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[Powersteve621]

So today as I was designating a bunch of staircases leading to my stockpile layer, it occurred to me how great staircases are. They are basically a floor space that allows creatures to move between layers as if they are flying, so in that case, why have floors at all!?

Has anyone ever done this? Would an Escherfort, where all free floor space not going to be built on is designated as up/down stairs instead of floor be a pathfinding dream or a chaotic nightmare of lag, confused dwarves, falling and crushed limbs?

[TubaDragoness]

As long as nobody trips... you don't stop until the bottom of a staircase.

[Aranador]

I have this vague recollection of someone once having commented on the idea as being a horrible FPS disaster, because of the way path finding works across Z levels  Something about every possible route to a particular stair being calculated, then again for every possible stair, creating a geometric process load.

[Fleeting Frames]

Pretty easy to test for simple forts with tools like tiletypes or builder.
Just replace all floors with up/down stairs.

Practical applications are more difficult, since one can't build on up/down stairs - need obsidian-casting, like in itg's skyfort.

What's more, even if you do obsidian-cast them, you still won't get up-down staircases on farm plots, going by brief 43.03 tests.

As long as nobody trips... you don't stop until the bottom of a staircase.

Hatches can fix this to an extent, but it won't work for areas with other buildings present like stockpiles.

[Powersteve621]

I didn't think about hatches. Ye gods, I had enough trouble visualising what such a fort would actually look like IRL, but now I have to try and picture giant banks of hatches popping open and shut as dwarves move about as well.

[Eschar]

Wouldn't it be a security risk? FBs with flight, and all that?