My designs tend to be vertical. Surface (and above-surface) dedicated to building sprawl, fortifications and the like, but very little that isn't surface-dependent ('open' grazing, natural orchards, all enclosed/enclosable) or Depot and entry.
Immeditaely subsurface (soil) is farming. Underground crops, plus surface-crops (with 'skylight', cut and recovered once the 'outside' is let in. Between there and the first cavern is initial workshop areas (which continue to be so for farm-related processing) and probably taverns/temples/etc, depending on what room I've got in my footprint and what I dug out as initial storage areas of later items. Trade Goods storage stays here, too. (Main dining area and food store will be hereabouts, but I'll dot some sub-refrectories around at other levels, a smaller "take from" food/drink stockpile in each for my haulers to worry about).
Skip through fo between first and second cavern (I'll have sunk 'exploration stairwells to discover the cavern(s), and chosen a route that misses entirely for cavern-passing routes) and that's generally where I find the rick layer I like to dig my bedrooms out of. If it's a nice big clump of marble-layers, that's usually it. Over several layers of this I spread down and out to dig (spaces for) individual rooms and get valuable rock (either literally, or to be my 'signature' surface construction material for my fort, to be passed upwards to a handy block-maker) as a side-effect, on the basis that my expansions do the "disturbing sleep" already so the quarrying side-effect is basically on a free pass in this respect.
Interesting other rocks (especially my signature magma safe rock, when I decide upon it) get similar mini-expanzions outwards in layers where found, to be given a number of mason/mechanic workshops set up dedicated to that localised material, whether granite or olivine or whatever.
Usually before this has become too mature, though, my explorations have found/sufficiently mapped from ceiling breakthroughs (resealed until needed) all three regular caverns and the fourth (magma sea). The latter likely due to seeing its intrusion up through one or other cavern. Working on that discovery (as cautious about the Hot Rock as the Wet Rock below cavern-pools, but in both cases determined to get cancellation spam over and done with ASAP) I decide where my magma-workshop layer will be and its extensive layout, to side-tap into the source to slowly flood a winding magmaduct (or several) that pass under the predug workshops in just the right way. Ditto with cavern-water, I'll design a side-tapping cistern into some underground lake (though there are different issues, meaning I can't eventually just fill it, albeit quicker, and close the strategic floodgate like I do with the magma one).
Sometimes this means I actually have my magma-source half way up my stack! Enough for me never to worry too much about moving it to a 'handier' location - I just take the hit when it is only at the very(-nearly) bottom of my bottommost staircase. Though I know it doesn't quite work this way, I rationalise that whatever ores(/’coal’/flux) I send down the stack to the magmaworkshop stockpiles is using far less effort than if I send it up; smelted bars stay in the same area for further use or intermediate alloying and finished metal goods come up from the depths in an easier fashion anyway (whether hauled by my haulers or collected by their new owner/claimer).
Which is just my choice of elegence in solution, not actually better than others' but it works for me.
And this is on worlds I generate with increased space between cavern layers, from default. It makes my quest for magma less easy, but gives me a number of solid layers (uninterupted by the neighbouring cavern layers, "secret tunnels" between them notwithstanding) to set up the accomodation bulge/etc.
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Topic: Magma and its long way (Read 9050 times)