I built a non-QS system for storing wood when I only had trees in one corner of my embark and wanted to limit dwarven wood-gathering to short bursts of activity.
- A side gate was built on the surface (a roofed 3x3 tower with a raised bridge as a door, and stairs down).
- The staircase went down a couple of zs (to avoid the "cut down trees and leave holes in the roof" issue), and opened into 3 z's of 20x20 rooms. Each room had a wood stockpile set to "take from links only". Each of these stockpiles was set to give to the fort's wood stockpile and that stockpile was set to "take from links only".
- There was a tunnel leading back to the main fort for the hauling to the main fort.
Once that was built,
- the main fort's gate was closed (sealing my dwarves in)
- the side gate was opened (giving them only one way to the surface)
- the wood stockpiles were set to take from anywhere
- many trees were designated for cutting.
As trees fell, large numbers of dwarfs headed up through the side gate to collect the wood and bring it down to the wood stockpiles. When it was time to stop the collection, the stockpiles were set back to "take from links only", the side gate was closed, and main gate reopened.
Thing is, if you were to do it one at a time, and floor the 20x20s with wood FIRST, THEN put the wood stockpiles in place, you would effectively double your wood supply. Running low on something, and the stockpiles are emptying? Remove stockpile, remove flooring.
re-add stockpiles/flooring as supplies become available.
Let's see......20x20s store 400 wood apiece, and you have 3 of them, so 1,200 total. if I used the stockpile+minecarts in the same area, it would be.....
~1,500 storage in a single 20x20 square. 400 for the floor, 361 for the stockpile, 40 for the stops, and 800 in the array of minecarts (my math may be slightly with a margin of error of 1-4 here). Say, 1,160 easily accesible.
On one floor. If all three of your 20x20 levels were used, it would be ~4500 logs stored, with around 3400 easily accessible, roughly.
A more space-efficient but still non-QSP method could be the use of stationary minecarts. One log for a constructed floor, one log for a constructed track stop, and a minecart full of logs parked on top of that. A largish feeder stockpile to load the minecarts from would even semi-automate loading. Admittedly, you'd have to set up one route/stop/minecart per tile, and you'd actually be doing all of the setup for a minecart-based QSP except for the dumping, but eh.
Space-efficient, maybe. Hassle-efficient no.
Plus, this way, you have a bit of a visual cue as to when you're running low.
EDIT: Wait, you can put logs for track stops? Never mind, that IS far more efficient. /EDIT
EDIT2: Sorry, my doesn't-use-minecarts-yetness was showing. so, for optimal storage, you'd want a 32x32 [Material] floor. In it you would put a 31x31 [Material] stockpile, with a [Material] minecart stop on every tile on the perimeter of the stockpile, with a minecart of every stop designated to store [Material].
The initial flooring will hold 1,024 [Material]. The stockpile and the Minecart stops each equal one of each additional [Material] (assuming what you're toring is something like wood that does not fit into bins), for another 1,024 [Material]. Now, if my math is right, there should be 128 minecart track stops.
or (1024*1024)+(128*
X), where X=the carrying capacity of a minecart for a given material.
If we're using my original hypothesis of using wood, that would equal another 1,280 wood, for a grand total of 3,328 wood stored in a single 32x32 square.
32x32 MegaPile Capacities (Note: "Stockpile" numbers include the material used to build the Stop, except in the case of Bars):
Stone: 2,688. Math: 1024 Flooring+1024 Stockpile+640 Minecart (5 Stones/Minecart)
Wood: 3,328 logs. Math: 1024 Flooring+1024 Stockpile+1,280 Minecart (10 logs/Minecart)
Bars: 16,581. Math: 1024 Flooring+4805 (assuming 5 bars/Bin in a 31x31 stockpile)+128 Minecart Stops+10624 Minecart (83 bars/Minecart)
This would not work for a whole lot else, considering that you need something you can build a Floor and Minecart stops with.
Flooring is a lot better than roads for storage since it uses one block per tile, as opposed to roads, which are using materials more efficiently (you CAN make single tile roads, but that makes no sense in any way I can think of, except possibly architect training).
plus paved roads need an architect.
yeah, I started with paved roads because I was obsessed with getting rid of the dead saplings in my soil layers.
But with flooring, everyone from your great General Cacame to Dumplin the Littlest Cheesemaker fresh off her 12-year birthday can rush in and help. With roads you have to either wait or turn EVERYONE into an architect.
that said I do want to eventually pave the main pathways in platinum, with gold edges.
Floors... I never, ever thought about that. That's a brilliant way to store stone and wood and blocks. A bit micro and also a bit inefficient, but great for making small fortresses.
I disagree about the inefficient part. double the storage in the same space.
unless you mean inefficient about having to pry it up later.
Now that this discussion is out of the way, let's move on to the far more important topic at hand: Weaponizing this.
>.>
(only half joking)
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Topic: Introducing the Megapile: A Compact, non-Quantum 2.5-3x Storage Option (Read 1788 times)