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[Trekkin]

Firstly, I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm kind of new to Dwarf Fortress, so if there are any gaping holes in my logic other than the ones I note, please, I would love to be enlightnened.

My actual question is this: How big should a tower-cap farm be to provide a given number of trees per season? I always build huge farms that take forever to mine, longer to clear, and frequently overload my irrigation apparatus, and while I'm working on making them modular I can't decide on an overall size to build into my fort design. Successful designs/scales would be most helpful; it seems limiting now to design my timber industry away from everything to accommodate having the farms on dirt.

Also, if I use magma to clear away the stones rather than hauling them, will that inhibit future tower-cap growth? and how often if ever do I need to remuddy my stone fields?

[Albedo]

"How much" is like "how much food do we need"?  Who is "we", and how hungry are we?  Some players get by on a single 30x30 farm, some (me) like several 50x50's and keep going.  No limit, really.

TC farms grow fairly densely, but slowly (as do any trees - never fast enough).  Dense enough that if a caravan had to get through, it would have to work its way.  And slow enough that if you don't keep building farms early, I find that I've cleared one long before the next is even thinking of being ready.

So, I like to overdo it - never enough.  The safety of underground tree-cutting is a huge draw. Iirc, you can train 2 miners up to Legendary+5 in a single 48x48 area block in under 3 seasons if you first carve up-stairs, and then clear those. (You can also then carve down-stairs and get 50% more usage out of the same area, but I don't like the flashing, and down-stairs have their own pitfalls, as it were.)

For irrigation, I like to have a tunnel come up in the rough center of where I'll have the farm - always seems to do fine.   I pump a pool that feeds the tunnel higher than its level, and let it bubble up - no chance of a system failure, the pump has to be working or the pressure isn't there.  Re-irrigation never seems a concern due to the density.

Also, trees and shrubs compete against the limit on the max # of "things" that can grow in an area block (a single 48x48-tile biome, as distinguished on the embark Local map.)  So if you can remove the shrubs, that will encourage more saplings.

[Trekkin]

the mining of the cavern has never been a problem for me; it's always been the removal of the loose stone. I can get the chambers mined within a few seasons, but it takes my entire fort basically stopping work to move the rock into the nearest garbage dump.

Thanks for the size; it was much larger than I had anticipated.

[Albedo]

I was thinking "in soil" - if mining in stone, triple that time (or so.)  If I can find a double-soil layer, I'm all over the lower one.

That size assumes an aggressive use of wood - ample beds (with some rejects), barrels and bins out the wazoo, etc.  Some players find ways around that, but that seems a standard approach for my playstyle.

[darkflagrance]

As a related question, do tower cap farms cease to function after reclaiming?

I'm 90% sure this is the case, but I just want confirmation from anyone who knows this for certain.

[smjjames]

As for stone hauling, I just set my dwarves to SPEED:0, that way they can clear out a TC farm within a season.

[Quatch]

switching the long hauls to shorter, you could build a set of atomsmashers on the level below, raise then lower all bridges, then deconstrct.

Magmas probably faster, and wetting should remove any magma effects on the surface.
Wet before you haul, things start growing right away. I put traffic designations (restrict everything, 1 tile wide grid of high at 10 tile steps) in before hauling too, so that I get a good stand of trees by the time everything is cleared.

[Malicus]

Also, trees and shrubs compete against the limit on the max # of "things" that can grow in an area block (a single 48x48-tile biome, as distinguished on the embark Local map.)  So if you can remove the shrubs, that will encourage more saplings.

Honestly, my attention has never been held long enough recently to get around to trying it, but does this mean that stacking one farm on another would be counterproductive?

[smjjames]

No because more surface area would be available. Its the same for the surface, the more surface area available, the more room for plants, less surface area, fewer plants.

[Albedo]

<nods>

It's per level, effectively.

[Derakon]

Yes, but would it be better to leave a "fallow" undug level between each lever of your towercap farms?

Put another way, does digging out the level beneath your farm more than halve your tree grow rate? If so, then stacking farms right on top of each other is counterproductive.

[smjjames]

I don't think digging out the level underneath affects TCs since they will grow on muddied rock, unlike surface plants and trees. I believe anyway.

In my experience, having multiple levels on top of each other works fine and is very productive.

[Quietust]

Muddied tower-cap farms do not require solid stone or soil underneath them - a floor is sufficient for dense growth.