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[Gus Smedstad]

I finally completed my project which involved a massive pump stack, bringing magma from level 6 to level 146.  I found the basic pump stack iffy for such a large project, since severely delays construction that no pump can be completed until the pump below it is done.  The dependencies are a headache, so I went with an alternating approach where every pump rests on solid ground, and power transfer is done with gears.  This adds 50% to the power requirements, but is well worth it since all the pumps can be built in parallel.

This of course required massive power, so I ended up with 17 standard dwarven reactors, generating some 2800 excess power.  I experimented with some alternate designs which drove multiple banks of water wheels with a single, separate pump, but this proved unreliable and hence inefficient.  The fluid simulation in DF being what it is, what should be a channel with a reliable, rapid current often isn't.  I may try different designs in some future fort.

By the time I was done, the fort was really at a crawl.  I'm running on a Q6600, and my 220 dwarf fort was running at about 6 FPS.  It's purely computation, since I get 100+ FPS on embark, and only get slowdowns when the population climbs into the 50+ range.  I threw the lever, engaging my 3 banks of reactors with the magma pump stack power train....

... and FPS dropped from 6 to 2 to 1 to 0.  Which wasn't actually stopped, just less than 1.

I immediately threw the lever back, and after a few painful minutes, the pump stack shut down and the frame rate climbed back up to that pathetic 6.  I think it's the pumps themselves that eat CPU cycles.  The amount of new fluid movement was tiny compared to the waves that were already going on from the partially-drained cavern lake that provided the working fluid for my reactors, and of course the reactors themselves had been going full blast for some time.

I think the only solution, if you want to accomplish such a long-distance lift, is to do it in stages.  Pump it up 20 levels or so to a reservoir, stop the first set of pumps, and then pump it up another 20 levels to a second reservoir, etc.

 - Gus

[gtmattz]

A couple things I do in order to make pumping 100+ levels a little more FPS friendly...

Embark on an area with a brook and dam it ASAP.  You can then dig all kind of channels for your power plant and the water will not actually be flowing in the FPS killing manner, but has the needed 'flow' in order to power water wheels.

Embark on a 3x3 area.  With all the Z levels and caverns, one really does not need more than a 3x3 embark.

Doing these 2 things have made pumping magma from the sea to the surface doable for me.

[mrb4b00]

I learn this the hard way as well.  I built 30 levels of water pump and it slowed my fps to single digits. 

[haywire]

Embark on a 3x3 area.  With all the Z levels and caverns, one really does not need more than a 3x3 embark.

On my latest fort I've gone even smaller, 1x1.  Had never used nano fort in 40d, but I figured with caverns and the magma sea, I could get everything I wanted in one square.  It is actually pretty fun.  Of course I have the population at 20, I'd probably do a bigger embark if I wanted more.

[gtmattz]

Embark on a 3x3 area.  With all the Z levels and caverns, one really does not need more than a 3x3 embark.

On my latest fort I've gone even smaller, 1x1.  Had never used nano fort in 40d, but I figured with caverns and the magma sea, I could get everything I wanted in one square.  It is actually pretty fun.  Of course I have the population at 20, I'd probably do a bigger embark if I wanted more.

I had no idea nanofort worked in 2010, i will have to look into this now.  I tried some nanoforts in 40d but did not like the fact that i had to choose between features.  Thanks for the heads up there.

[Hyperturtle]

Hmm, sounds like a staircase leading down to magma is the best fps solution...

[Greep]

how do you even do nanofort? It won't let me resize embark location lower than 2x2.

[gtmattz]

how do you even do nanofort? It won't let me resize embark location lower than 2x2.

It is an application.  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21601.0

Download it, get to the site chooser screen and run it, you will then be able to go down to a 1x1 embark.

[Diamond]

Well, what for do you need a constant magma flow anyways ? Magma smelters and traps don't need much magma, you can farm obsidan at lower levels - much simpler then building 100-level pump stack.
So just turn the pumps off when you don't need 'em. Be smart, use cisterns. Not much of a problem.

[Retro]

I had a 90z pump stack three pumps thick (ie. 270 pumps) and it didn't really give me lag. Admittedly this was on an already laggy fort, but until the water pumping through it started to move around at the top nothing slowed down that much.

[haywire]

I had no idea nanofort worked in 2010, i will have to look into this now.  I tried some nanoforts in 40d but did not like the fact that i had to choose between features.  Thanks for the heads up there.

A fun fort I did was use nanofort to do 1x1, embark on an ocean tile adjacent to a land tile using embark anywhere, and then make a copy and inspect the site using reveal to check for HFS.  Make sure the ocean floor steps down a few z-levels as well.  Under the lowest level set it up so the ocean will drain either into a aquifer or an edge fortification, but can be sealed again with a lever controlled door or floodgate.  Pull the switch, drain the ocean, build out from the shore to one of the higher z-level ocean floor, begin digging down and make your fort water tight, then close the drain.  BAM!  Under ocean fort entrance that isn't all that bad on fps.  You can choose to make it so you have a small section always above the water, or that you have to drain the ocean if you want above ground access.

[RandomNumberGenerator]

I usually build my forts between the first and second caverns, so there is less distance to pump magma. I got really lucky with my current world though, because in flat areas it's a mere 45 z-levels, so I don't even need to pump magma; I can just build above the sea.

[o_O[WTFace]]

I think a pump stack is more work then just setting up a new fort above the magma.  By then your miners and engravers should be legendary and have spare time work on it anyway. 

[ManaUser]

But a pump stack is the only option if you want to flood the world with magma.

[beorn080]

I think if you alternate floor tiles, you can make all the pumps at once without waiting for each one to be built.