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[guitarxe]

What do you guys figure is a better method of delivering magma to the surface? Good old Pump Stacks or Minecarts?
In terms of:
Time to set-up
Efficiency - (how much gets delivered how fast)
Difficulty
Dwarfiness

[i2amroy]

Time to set up: Pump stack > mine carts
Efficiency: Pump stack > mine carts
Difficulty: Pump stack > mine carts
Dwarfiness: Pump stack = completely automated mine carts > normal mine carts

So a pump stack is more dwarfy and more efficient, but also more difficult to make and harder to set up.

[greycat]

Dwarfiness: Pump stack = completely automated mine carts > normal mine carts

If we quantify dwarfiness as "the percentage of the world's biosphere that will be rendered unlivable if when we screw this up", then I have to agree: pump stacks pose a significantly greater threat to life as we know it.

[Perroquet]

Efficiency: Pump stack > mine carts

I have to disagree on this point. With the Magmacart pump design it is:
Efficiency: pump stack ~= mine carts.

Power: mine cart > pump stack

Magma safe material:  mine carts > pump stack

BUT the most important aspect is FPS:
mine cart >>> pump stack.

If you need the magma only for your workshops, you should use mine carts. (no Power needed)
If you want to have the pump the whole time active, you should use mine carts.

[NCommander]

Biggest issue with pumpstacks is they're a serious pain to delegate and get everything connected. THe hauling update at least made it harder to screw up magma-safe materials in your stack.

I haven't tried minecarts for this, but I generally prefer to bring whatever it is I want to burn to the magma vs. the other way around (the last three forts I ran had workshops powered directly off the magma sea).

[Crashmaster]

You're all ignoring the greatest deciding factor in my opinion; volume, and I'm fairly certain pumpstacks trump minecarts in this area.

[Patchy]

You guys forgot the dwarfy magma piston for getting magma to the surface. But anyways, as has been mentioned, the volumn of magma you want to move is the deciding factor. If you only want to power your forges, minecarts are probably your best bet. But if you want to build a FTW cannon, you will definately want a pumpstack.

[Triaxx2]

Mine carts also make a superior choice, if you're trying to dam a river. Bring your track up to the edge, dump into the river, carve track into that piece of obsidian, move the Track stop and route stop and repeat. Easy damming for any width of river. And no pointless spillage or random fires. Not that those are necessarily bad things, but when you're trying to dam a river, they are rather distracting.

[hiroshi42]

For precision or smaller projects I use minecarts.  The only real effort is setting up a filling area and a stop which dumps wherever you are currently working, you don't even need to connect everything up.

When I wish to do major obsidian casting projects the pump stack comes to the forefront.

[Triaxx2]

Which isn't to say they can't be used together. A mine cart based automatic actuator can engage and disengage parts of a pump stack so the entire system isn't pumping continuously, saving FPS.