build pressure plates on the same tile as floodgates/bridges), when the 3rd tile is at 6/7 or 7/7, have a pressure plate there open the reservoir some more, etc.

(DF forums: you might as well add "how to weaponize" to the start of every thread title)

[Scott Cee]

How do I mine carts?

I'll just leave it for now, I think. Unless I can get dorfs to do it by hand, with buckets.

I'll start a new fort for deliberately having fun and !!fun!! with the hot stuff, I think. I learn best by trial and error, and I'd rather not see my best fort to date melt/explode/burn down.

Although part of me wants to see what will happen when I get it wrong.