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[ShoesandHats]

I just dug up the magma sea (along with some HFS free adamantine veins! ) and I want to pump it into my fortress so I can make magma forges and the suchlike. What would be the simplest, most cost-effective way to do this? After all, what are dwarves without access to magma? Simply a more awesome, bearded elf!

[slink]

The simplest, most cost-effective way to pump the magma into your fortress is not to pump it at all.  Build the forges, smelters, and other furnaces right down there over the magma sea.  Adjust the rest of your fortress to match.

[ShoesandHats]

Well, what if I wanted to flood the surface with magma in order to drive off elves goblins, ala Boatmurdered?

[100killer9]

Make a pump tubr out of magma-safe materials with enough power to supply every pump. Make multiple tubes to do it faster.

_XX
 XX_
_XX
And so on, where X is a pump and _ is an open tile.
In fact. Magma safe materials shouldn't be nessecary so long as you don't use wood or unsafe stone. There is then a danger of turning it off, I think, but it's not a worry.

[NecroRebel]

Well, what if I wanted to flood the surface with magma in order to drive off elves goblins, ala Boatmurdered?

Pump stacks are effective with magma if made from magma-safe materials, and the cheapest, most readily-available material for many forts is green glass. If you've got not sand available, it becomes more difficult. Note that the blocks of the screw pumps can be made out of stone, which is generally easier to acquire in significant amounts than, say, iron or steel on many maps.

As for how to actually create the pump stack, this thread presents several designs for stacks that cause significantly less FPS drop when used with magma than the one on the wiki. Note that later in the thread there are refinements to the design in the first post; the most sophisticated is essentially the pump stack on the wiki, except with the output tiles of each pump expanded into a 1x3 space.

[Keldane]

Make a pump tubr out of magma-safe materials with enough power to supply every pump. Make multiple tubes to do it faster.

_XX
 XX_
_XX
And so on, where X is a pump and _ is an open tile.
In fact. Magma safe materials shouldn't be nessecary so long as you don't use wood or unsafe stone. There is then a danger of turning it off, I think, but it's not a worry.

Attempting to pump magma without using magma-safe materials will, if I'm not mistaken, cause the pump to instantly deconstruct along with every other pump that relied on it for support.

[ShoesandHats]

Yes, but we're talking about the MAGMA SEA here. A huge pool of magma over 100 Z-levels below the surface. I don't think I'll be able to build 100 pumps all the way to the surface.

What would be the simplest, most cost-effective way to do this?

Note the cost-effective and simple bits of that sentence.

[NecroRebel]

Yes, but we're talking about the MAGMA SEA here. A huge pool of magma over 100 Z-levels below the surface. I don't think I'll be able to build 100 pumps all the way to the surface.

What would be the simplest, most cost-effective way to do this?

Note the cost-effective and simple bits of that sentence.

Your options are a pump stack or a magma piston. The pump stack, frankly, is the simplest and most cost-effective method for the amounts of magma that you're talking here.

[Reelyanoob]

The simplest, most cost-effective way to pump the magma into your fortress is not to pump it at all.  Build the forges, smelters, and other furnaces right down there over the magma sea.  Adjust the rest of your fortress to match.

Do it Slink's way if you tend to get bored with your fortresses and start again. It's a better time investment.

Basically, to have surface magma, you need the pump stack or piston. If you go pump stack you need the green glass components, less so for the piston.

So you have to have the forges by the magma sea anyway, and run them for some time to build the components. Start this up, then decide if you can be bothered to build the pumps and recreate these workshops at ground level. Flooding the surface is the only real advantage.

[darthbob88]

Yes, but we're talking about the MAGMA SEA here. A huge pool of magma over 100 Z-levels below the surface. I don't think I'll be able to build 100 pumps all the way to the surface.

What would be the simplest, most cost-effective way to do this?

Note the cost-effective and simple bits of that sentence.

True, but pump stacks can be built once and forgotten, especially if you use dwarven reactors. As far as 100 z-levels goes, I generally go for only two cavern layers for exactly that reason. OTOH, magma pistons can be built with minimal materials, but are immensely more complicated to use.
Long story short, you have three options:
1. Build your stuff on-site, right on the magma sea. Simple, easy, but expensive in the long run.
2. Pump stack. Slightly more complicated and expensive immediately, but easier to work with in the long run.
3. Magma piston. Much more complicated, slightly more expensive, might be harder to deal with than a pump stack.

Edit: Ninja'd by NecroRebel. Curses!

[Reelyanoob]

1. Build your stuff on-site, right on the magma sea. Simple, easy, but expensive in the long run.

Yeah but he needs magma forges/glass furnaces for the pump parts, so this step is required anyway. Unless he's going to use all his wood for charcoal, which is a waste. So this is a common first step, with the only difference being how big you make the forges. I make mine extensible, usually 4x4 is heaps  (16 total : smelters + kilns + glass + forges). And put beds / burrows down there, to keep the workers close to their jobs.

And if you're making parts for 100+ pumps, you need food stockpiles and booze/dining down there too, for efficiency. 3-4 glass furnaces would be a minimum build to get the parts done quickly.

It all depends how much smelting you're going to do, you have to do a fair bit up top to pay off the time cost of building the pump stack, and any ores far down below which get pulled up will take more hauling rather than less.

With magma sea forges, I can have a garbage chute, and dump down the hole on any level straight to the forges. So there are other savings which mitigate the travel time. Gravity only works 1 way.

[Psieye]

Yes, but we're talking about the MAGMA SEA here. A huge pool of magma over 100 Z-levels below the surface. I don't think I'll be able to build 100 pumps all the way to the surface.

What would be the simplest, most cost-effective way to do this?

Note the cost-effective and simple bits of that sentence.

You seem to be under the impression that this is a small task like farmland irrigation. Bringing magma to the surface (no matter how large or small in quantity) is practically a megaproject no matter how you do it unless you started at a volcano (which has other disadvantages, but less so nowadays if you have high mineral scarcity).

[nanomage]

I believe the simplest one-shot piston is what you need just for powering your forges and furnaces on the surface.
Complexity of building a piston does not depend greatly on depth, and 20z and 200z piston take nearly the same amount of your time to create. (although the latter will take much more time of your dwarves).


if you want a FTW device or an orbital magma cannon, then pump stack looks much more effective because it is much easier to reload - in fact, it can even work permanently.

[Sutremaine]

1. Build your stuff on-site, right on the magma sea. Simple, easy, but expensive in the long run.

Expensive? How so?

[Starver]

Expensive? How so?

I believe some people's thoughts is regarding the magma workforce wandering up and down 100 levels for food/etc, although I personally find that manageable.  Other people explicitly provide everything from the dining and drinking experience to accommodation down much nearer the scene so that they needn't (or, with burrows, can't) go anywhere near the surface.