Staircase length?

[Zottel]

Hello, I have only played very little and I am still in my first game. Here I have built all the staircases 1x1 blocks to get down to the lower levels and to be honest, I also thought that this is how it should be done. But now I have already looked at a few videos on YT and often saw that staircases have a length of 1x5, for example. Is there any advantage to this or why is it done? Especially since the whole thing in the game doesn't look like a single long staircase but like many small staircases right next to each other.

[koimeiji]

which has more throughput? a 1 tile wide hallway, or a 3 tile wide hallway?

or, to use a real life example, which pipe can transport more water? a pipe 1 centimeter wide, or a pipe 3 centimeters wide?

stairs are the same concept just vertically.

[Fishi]

I haven't played all that much but I'm sure you'd be fine with square staircases, I often do mine in a 3x3 or 2x2 though, since that supports a greater amount of traffic.

[Keshire]

Originally posted by koimeiji:

which has more throughput? a 1 tile wide hallway, or a 3 tile wide hallway?

or, to use a real life example, which pipe can transport more water? a pipe 1 centimeter wide, or a pipe 3 centimeters wide?

stairs are the same concept just vertically.

And in more specific terms, dwarves that overlap have to literally crawl over/under each other to pass through the same tile.

[Zottel]

Ok, thank you. I think that makes sense, even though I have not yet reached the point where I have so many dwarves that they often use the stairs at the same time. But it will probably be helpful later on.

[Johan 2.0]

It is important to factor in other fun stuff like hostiles getting into your fortress. If you have a narrow 1x1 pathway downstairs, you can only engage one dwarf at a time with the combatant which is either positive or detrimental depending on the scenario.

[Zottel]

Is it disadvantageous for the attacker then?

[Johan 2.0]

Thats scenario dependent. It would make it easier to flood the stairway and flush out the invader if it is one tile wide. It would also certainly help to have the stairwell be 2-3 tiles wide so that you can have 9 or so dwarves hacking away at some megabeast climbing up or down.
More than 1 tile wide stairs is optimal for pathing but its not always the only factor to consider.

[Zottel]

So first of all, thank you very much. I don't have any experience with flooding yet, but I think with more dwarfs in the future I will go for wider stairs.

I have a quick other question about this. I discovered that you can not only "dig" stairs, you can also build them in the build menu. What exactly is the difference, apart from the fact that you have to choose a material when you build them?

[Johan 2.0]

You can effectively refund the material from your stairs on deconstruction. You cannot remake an original soil or stone tile.
If its relevant, wood isn't fireproof and the material you make constructions from contributes to the construction value of your fortress.
You can engrave natural rock and unless they changed it for some reason, you cannot engrave constructed stone walls, only dug and smoothed ones.

But in short, for most cases, the difference is understanding that earth tiles and constructions are modified with a different designation.