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[Patroclus]

(Note that it's Pain-Less, not painless, since building this is still somewhat of a pain, but at least it's a LOT less pain than doing it without a good plan.)

I decided to make my first pump stack a few fortresses ago -- which turned out to be 130 Z levels, in two stages.  Having never built a pump stack before, I read the wiki carefully, then set up magma glass furnaces in the depths to crank out green glass corkscrews, tubes and blocks, and started trying to dig the space out to put the pumps for the lowest stage.

My first attempted stack was abandoned, because I didn't pick a large enough column to go up, and I ran into open cavern space.
 
Then the second attempt required tons of micromanagement, since the moronsdwarves would regularly strand themselves on the wrong side of the channeled square that the power is routed through, and I had to construct floors to rescue them.

Then, when it was finally dug out, I realized I had inadvertently flipped left and right at one point, so there were two incompatible layers and I had to rebuild about 15 layers with constructed walls.

Then, when I designated a bunch of pumps to be built, the dwarves would start in the middle of the stack, which meant the pumps were unsupported, and immediately deconstructed as soon as they were built.  I had to designate pumps at the top and bottom, and suspend construction for any except the outermost two, then resume construction of each pump individually once the supports were in place.

As the parts that needed to be worked on were over a hundred Z-levels down, any instructions took ages to get carried out.  The net result: after about four hours of actual play time, I had just *four* pumps built out of the 60 in the first stage.

I knew there had to be a better way.  So for the second stage, I set out to build more efficiently with good planning:

1) I wanted to use the best 1x3 head-over-tail pump stack design from the wiki, and have it be completely leak-free.

2) I wanted a design where I would know exactly how big a column of stone I needed before I did anything.

3) I wanted a design where I could designate the hard things using macros, so there was no chance of me making a typo and screwing things up.

4) I wanted a design with a minimum of micromanagement: I wanted to designate everything once, then (in theory) everything should be completed with no further input from me.  This meant that:
a) there had to be no way for diggers to trap themselves at any point
b) the entire set of pumps had to be buildable in any order
c) I was willing to be efficient with keystrokes at the cost of the dwarves being inefficient (e.g. digging walls out that were later reconstructed)

Once I had this plan, I was able to finish the entire stack (the second stage of 70 levels, and retrofitting the first stage to use this method) in under about 3 hours of play time, most of which was spent just waiting for the dwarves to finish building it.  YMMV, of course.

First: I needed a digging pattern, so I could know how big the column had to be.  Here is the best design I could come up with; it requires a column of rock 6 spaces wide and 7 spaces tall, with the outermost walls being for containment only.  (The legend uses the keys you have to press in the designation menu, except for the undug stone).  The D space is dug out, a Gear Assembly is built there, then the gear is disassembled once the pump is supported, and a Constructed Wall is built.  Thanks to the ramps, there are no spaces that your dwarves cannot reach, even after everything is built, so nobody should ever get trapped.  The designation does have one redundancy, since the upward ramp and one downward channel are really one and the same, so it does give occasional "Urist McMiner cancels dig: invalid square" messages that you can ignore.

Code: [Select]

_ = undug stone
d/D = mined out stone
h = channeled stone
r = upward ramp
i = up/down stairs

Odd Floors (pumps from right to left):

______
_d____
_rhdh_
_dDd__
___d__
__ii__
______

Even Floors (pumps from left to right):

______
____d_
_hdhr_
__dDd_
__d___
__ii__
______

Step 0: Preparation

Each floor of your stack will need

1 mechanism (reclaimed after use, does not need to be magma-safe)
1 magma-safe block
1 magma-safe giant corkscrew
1 magma-safe tube/pipe section
1 magma-safe door

The mechanisms are used first, so you can set your workshops to start building while the miners dig. To make construction go a little faster, you can designate stockpiles for all the pieces near the stack.

Choose a way to mark a 6x7 area (such as a farm plot) and position the zone where you want the stack to go.  Go up and down the Z levels to make sure you have enough room to put the stack there. Any space on the outer edge can go on exposed walls as long as you don't have open space intersecting the 6x7 area (although the lower right and left corner tiles are not used, so those could be clipped off if necessary.)

You will also need a power supply, at least 10 per floor of the stack. Having easy lever-controlled way to stop the pump stack is a good idea.  Route the power from above the top pump. 

The most limiting factor in real time is how fast your dwarves can labor.  Having a large hauling squad, all of whom have Mechanics, Architecture, and Masonry turned on, will make things go much faster.  If you're using glass for the magma-safe stuff, building many glass forges (regular ones to just collect sand on repeat, and magma ones to actually make the components, and a furniture stockpile set to accept only sand bags near the magma forges) can help.

Step 1: Designation and Digging

Once you have your site, get into the Designation menu, and position the X on the left of the two stair spaces, at the bottom of where you want to build the stack. 

Then, while still in the designation menu, press ctrl-r to start recording a macro, and designate the squares in the pattern, ending with the cursor two levels above the left-stair you started on. If done correctly, your two levels should look like this:

Lower:
Upper:

If you really can't figure this out:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Type the following keystrokes in order.
( < > ^ v means the left-right-up-down directional arrows)

ctrl-r (to start recording)
i
enter
>
enter
^
d
enter
enter
^
enter
<
<
enter
^
r
enter
enter
^
d
enter
enter
v
>
h
enter
enter
>
d
enter
enter
>
h
enter
enter
shift-, (go up one level)
^
d
enter
v
v
enter
enter
<
<
enter
enter
^
enter
enter
<
h
enter
enter
>
>
enter
enter
>
r
enter
enter
v
v
<
<
d
enter
enter
v
i
enter
>
enter
shift-, (go up one level)
<
ctrl-r (to stop recording)

You have just designated the first two levels of the stack, ending with the cursor positioned on the left stairs of a new level.  You can now press ctrl-P to run the macro and designate the next two levels.  Repeat until you have
designated your whole stack.

(If you want to save the macro, press ctrl-s and type in a name for it before you record another macro)

You will also want to modify the bottom and top levels.  The bottom level does not need a downward channel in the center, since there's no pump below that needs power, and you want to have a solid floor to build the pump on. Because of this you can also avoid digging the space out for the gear on this level. Finally, the top level will not have an upward ramp, so you need to dig out that one square, and you should include a channel above the top pump, to allow you to route power in to the top of the pump stack.

Once you have designated the digging, unpause the game and wait for the miners to finish before step 2.

(In testing, it was still possible to get "Urist McMiner Cancels Dig: Cannot Reach Site" messages even though it shouldn't happen.  I think this occurs if you have a dwarf trying to dig while standing on a square that gets channeled by another miner. This can rarely result in a miner being trapped, but you just have to redesignate the dig/ramp/channel square that got cancelled, and they will immediately dig themself out.)

Step 2: Scaffolding

Once the digging is complete, you are going to build a Gear Assembly on every floor, to support the pumps until the stack is complete.  You should have at least one built mechanism for every floor by now. 

Go to the next-to-bottom level of the stack, go into the Build Mechanisms menu (b-M) and choose Gear Assembly (g).  Position it on the right spot (the D in the map above) and press return. Press return again to accept a mechanism from the list.  Now, press g to build another gear, press shift-, to go up one level, press < to position the gear in the new place, and press return twice again to build another mechanism, and repeat for every level in the stack.  When done, unpause the game and wait for the gears to build.

The loose stones can cause later construction to fail (Item Blocking Site).  You can either fix the suspensions manually as they occur, or go through at this point and designate all the stone in the stack to be dumped at this point, and your haulers will do it while they install the gears. (I dump them because I don't like the little melted stones all over the place.)

Step 3: Pumps

The pumps are positioned in the center 2 squares, pumping from the channel side and towards the ramp side.  If you dug the channels correctly, the only way they can be installed is in the correct orientation. 

If you have non-magma safe blocks, corkscrews and pipes, you should forbid them in the Stocks menu so only your magma safe ones are offered in the list.

Thanks to the constructed Gear Assemblies, every pump can be built and supported without any other pumps on adjacent floors.  This allows you to designate the entire stack in one go, and then ignore it until it's all done.

Step 4: Deconstructing gears, building walls and doors

Once the pumps are built, go through and deconstruct all of the gears. You don't have to wait for the entire stack to be finished, as long as a pump has a connection to another, supported pump.  Then, construct walls on the squares the gears were in, and install magma-safe doors adjacent to them.  This design shouldn't leak; the doors are there more to allow you to lock pets/dwarves out of the stack by forbidding the doors, but having a safety net is a good idea.

Once it's all built, open magma access to the bottom of the stack, flip on the power switch, and enjoy your vertically-mobile liquid fun.

[Quantumtroll]

This is very good.  Thank you!  I will use this when I need an absurdly large pump stack.

I just need a faster computer so I can run a fortress with one :/

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

Don't you still have the same problem with gear assemblies that you were trying to avoid with the pumps?  The dwarves will randomly build gear assemblies in the middle of your stack which will instantly deconstruct because they're unsupported.

[UberNube]

No, the gear assemblies are over solid ground adjacent to the pump so they provide support without needing it themselves.

Also, great work btw, this is a nice design.

[Patroclus]

Don't you still have the same problem with gear assemblies that you were trying to avoid with the pumps?  The dwarves will randomly build gear assemblies in the middle of your stack which will instantly deconstruct because they're unsupported.

The gear assemblies are built on the floor (the D square in the diagram), not over the channel, so they will always be supported and not disassemble.

[darthbob88]

I use a very similar structure, which only requires a 3x4 area

Code: [Select]

W = Wall,
X = stairs,
. = floor,
_ = channeled area.
Right-to-left pumping, level N
WWWWWW
W.X.WW
W.W.WW
W._._W
WWWWWW

Left-to-right pumping, level N+-1
WWWWWW
WWX..W
WW.W.W
W_._.W
WWWWWW
Yours has the advantage of requiring half as many seals, and the gear assemblies, which I'm stealing, allow for designation of the whole stack at once. Mine's smaller, and, IMHO, easier to designate.

[andyman564]

brilliant! though i usually employ a double pump stack, and strangely enough, have never had the dwarves construct an unsupported pump. i guess it has to do with the order you designate them to be built.

[darthbob88]

brilliant! though i usually employ a double pump stack, and strangely enough, have never had the dwarves construct an unsupported pump. i guess it has to do with the order you designate them to be built.

Well, yes; provided an adjacent pump/gear assembly is supported, the next pump connected to it is supported. In most of my pump stacks, the only thing that's actually supported is the pump in my DWRs; everything else draws their stability from it.

Code: [Select]

  *===*
DWR|||pump
||||||pumpThe gear assemblies are hanging off the DWR and the axle, the pumps are hanging off of the one gear assembly, and yet everything is "supported" enough to work. You may have to trust me on this, it works. The only problem you might run into is if one pump breaks half-way through building it, then everything which relied on that pump for support would break down.

Having answered that question, double pump stack? Would that be a stack with the pumps doubled up, two on each layer? Sounds terribly powerful, if terribly inefficient.

[Dorf3000]

The most efficient-to-designate double pump layout looks like this:

Code: [Select]

even   odd
_...   ..._
_._.   ._._
 .       .
 X      X

In this case, there's no need to build support gears because one of the pumps is always on solid ground (build these ones first), there's no need to dig out and replace any walls because the dug out area doesn't trap any miners, and you get roughly twice as much water or magma as the single pump design.  The only downside is you need to build twice as many parts and twice as many pumps