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[DerSchlund]

Hi there,

I'm playing DF for about 6 month or so and think that I understand enough of the game now to face some challanges beyond the minimal fortress. So I try to understand DF more in-depth and want to know how other players design there fortress.
The first thing that rly bugs me is that magma is reeeeealy all the way down, but the main fortress is more on the surface. So my question is: How do you people make your fortress work? Especially when it comes to magma? I get the impression, that you have to make a forge with all the important parts near the bottom and your living area, with mainhall, temples, foodstuff and whatnot near the surface and all my dwarf have to walk over 120 tiles just to make a copper goblet.
I know that there are some advanced buildings to bring magma all the way up (piston and pumpstack), but to me, that still looks very complicated. I often plan to move my fortress to the deep deep underground once the most important things work, but I never got that far.
Long storry short... please tell my how you usually try to make you fortress work once the fuel (coal) is exhausted. Not every location has many trees or lignite/bituminous coal. Or at least show me how you get alle the power to bring magma over 80 tiles or so up with a pumpstack.

Greetings, DerSchlund

PS: English is not my first language.... so I'm sorry if the text sounds a bit weird.

[vjek]

You can bring magma to the surface (very easily, safely and quickly) with minecarts.
Having said that, you can also make worlds where magma is less than 20 Z levels down from the embark layer, if desired. (even closer than a surface volcano!)
Also, surface volcanoes are an option to make that part easier, if you really don't want to dig.

Typically, 1 out of the 3 (or 1, at all) caverns will have infinite trees in it for turning into coal as well, if not on the surface.  You can also typically grow your own infinite tree farms near the surface, once the caverns are breached.  An ideal 2x2 embark can have thousands of iron, coal, and flux.

[DerSchlund]

Well I don't want to make the worldgen too easy for me. I Already have frequent minerals.

But what do you mean by infinite trees. Don't they usually take a while to regrow?

[vjek]

Yes, but what's in the caverns is typically hundreds or thousands of logs worth of underground trees.  If you get it from the caverns, you should have more than enough.
If you want to grow it yourself, yes, you'll have to wait for the trees to grow, but.. they don't stop growing. 
If you make your own tree farm big enough, you have safe access to more trees/wood than you would ever likely need, eventually.

[PatrikLundell]

It takes 3 years from the appearance of a sapling to the time it matures into a tree.

Personally I make my magma facilities down by the magma sea, partly because I usually don't have any magma safe metal for a mine cart early on (relying on Goblinite for metal in very metal poor worlds). Making a mine cart and a screw pump to haul it to your normal workshop area to power magma facilities isn't hard, though.

Pump stacks are a lot of work, but needed only if you intend to move large amount of magma: it's definitely overkill to just bring some up to power workshops.

Tree farms in the soil layer has an unlimited potential to produce wood, while the caverns are actually limited: each tree cut leaves a bare rock tile behind (although you can muddy it). That doesn't matter in practice, though, as you're going to have more trouble with an excess of trees (blocking movement paths and killing FPS) in the caverns than a shortage.

[Moeteru]

Every time I've done it I've either embarked on a volcano or built a pump-stack out of green glass (using magma forges at the bottom of the map), although as vjek says you can now use minecarts to efficiently transport a few units of magma over long distances. Each minecart can transport 2/7 magma, and I think you only need 4/7 to power a magma forge.

I tend to use motionless water reactors to generate sufficient power for a pump stack. You can use the following procedure to create a pool of water which is at a constant 7/7 level but which the game considers to be flowing and can therefore be used to power waterwheels:
1. Dig out a large room just a few tiles away from the map edge.
2. Carve fortifications at the map edge to serve as a drain, and install floodgates so you can control the drain with a lever.
3. Fill the chamber up with water (don't forget to regulate the water pressure so you don't flood your fortress).
4. Open the drain for a few seconds, then close it again. Water needs to reach the map edge, but you don't want completely empty the chamber.
5. Refill the chamber to 7/7 depth.
6. It should now all count as "flowing" water, even with the floodgates closed. Channel out the level above and install as many waterwheels as you like.

Don't worry about your English. It sounds fine and is easy to understand.

[FourierSeries]

In times past I've done the pump-stack routine to bring the magma up. Aside from powering forges, this would be used to fill up a reservoir for further processing into a weapon of mass destruction.

My recommendation? Now-a-days, I prefer to create a mini-colony near where the magma is. Give them a set of bedrooms, a dining room, forging ingredient stockpiles, and some food and drink storage nearby. Burrow all them who need to be down there and get to forging whatever needs done. Let some dedicated ingredient haulers do all the work of charging up and down the stairs to keep the local stockpiles filled. With this method, in previous versions, there was still some inefficiency as they occasionally found excuses to head up top, but it still was much less of a hassle. In the current version we now have things like temples and libraries and whatnot to help distract them up top, but it's still so much easier to manage.

You could also lock them down there, but that's just an open invitation to stress and headaches.

As the others point out, and I agree with, there is usually plenty of wood to be found so as to run a set of regular forges for most of your immediate needs. With enough preparation, magma forges can be relatively swift and efficient. First off, you might want to ask yourself why you suddenly want such features. Do you really need the ability to create 9000 steel anvils as maximally quickly as possible? Or, do you just need to do a quickie one off candy bake?

Weapons of mass destruction projects always trump any other considerations, of course.

[kaijyuu]

Also remember that going 50 z levels down really isn't much different from going 50 squares horizontally. Dwarves have no problems repeatedly climbing huge numbers of stairs.

[Inarius]

I have had the same issue for a long time. But, well, actually, as said, 100 Z level are not different from 100 X or Y tiles, as said stairs aren't tiring for dwarves.
If you want magma near surface, one word : Volcanos !

[Quarque]

Short answer: Wheelbarrows. And stockpile links.

Walking up or down 120 z levels is not so bad by itself. But if your smith is dragging a heavy ore by hand to smelt it first, it becomes terrible.

So here is how you prevent that. Next to your smelter, you make small ore stockpiles for every type of ore you want to smelt. Link them to the smelter and give all of them a high number of wheelbarrows. The stockpile link prevents your idiot dwarves from dragging an ore by hand from the surface.

Make additional linked stockpiles for bars that take from the smelter and give to the forge. Disallow most other tasks for your smith, so that he can forge things 24/7.

When forging steel, the stockpile links become a little more complicated, especially because your pig iron stockpile cannot give to and take from the same smelter. One workaround is to have two smelters. Another workaround is to have two stockpiles: pile 1 takes pig iron from the smelter and gives it to pile 2, pile 2 gives it back to the smelter.

Finally, if you use DFHack there is a great way to automatically smelt low quality items and reforge them. Make a stockpile that takes from the forge and only allows low quality items. Now press 'M' in the settings for the stockpile to mark all items stored here for melting.

[anewaname]

I usually use a forge room in the basement and let the dwarfs walk. You can also stop dwarfs from hauling ore long distances by using a workshop-restricted burrow over the forge room. And, sand is usually available a short distance away in the caverns. However, if you want to transport magma to the surface, go for it. It is a dwarfy thing to do.

[Sarmatian123]

I keep all enterprises close to surface, either above ground or below. Quantum stockpiles, right beside workshops. Close to centrally placed taverns, temples, libraries, dinners. Below only those that require this like for example: mass-pit, hospital's wells and of course under-ground farming. All rest gets done on surface. I do not like the cave adaptation too much, even without current emo-system in. Cave adaptation affects combat on surface with annoying creatures. I get iron/steel usually from merchant, even in first year. Ironically I sell wooden wheelbarrows (priceless for hauling stones and empty steel/iron mine-carts) to be able to make iron/steel mine-carts and wheelbarrows for magma hauling. There are tools, you can make out of stone too.

Good thing is that magma never cools down, else I would need to engineer some supply train to a below surface colony. Still, it could be so, that burning tree logs for charcoal could be preferential instead magma. Iron industry kind of dies after you get all metal items done for the Dwarven military. There is no need for exports, even to colonies (we do not have those yet in DF lol), conquered sites or economically dependent hillocks.

[DerSchlund]

Thank you all for your answers. Very interesting.
I kept my distance from minecarts, cause there looked even more complicated to me then a magmapiston or pumpstacks. But I think, I give it a try now.

One thing I like to know though is, if magma in minecarts evaporates... also ... do I have to worry about the magma in a minecart to spill out or something with an impulseramp elevator? I get the impression, that a minecart constantly derails on it.

I think it's just me, but I like to have a compact overview over my fortress and that means, that I don't want switch to much between z-levels in my fortress. I also like aboveground crops for booze diversion... so I often end up to have the biggest part of my fortress close to the surface and I often want to keep it that way.

Last but not least I have another question. I play with the LNP and adjusted the Pop-max to 100 cause in the most games, I got overwhelmed with all the new migrants and to often didn't know what to do with them. After all, in most cases one dwarf would be enough to fulfill the needs of one industry. So if I have a savegame that started with with 100 pop-max and I change the setting before I play this savegame forward, does this cause any trouble? Also what happens if I rechange the settings back to 100 pop-max?

Greetings, DerSchlund

[vjek]

As far as minecarts go, this is a fair overview of what would be involved, step by step (I just did this yesterday):

• Build a pump above the edge of the magma sea, with the intake tile above the magma sea.
• Channel out the intake tile.  Build a grate over the intake tile.
• Dig a square in front of the pump output. channel it downwards, and seal all 8 remaining directions, so it can only go down. (using walls, doors, whatever)
• On the z level below, directly beneath the tile in front of the output of the pump, this is where the magma will fall into.  This is where you want your minecart.
• In one direction away from the minecart spot, build a fortification, and on the other side of the fortification, build a large room for evaporation/drainage. 11x11 is plenty.
• Seal off the rest of the tiles around the minecart.  Use a door for at least one of them.
• Now, in the hauling menu, create a route stop at the location where you want your minecart.  Assign a vehicle, your magma safe minecart.
• Once the minecart is in place and the room is clear, turn on the pump manually. Immediately turn it off after it's been pumped at all.
• Wait for all the magma below the minecart to evaporate.
• Create a new track stop on the surface, with a dumping direction. Have the target of the dump be an adjacent channeled tile where you want to build your surface magma workshop.
• Assign the minecart with magma in it to the new surface track stop.
• Dwarves will remove the minecart with magma in it from the filling room and carry it to the new stop, where it will immediately dump the magma.

Repeat this twice per surface magma tile.
Voila. Magma Smelter/Forge/whatever on the surface.
As it's not explicitly obvious, no tracks are required between these two activities.  Stairs are perfectly fine.

Two diagrams (top down view):
Pump Level
█D███
#%%·█
█████
Fill level, Z-1 from Pump Level
███D█+++++++++++
≈██M╬+++++++++++
█████+++++++++++
(Where everywhere else is presumed to be sealed/doors/walls/stone/etc: █ )
# = grate
% = pump (pumping from west to east, in this case)
D = door
≈ = magma sea
M = minecart to carry/hold/be filled with magma
╬ = Fortification (built or carved)
+ = drainage/evaporation room/area

Grate and all pump parts can be made from green glass. Minecart must be made from magma safe metal.

[PatrikLundell]

Your design is actually needlessly complicated, vjek.
The way I do it:
- Dig a tunnel up to, but not through the magma sea's highest level (you need it to be 7 tiles long).
- Build a magma safe raising drawbridge at the end of the tunnel, and hook it up to a lever (with magma safe gears!).
- build a magma safe wall grate inside of the drawbridge (to stop unpleasant critters from getting in).
- Channel out the tile separating the tunnel from the magma sea from above and immediately build a wall or floor on top. The tunnel is now connected to the magma sea and is filling up with magma.
- Once reasonably full, close the drawbridge (you did test it before you breached the magma sea, didn't you?)
- My tunnel is fairly long, and I build my magma workshops on top of it, but for magma hauling you don't need a long tunnel.
- channel through the floor above the tunnel inside of the wall grate and again 3 tiles further on so you can fit a screw pump in between them.
- Build magma safe floor grates over the two holes (strictly needed only for the one the longest away from the sea).
- Build your magma safe screw pump in between the two holes, taking from the sea end pumping away from it.
- Enclose the pump outlet tile (the one furthers away from the sea) with walls, except on one side, where you install a magma safe door (and one side is the pump). If planning ahead, you left the original rock here, so you only need to install the door.
- Assign the minecart on top of the remote grate (inside the door).
- Pump for a short while.
- When the pumping has stopped you can order the minecart moved to the new location. There's no need for waiting for evaporation, as the excess magma falls down the grate. If you closed the drawbridge before pumping there is no risk getting temporarily lingering magma.

In practice I do it slightly differently because I very rarely have access to materials for building a magma safe minecart early on (very mineral scarce worlds, and so relying on Goblinite for metal, and they may not even bring iron. If they do, it still takes a fair while to get enough). My minecarts are used for cavern lake edge obsidianization rather than magma workshop setup.