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[Sevrun]

It's a love/hate relationship...
  However our most recent fling is putting me in a rather awkward position.  Use burrows (which I have little/no understanding of) for my metal working dwarves, and carving a rail system for moving supplies down to them and goods back up, OR...



  Build a pumpstack roughly 150z tall...  Even if I use the 1x3 head-over-tail model that's a BIG stack and a lotta calculations, not to mention about 2 years of construction time if I do nothing else.  Oh and I still have no idea how to power a stack that big...   

[neblime]

The pump stack is totally worth it once it's done, you can also pour magma on the goblins outside! (or the elf merchants if you like)

Power it with a water reactor, or just lots of windmills, windmills are cheap and easy to setup.

[Sevrun]

I've already got a dry moat... it'd be a lot more impressive full of magma...

Ok, I'm sold!  Now to get the materials together.  I'll build the stack first, then the generators.  Figuring out how to pull the magma up past the forges without flooding them or leaving them unpowered should be an interesting challenge.  Either I'll get it to work... or I'll have a magma filled fortress! 

[TheDarkStar]

There is an alternative, actually. It's called a magma piston. The idea is that you drop a block of rock a few z levels higher than what you need on some lava (that doesn't have semi-molten rock beneath it), and the lava gets teleported to above the block of rock because DF physics.

Wiki page:
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma_piston

[Cattani]

Just to clarify, can the double watermill design from the wiki power an entire stack? I would hate building the whole thing just to find out later that my generator can't power it.

[Dangerous Beans]

Just to clarify, can the double watermill design from the wiki power an entire stack? I would hate building the whole thing just to find out later that my generator can't power it.

each pump takes 10 power, and a single dwarven water reactor produces 190, so one reactor is good for about 16-18 z levels depending on the complexity of the gear train.
how tall will your pump stack be?

[GavJ]

yes for a metal industry only, a magma piston is like 0.5% as much work for you as a 150z stack... and it's even conceptually much simpler / takes less time wasted hemming and hawing about remembering where to designate what in the moment. And requires NO power. Only moderate amounts of mining. It will be completed at or before the same in game date as a stack, usually well before if you keep the size modest.

Another option is a bunch of ramps from magma to topside, carved with minecart tracks, and just fill up magma at the bottom by letting it splash through some, then guide it up and dump into a small reservoir for your forges. No power, no magmaproof stuff other than the cart, 1/10th as much mining as even a small piston. By far the fastest option in dwarf time. Probably in between stacks and pistons in your gameplay time, though, and difficulty.

[neblime]

A magma piston is way less awesome than having all the magma you would ever need on tap though...
even if minecarts are better imagine the satisfaction you'll have on completion of the pump stack!

[GavJ]

About 70% of the time that I build a pump stack for water or magma, I never end up using it for anything more than like one room full of liquid. And that's already taking into consideration the fact that I know that and that I therefore avoid building pump stacks, and my %age is STILL that high...

If you've never done it before, sure do it just for the experience if nothing else. And the novelty might make you actually use it a lot, too.  But it sounds to me more like the OP is sort of saying "groan, not another pump stack, especially such a big one" and has already built them before, in which case, I say SCREW THAT.  Unless you have very specific preplanned needs for magma on tap beyond your metal industry.

[timotheos]

I generally go with the other option of moving my whole fort down to the magma.

But pump stacks are !!Fun!! My current fort (down near the magma sea) has a 140Z magma pump stack, it took 2 in-game years to build, including 2 stack collapses due to messed up build orders, killing 3 FB's to get though the caverns and then another year and a half to build the 80 windmills to power it. but I now get to set fire to the surface when ever I want.

[GavJ]

but I now get to set fire to the surface when ever I want.

...Which you can also do with a single minecart and track that you could have built in 1-2 months without any accidents and a miniscule fraction of the resources.

[jcochran]

It's a love/hate relationship...
  However our most recent fling is putting me in a rather awkward position.  Use burrows (which I have little/no understanding of) for my metal working dwarves, and carving a rail system for moving supplies down to them and goods back up, OR...



  Build a pumpstack roughly 150z tall...  Even if I use the 1x3 head-over-tail model that's a BIG stack and a lotta calculations, not to mention about 2 years of construction time if I do nothing else.  Oh and I still have no idea how to power a stack that big...   

To help reduce the FPS loss caused by temperature calculations, add a small "reservoir" at each pump level.  Basically, each pump level looks like a "T".
Look at http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72296.0 for details.

[Maul_Junior]

I generally go with the other option of moving my whole fort down to the magma.

But pump stacks are !!Fun!! My current fort (down near the magma sea) has a 140Z magma pump stack, it took 2 in-game years to build, including 2 stack collapses due to messed up build orders, killing 3 FB's to get though the caverns and then another year and a half to build the 80 windmills to power it. but I now get to set fire to the surface when ever I want.

......I'm suddenly imagining a sprawling road down 70 Z-levels, open to the outside world, lined by weapon and cage traps by the hundreds, if not thousands........for farming gob/elf/humanite. Each level literally crosses the entire X or Y level........

......damn it, now I'm going to have to build that.

 

With a backdoor ramp/staircase for caravans, normally closed off by 3 airlocks and a few dozen traps..


that sounds glorious, actually.