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[Greep]

I'm not really sure how the whole pressurized deal works, but could you theoretically pump magma to the top of a fort using a single pump, pumping magma into a 1x1 flight of stairs?  You only need a little magma for forges, so I could just pump what I need and cap it off with a floodgate if it works.

[zergl]

Nope. Pumps can only pump up to the level they are constructed at, as in elevate liquid by one z-level up to which it will be pressurized.

[saarmae]

I'm not really sure how the whole pressurized deal works, but could you theoretically pump magma to the top of a fort using a single pump, pumping magma into a 1x1 flight of stairs?  You only need a little magma for forges, so I could just pump what I need and cap it off with a floodgate if it works.

In case this really comprehensive guide (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Pump) doesn't help you...
The answer is no, if you want to get magma up from -50 to -5 then you have to build 44 pumps.

[CppThis]

Note that especially for pumping magma you can probably avoid worrying about power and just do it manually.  Expand the exit-hole tile into a 3x3 room or something every 10 z-levels or so, and just pump from one cistern to the next until you have a little magma at the top.

[Retro]

Note that especially for pumping magma you can probably avoid worrying about power and just do it manually.  Expand the exit-hole tile into a 3x3 room or something every 10 z-levels or so, and just pump from one cistern to the next until you have a little magma at the top.

Nah, still a huge pain in the ass. The best solution is to make a power plant regardless, since you'll probably need one for the water stack, and hook it up to the magma stack later (or borrow the same stack once it's clean out).

[Nexii Malthus]

Note that especially for pumping magma you can probably avoid worrying about power and just do it manually.  Expand the exit-hole tile into a 3x3 room or something every 10 z-levels or so, and just pump from one cistern to the next until you have a little magma at the top.

Nah, still a huge pain in the ass. The best solution is to make a power plant regardless, since you'll probably need one for the water stack, and hook it up to the magma stack later (or borrow the same stack once it's clean out).

If you do it via the manual method, mind that all you need to transfer up is a small bit of magma and only one (1) pump is needed for the entire operation. I don't see the huge pain in the ass compared to creating 40+ pumps.

[Retro]

I don't understand your point at all. If you're transferring magma up a long way, it doesn't matter how much or little magma you need. You need a lot of pumps. You could hypothetically use two for a whole stack, and deconstruct one then rebuild it on the next level up, but unless you're short on resources it's even more painstaking. If you just use one pump, the magma's just going to be sitting at magma sea +1z regardless of if it's powered or not - and frankly, if you're just pumping magma up a single level, there's little point to bothering in the first place. That being said, if you're going to use a lot of pumps anyhow, you might as well power them, thus should you want to pump up more than a few tiles of magma (or water, the same stack can be reused) you can just expand the receiving area rather than send a dwarf to pump a tile of magma up one z-level at a time. Hence my point - make a pump stack and power your pumps.

[Psieye]

Doing it via 1 pump would mean having a loooooooooot of floodgates for tiny cisterns at every z-level so that you can deconstruct and relocate that 1 pump over and over again for each z-level you want to go up. I suppose for someone who isn't comfortable with setting up a perpetual motion power generator and then transferring that power, this would seem like less of a pain since there's less unknowns to it.

[hjd_uk]

I only realised that you can change the direction of pumps yesturday, Derp! 

My previous pump stacks were double the size the neede to be

[Eric Blank]

I think the real solution is to always embark on a volcano if you plan to use magma above-ground (lol magma flood/crazy conraption) or just build your magma forges way down there at the bottom if that's all you'll use it for. Same with water and it's uses. Avoid pumping at all costs.

[Psieye]

I think the real solution is to always embark on a volcano if you plan to use magma above-ground (lol magma flood/crazy conraption) or just build your magma forges way down there at the bottom if that's all you'll use it for. Same with water and it's uses. Avoid pumping at all costs.

Avoid pumping why? I can understand reluctance based on not understanding dwarven machinery but once you've learnt it is there any reason to go to all lengths to avoid pumping?

[Reese]

If you do it via the manual method, mind that all you need to transfer up is a small bit of magma and only one (1) pump is needed for the entire operation. I don't see the huge pain in the ass compared to creating 40+ pumps.

No, actually, you can't.  If you use only one pump, the magma will flow back onto the pump when you deconstruct it to move it to the next level.  You need a minimum of two pumps which are moved in a leapfrog fashion.

what? floodgates? cisterns? no thanks! you'll lose a minimum of magma equal to the surface area of the cistern floor at each step, plus whatever is occupying the floodgate square when that is closed plus any random magma that evaporates before the cistern has no more 2/7... you lose atleast 1/7 of your magma per pumping stage.  one pump one square has 0% magma loss until Toady changes magma pumps to no longer move the entire contents of the source square.

best case scenario(no loss to random evaporation before the cistern is pumped out, no loss to floodgate closing) to go up 30 z-levels the lowest level cistern needs to be almost 94 squares in order to get 1 square of magma to the top, and going up 40 z-levels needs a cistern of 437 squares in size

Imagine how many squares it needs to be to go up from the magma sea if it's 100 z-levels below the surface.  My spreadsheet* calculated it as 4,534,100 squares.(that's almost a square 2130 tiles on a side, and that's assuming that the floodgate doesn't cause loss of magma and nothing evaporates before the room is reduced to 1/7 tiles of magma)

anyway, at that point, it's less effort to just make a pump stack.
*for the curious, my spreadsheet works like this:
starting at the top, you assume to get 7/7 magma in a single square.
each row below is that value multiplied by 7/6 (the inverse of 6/7, which is the optimum efficiency pumping from a cistern of greater than 1 square in size) to determine how much magma needs to be in the cistern below

the number of squares required is simply the number of magma units that level needs to have divided by 7 and rounded (and then add 1, but this does not affect any other calculation because no cells reference the required squares column)

[numerobis]

Think incrementally!  You only need one pump.

YOU WILL NEED:
a tile of 6/7 magma at level i.
a floodgate and 1-tile cistern at levels 0 to i+1.
materials for one magma-safe pump.
1. Build the pump, with its outflow pointing at the floodgate.
2. Open the floodgate.
3. Pump the 6/7 magma.
4. Close the floodgate.
You spent the 6/7 magma and got an extra 3 into the cistern, but your pump is free.

So now the procedure is clear:
1. recursively, pump 6/7 magma into the cistern at level i.
2. use the procedure to pump 3/7 into the cistern at level i+1.
3. recursively pump 6/7 at level i.
4. procedure, now you have 6/7 at level i+1.
(base case: the magma sea)
QED.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out precisely how much architecture skill the dwarf designing the pump will have at the end of moving 6/7 magma up 140z using this method.

Also, this procedure uses up 3n (of which n magma-safe) mechanisms and n magma-safe floodgates to go up n levels.  Can we improve on that?

[Retro]

Sorry to be crude, but the one-pump idea is horrible. It's the equivalent of saying that marksdwarves should only carry one bone bolt with them, and once they fire it, they have to go grab a stray animal, butcher it, and carve a new single bone bolt from its remains. Not to degrade your outline itself numerobis; if someone wanted to use nothing but a single pump to move a few tiles of magma up 100z, that'd be fine. But wanting to do so like that is stupid. It's incredibly easy to designate a pump stack and then build the damn thing. I reiterate: If you want to get magma up more than 10z, get some power going and build yourself a stack. You can reuse it for water and when needed can easily attach more output tunnels to it for moving magma elsewhere, and frankly even with the power plant it's not that hard to do.

For those who find pump stacks annoying/confusing/whatever to dig out, here's the second-simplest designation setup I can think of, and the one that I use. # = undug wall, X = up/down staircase, . = regular dig, ^ = ramp., O = hole, pP = pump (lowercase is passable, uppercase is impassable).

Code: [Select]

z0:
#####
#####
#X.^#
#.###
#..^#
#####

z1:
#####
#..^#
#X###
#..^#
#####
#####

Repeat as needed. You end up with:

z0:
#####
###O#
#X.p#
#.#P#
#...#
#####

z1:
#####
#...#
#X#P#
#..p#
###O#
#####

Each set of ramps will dig out the tiles above, leaving you with a XOXO pattern of floor-hole-floor-hole. Beforehand all you need to do is figure out how many pumps you'll need and order that many corkscrews, blocks, and tubes/pipes built. For power, odds are you'll only need two/three waterwheels, but it doesn't hurt to have more. Dig your up/down staircase, designate and dig out the rest, remove the ramps, place the pumps from bottom up, wall off the output tile. Hook up power whenever you're ready. Power transfers across the whole stack, and bam. Your fluid has been moved up as high as you like.

Of course, constructing pump stacks rather than digging them is a colossal pain. That's a different matter. Though I'd still vouch that building stacks is worth it if you really need your water/magma to go higher than ground level.

[numerobis]

Rather than denigrating my approach, you could have mentioned that with *two* pumps, you can move 7/7 up n levels just by leapfrogging.  As Reese pointed out, this has to be with 1-tile cisterns, or else there's just a ridiculous amount of lossage.