Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Build constructed track ramp on natural soil ramp  (Read 1484 times)

isitanos

  • Bay Watcher
  • Seasonal river flood nostalgic
    • View Profile
Build constructed track ramp on natural soil ramp
« on: August 12, 2014, 11:27:14 pm »

It's rather annoying that you cannot do it, since if part of your route has soil and you're trying to make a track in a 1-wide tunnel, you're forced to either:
- carve an access way to the side, which often is not desirable for aesthetic and security reasons
- remove the soil ramp before constructing the rail ramp, thus sealing off the access; likely outcome: a dwarf starves to death or mind-boggling logistic problems to bring in the dwarf who's supposed to construct the ramp.
Logged

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Build constructed track ramp on natural soil ramp
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2014, 01:56:46 am »

That would be nice.

In the meantime, however, you can just dig your tracks from the bottom rather than the top. Which doesn't exactly constitute "mind boggling logistics." Worst case (and rare) scenario, you are digging a track that goes both up and down repeatedly like a sea serpent, all within soil for some reason. Even then, you only need one utility hallway to connect the bottom portions.
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Larix

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Build constructed track ramp on natural soil ramp
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2014, 03:11:30 am »

There are two very simple workarounds, both based on the fact that all it takes to allow building ramps on top of a natural ramp is an open "access" tile (adjacent in a cardinal direction):
- make your ramp two wide. If you designate the two desired ramp tiles with a single, two-wide order, it will give you a "blocked" error, but if you give two separate building orders (of a single ramp each), each ramp will count as access for the other one and the job works.
- don't carve an access _way_, carve an access _tile_. You only need one open tile right next to your building site. There's no need to make this tile accessible from anywhere but the building site itself. You can even wall that tile shut afterwards (the newly-built ramp will count as access tile).

I agree that fixing it so the game stopped blocking the designation would be better - only _designating_ a ramp on top of a natural ramp can get blocked, the actual building job has no problem with the constellation.
Logged