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[Valguris]

I'm for this design:

Code: [Select]

=====
=+++=
=+++=
==.==
==+==
==.==
=====
To drain it all:

At top pump output, instead of:

Code: [Select]

======
.%%+++
======
make

Code: [Select]

======
.%%++X
====+=
====+=
====H=
======
where X is a floodgate and H is hatch cover over an empty space. Under hatch cover is a vertical shaft down to magma sea (or just big enough reservoir). So if you want to drain pumpstack, close floodgate, open hatch and turn on pumps. Full laziness.
You can easily modify already built pumpstacks.

[Edosurist]

Listen to some of these success stories:

With my 80 z-level pump stack...

I went from 7 fps to 83.

bravo, well done. does anybody want to start up the Urist Prizes?

[nordak]

Just a thought, temperatures can be turned off, less calculations euqals less fps... so you only have the drop from flow....  just my theory...

[Lytha]

Just a thought, temperatures can be turned off, less calculations euqals less fps... so you only have the drop from flow....  just my theory...

If you turn off the temperatures, nobody gets burned to death by the magma anymore, and your carefully designed setup for the freezing water + magma trap for the caravans won't work anymore. Also, your painstakingly designed, executed, smoothed and engraved outer wall, which consists of ice, will melt.

[Brambled]

Is there anyone out there that can do a short video of them building this using a texture pack?  I am having a ton of trouble trying to figure this out and there are no videos of this at all some reason.

[Werdna]

Just a thought, temperatures can be turned off, less calculations euqals less fps... so you only have the drop from flow....  just my theory...

If you turn off the temperatures, nobody gets burned to death by the magma anymore, and your carefully designed setup for the freezing water + magma trap for the caravans won't work anymore. Also, your painstakingly designed, executed, smoothed and engraved outer wall, which consists of ice, will melt.

Yes, but shutting temperatures off would be a quick way for someone to confirm the 'lag' hypothesis - that the lag savings between the two stack methods was from temp calc savings.

[The Grackle]

For converting an old pump-stack w/o redesigning the whole thing, you could dig vertical shafts/chimneys alongside the stack and then pump magma into them.  (Separate shafts. Not connected to the reservoirs at all.)   Those shafts would keep whatever tiles you need permanently heated.  Also you could have the bottom of these shafts attached to floodgates so that you could drain the whole thing very quickly.  Obviously, this would be easier for below ground stacks than for constructed towers.

[Thundercraft]

What an awesome discovery by NecroRebel! I'm glad that magma pumps don't have to be such FPS hogs. However, I still have a few questions:

Spoiler: "original head-over-head discussion" (click to show/hide)

Do those extra cross tiles stay filled in this design, though?  Each pump is outputting to the intake tile of the pump above, so it will be sucked up before it has a chance to spread to the cross tiles.  Meanwhile, fluid from the cross tiles will spread to the intake tile, and eventually be depleted.  With the head-over-head design, the magma in the output tile can spread both to the next pump's intake, and to replenish the cross tiles.  Or so it seems to me.

That is a concern. I suspect that if you let the cross tiles fill before you run the stack that they won't empty very quickly, or at all, as the pump's filling of the input tile takes precedence over simple fluid spreading. However, if the input at the bottom of the stack doesn't fill quick enough, you'd start getting 2/7 tiles pulled up, and then spreading would being to be an issue.

That T-shaped design also isn't very extendible; the full 3x3 one you could extend endlessly, but the T-shaped one if you get more than 2 pumps long you start getting squares that aren't always next to magma, like this:

=======
=+++++=
==...==
==+++==
==...==
=======

As only the two tiles at the ends of the T's crossbar would usually be filled and the other 3 would be pump input tiles.

Perhaps head-over-head like this, instead of the full 3x3 reservoir?

=====
=+++=
==+==
==.==
==+==
==.==
=====

I'm not sure how much of an improvement this is, since fluids often don't path diagonally very well. I'm worried that the supply pump's output wouldn't go into the ends of the T any more than they would without the head-over-head design.

Hm. A 2x3 reservoir would solve that concern, though:

=====
=+++=
=+++=
==.==
==+==
==.==
=====

We're getting back similar to the first design, of course, though it is a small improvement in its compactibility. Not as extendible as the original design, though I'm not 100% sure how well the extensibility would work with the original given that you'd have a wall of input squares blocking the far side of the reservoir from refills. Someone should apply !!SCIENCE!! to the T-shaped designs, though. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to do it myself for a while at least, as I lost the fort that I had been testing on to a bunch of Nightwings.

...Also, I've now done a bit of tentative testing on the 2x3 head-over-head reservoir design, and found no significant FPS drop while it was running (it filled the magma forge works quickly, so hard to say how it'd work in the long run). It appears to work just as well as the original 3x3 design, as Trouserman's and my theorizing earlier suggested it would.

I don't understand what is meant by "head-over-head". Does this mean that the "head" of the screw pump - the dark green impassible tile - is always directly above/below the "head" of the pumps on other z-levels (such as in NecroRebel's original 3x3 design in the OP)? Or does it refer to the output tile being directly above/below the input tile of the pumps on other levels?

I can follow the screenshot in the OP to figure out how the 3x3 design is built. But I'd much prefer to build the 2x3 design... if only I could be certain of how one level lines up with other levels.

...The only downside I can see is that this design can't be fully "cleared" by shutting off primary access to the magma.

You could have a lever-linked hatch over the input square of the bottom pump. Open it, and the pumps fill the reservoirs, but close it and the pumps will keep working, eventually emptying each floors' little reservoir to 1/7 all around, which will then dry. It would take significantly longer to clear than a standard stack, but would be possible.

I like that idea much more than building a drain hatch on every z-level and linking them to the same lever. However, I also really want to put a floor grate over the input square of the bottom pump. And we can't do both, can we?

I refuse to build a magma pump stack without incorporating some sort of creature filtration system to ensure a forgotten beast or some such can not sneak through the magma and into the bottom of the pump stack. If that were to happen, it might destroy the bottom pump and the whole thing would collapse!

A locked floor grate over the input is the only guaranteed safety I can think of, since building destroyers can not destroy buildings on a z-level above. Perhaps I should be satisfied with a locked floor grate on the bottom pump's input and a lever-linked hatch on the input of the pump above that level for draining - resulting in being able to drain all but the bottom pump? That, or I might get away with a drain hatch in the output of the first pump's reservoir to drain that too.

I also thought about using fortifications, but... the wiki warns about that:

Beware that fully submerged (i.e. 7/7 depth) fortifications will not block the passage of creatures that swim in water (or magma) - wall grates and vertical bars work, but they are vulnerable to building destroyers.

I had hoped that since magma does not have a natural flow, like water does, then it would not push creatures through the same way. But it sounds like they can get pushed through magma, too.
I did notice something else, however:

Screw pumps can pull water through a grate, floor bars, or a constructed fortification on the Z-level below. {source}

Note that constructed fortifications do not have walkable floors above them, while carved fortifications do. {source}

I was thinking, perhaps, that a constructed fortification could be built on the z-level below the bottom pump, allowing it to draw magma while - hopefully - preventing any creatures from entering the room above. But I haven't tested that yet.
The only other method I can think of is the "river filter" system of multiple diagonal fortifications. (See this post) But I don't know how that would work with magma and magma creatures.

[NecroRebel]

I don't understand what is meant by "head-over-head". Does this mean that the "head" of the screw pump - the dark green impassible tile - is always directly above/below the "head" of the pumps on other z-levels (such as in NecroRebel's original 3x3 design in the OP)? Or does it refer to the output tile being directly above/below the input tile of the pumps on other levels?

Yes, the "head-over-head" design family referred to designs in which the impassible tile of each pump is in the same vertical shaft as all the other impassible tiles on every other pump in the stack.

I can follow the screenshot in the OP to figure out how the 3x3 design is built. But I'd much prefer to build the 2x3 design... if only I could be certain of how one level lines up with other levels.

Essentially, the 2x3 design is the same as the 3x3, except with the outermost line of floors filled in with walls. So, the casing is like this:

===== =====
==.== ==.==
==+== ==+==
==.== ==.==
=+++= =+++=
=+++= =+++=
=+++= =====
=====

The next level above and below are the same, except rotated 180 degrees around the red channel.

Mind you, as mentioned in the first post, the head-over-head designs are generally worse than a head-over-tail design with a 3x1 reservoir on each level instead of the standard pump stack's 1x1.

I like that idea much more than building a drain hatch on every z-level and linking them to the same lever. However, I also really want to put a floor grate over the input square of the bottom pump. And we can't do both, can we?

I refuse to build a magma pump stack without incorporating some sort of creature filtration system to ensure a forgotten beast or some such can not sneak through the magma and into the bottom of the pump stack. If that were to happen, it might destroy the bottom pump and the whole thing would collapse!

A locked floor grate over the input is the only guaranteed safety I can think of, since building destroyers can not destroy buildings on a z-level above. Perhaps I should be satisfied with a locked floor grate on the bottom pump's input and a lever-linked hatch on the input of the pump above that level for draining - resulting in being able to drain all but the bottom pump? That, or I might get away with a drain hatch in the output of the first pump's reservoir to drain that too.

Well, as an alternative to a hatch on the bottom pump's intake tile, you could have a drawbridge below the bottom pump's intake tile. The bridge and mechanisms would have to be magma-safe, but when the bridge is raised, it would seal the stack's intake, thus allowing the stack to clear itself.

I also thought about using fortifications, but... the wiki warns about that:
-snip-
I was thinking, perhaps, that a constructed fortification could be built on the z-level below the bottom pump, allowing it to draw magma while - hopefully - preventing any creatures from entering the room above. But I haven't tested that yet.
The only other method I can think of is the "river filter" system of multiple diagonal fortifications. (See this post) But I don't know how that would work with magma and magma creatures.

Systems that filter out water should work identically with magma. A constructed fortification may or may not prevent creatures and/or magma from getting to your pumps. I've never found much problem with magma creatures, myself, so I'm not entirely sure how much you need to worry about it.

[Thundercraft]

...Mind you, as mentioned in the first post, the head-over-head designs are generally worse than a head-over-tail design with a 3x1 reservoir on each level instead of the standard pump stack's 1x1.

Ah! Somehow, I missed the fact that the OP had been edited recently (May 29'th).  Yeah, that 3x1 head-over-tail design, being almost identical to the standard water pump tower, is easy to understand and would take less space. But has anyone tested whether these designs are expandable to accommodate multiple pumps per level?

[NecroRebel]

Ah! Somehow, I missed the fact that the OP had been edited recently (May 29'th).  Yeah, that 3x1 head-over-tail design, being almost identical to the standard water pump tower, is easy to understand and would take less space. But has anyone tested whether these designs are expandable to accommodate multiple pumps per level?

Most of the designs don't accommodate multiple pumps per level well. If you want more than 2 pumps per level, just adding an extra square at the ends of the reservoirs, as the 3x1 design does, isn't sufficient to keep everything warm, so you'd need at least one extra tile on the far side of the place that is being pumped. The 3x3, or rather 3x(2+however many pumps you have) design, avoids that in theory, but the problem is that if you don't have sufficient input at the bottom your reservoirs will begin to be drained and the far side of each from the pump itself doesn't get refilled well.

Generally, if you want more magma flow, it's probably better to have multiple intakes into the stack, as even if your intakes are in the center of a magma pool the pumps will still move it up faster than the magma can flow in. You actually will get quadruple the magma flow if you just have 4 pumps feeding the second-to-bottom pump rather than just 1. If you need even more than that, well, multiple stacks might be in order.

[Farmerbob]

Just out of curiosity, if the issue is a heat issue, maybe just dig some 1x1 stairwells around an old style pump stack and fill them with magma?  Static magma that never moves and maintains the temperature of the main stack.

Not sure if this would be useful or not though.  It might be good for forts with really huge pump stacks that are of the old style, you could heat their walls and get rid of the heat effects without having to completely disassemble them.

Does the wet effect have the same FPS-affecting symptoms?

[Root Infinity]

I actually have both a 150z-level pump stack in my current "spare" fort (Only source of water is in the third cavern layer  ), and a magma piston that I'm slowly extending upwards (The caverns are set to maximum openness, so it's 48 z-levels down on the top from where it should be  ) - I'm getting about three z-levels up for each z-level I drop it.

I am currently retrofitting my water pump stack to be able to switch back and forth from magma to water, using a modified version of this pump stack (it has bridges so that it can drain out any remnants of water or magma so it doesn't clog)

[Melissia]

A bit new to making magma pumps... on the 1x3 reservoir, how would I stack them for different Z-levels?

Like this:

Z=(first layer)
=====
=+++=
==%==
  % 
  . 

Z=(first layer)+1
  . 
  % 
==%==
=+++=
=====
  . 

... etc., reversing the pumps each z-level, each pump directly over the next?  Or is there another recommende way to do it?

[NecroRebel]

Yes, it's exactly like a normal pump stack except for the expanded reservoirs, so the 2 tiles of each pump is directly above the 2 tiles of the pump below it, and each pump pumps out of the center of the reservoir that the pump below fills. There are other ways to do it, but they're less space-efficient and don't really have any benefits.