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[SeanTucker]

Is there any way to efficiently use magma without either an extremely complex pump system and reservoir or embarking on a volcano? I hit the magma sea for the first time on this fort, and using it for anything is ridiculously inefficient because my dorfs have to travel an absurd distance to get to it.

[Eagle_eye]

move your fort down, and make the caravan travel that distance to reach you?

[Akura]

Preferably across two bridges suspended over the magma sea, between them is a tiny area with a pressure plate on it. Guess what the pressure plate is linked to. Here's a hint: It's very efficient.

[LealNightrunner]

Splitting your fort, or moving entirely down there, are probably your easiest choices.

Pumping isn't terribly difficult, it's just very time consuming and can cause a lot of slowdown with all that fluid flow.

[Victuz]

Creating a pump stack high enough should not be that much of a problem. It will require less work than moving the entire fort down IMO.

OR, start assigning burrows and create your metal industry down there. Make a living, sleeping and eating area down there for them assign proper dwarves to it and just make them live there, other ones can live in the old part of the fort. That would take less time than building entire new fort for ALL dwarves and if you don't want to create a tall pump stack than it's the only option.

I personally just build a 140z levels high pump stack yesterday and tbh I wouldn't consider doing it any other way .

[Vercingetorix]

Shit, just dig down there and forge.  You'll have enough layabouts to haul things to and from.

[Shoku]

Well there's another way. Mine into the sea to get a fell for the shape. Then use just one pump to fill some low basic either naturally occurring in the caverns or made by hand, and carve away ate a big square chunk of rock above it with a nice suspension placed earlier. Build some bridges on the sides of the column and then drop it.

The magma teleports instantly to the top of whatever rocks fell on it and the bridges catch any spillover. Probably no good for a first year fort by any means but just setting up magma forges at the bottom should tide you over until you can spare some miners for the fairly involved project. Probably wanna wall off any unfortuante exposure to the caverns you're forced to have.

After dropping the thing you could just build your magma forges over you high pool you'd made or pump most of it out into a more convenient magma cistern.
Bonus: If you prepare beforehand you can have bridges of water resting over the column and just retract them after pumping out most of the magma for a fresh layer of obsidian and easy reset. Might wanna save before you start pumping it into storage in case anything goes awry.
*you'd also need to make sure that you had raised bridges or something to keep the lower level you were dropping onto clear after the drop- gotta mine that back out before you can prep it again.
**If you try to drop into the sea it will just swallow up all the rock. Gotta do it onto solid ground at least thicker than a floor tile.

Better though is generating normal regions instead of islands. You end up having to convey it up 100 levels fewer in most embarks.

[Lord Aldrich]

For a detailed discussion of a magma piston-pump that uses cave-in mechanics, see:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59894.0

[WrathNail]

For a detailed discussion of a magma piston-pump that uses cave-in mechanics, see:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59894.0

This.

Less taxing on your FPS and, once you get the mechanics down, faster in bringing the magma up as well.

[petersohn]

I personally prefer pump stacks. They are pretty time consuming to create, but are a quite effective way to move large amounts of magma in long terms, except for the FPS impact. The more intricate part is building the power plant. I recently tried to build an aquifer based one, but failed, so I just built a bunch of water wheels on the river, which freezes in early Autumn and melts in early Summer, so I have about one season to get enough magma to use for all the goblin sieges that happen in the Winter.

[Torgan]

I've just been building my metal industry at the magma sea and either setting stockpiles for any materials I need down there or just channelling a 1x1 vertical shaft through my fortress and dumping any ore down there, reclaim at the bottom.  Can be a bit fiddley to make one that doesn't pierce the caverns leaving a free route for any flying nasties to have free access to your whole fort though.

[Shoku]

Well if you embark on high enough volcanism you'll probably get a pipe that brings the red sevens a good deal closer to you. Makes it harder to find flux layers but you can usually find at least a few spots with marble that match your other criteria.

[Malibu Stacey]

I personally prefer pump stacks. They are pretty time consuming to create, but are a quite effective way to move large amounts of magma in long terms, except for the FPS impact. The more intricate part is building the power plant. I recently tried to build an aquifer based one, but failed, so I just built a bunch of water wheels on the river, which freezes in early Autumn and melts in early Summer, so I have about one season to get enough magma to use for all the goblin sieges that happen in the Winter.

Easy way around that, build Water Reactors inside your fort so it won't freeze over during the cold months. All you need are a carpenter, some wood, a water source, some buckets & some spare haulers. Build as many as you like & they'll power your pump stack indefinitely all year round.

[shadowclasper]

True that.

Personally, I'd make the piston pump to jump start your metal industry, though you'll have to be VERY luck to avoid tapping into any caverns >_>;

I'd suggest waiting on it until you can drop down female cats into the depths, they'll make more kittens due to how cats reproduce by spores Little fuzzy, expendable exploration units

Once you find a sufficiently large area you can safely mine out to make your pump, drop it down and have a good time

[forsaken1111]

You're a dwarf. Just hit it with a hammer over and over until it works.

Dwarven engineering 101