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[saintclair]

I have a successful fort with over 220 citizens. As an unrelated aside, they are all in squads with a rotating training schedule, and I have them all around legendary speardwarves, so that's quite re-assuring. Anyway, I've run out of lignite, and so I dug down to the magma and found that. I've set up some magma smelters, but the problem is that my metropolis is surface-adjacent, and a lot of the stockpiles are up there. So I want to build a sort of "deep colony" of miners and smelters that live in a smaller housing and industry block. Since my metro is at around 170 z-level, and the magma smelters at around -20, it's a little far for people to be walking and hauling things.

So... what's the best strategy for establishing a minecart conveyance to get supplies down there, and to get the products back up? Will a simple push-cart system work, should I set up two routes, one coming and one going? I know that pushed carts will magically pass through each-other, but that still means the dwarves have to push a cart up nearly 200 z-levels and around the curves. I have a creek, so in theory powered carts could happen.

How can I force the dwarves to live down there? Is it enough to just build bedrooms and assign them to them? I suppose I'll also need an eating space or they'll wander back up, and maybe a meeting area, too. How can I prevent surface dwarves from taking a 200 z-level detour downstairs?

Ideas or experience that someone can offer? I usually just pack up and move everything downstairs, but I want to try a two-city approach this time.

[Telgin]

How can I force the dwarves to live down there? Is it enough to just build bedrooms and assign them to them? I suppose I'll also need an eating space or they'll wander back up, and maybe a meeting area, too. How can I prevent surface dwarves from taking a 200 z-level detour downstairs?

I don't know anything about minecarts since I've never used them, but for this you can at least consider using burrows to keep part of your population in the secondary, lower fort.  You will need to provide all of the amenities in your second area if you do this, since if you assign a dwarf to a burrow they won't leave to get food, sleep or any other job.

This won't keep other dwarves out of the area though, and some will probably randomly decide to take bizarre paths down there.  This should be rare as long as they have everything they need closer to the surface.  The only solution to this would be to physically separate the areas in some fashion, which is probably overkill.  If they're physically separated such that dwarves can't path between them, it'll be much more difficult to figure out how to bring materials back out, although you can drop materials down to them.

In all honesty, just providing sleeping and eating areas down there will probably be good enough to ensure that the dwarves are usually down there.  They'll still wander off to temples to pray though, and probably some other activities I'm forgetting.

[Fleeting Frames]

I usually just move magma upstairs (tip: ramps set up  ==╞ across 2z with leftmost (not necessarily EW) ramp accelerating into trench will have even a copper cart enter trench, fill up with magma, and exit without melting with both dwarven push and being pushed onto the leftmost ramp and stopping), but going by PatrikLundell's problems with attempting isolated far-away visitors-only tavern(the dwarves went there), you might need physical isolation (especially since you don't want anybody ever walking the trip, anyway).

As such, I haven't really tried seriously isolated fortress pairs, although I've set up multi-direction cart quarry hauling as well as bidirectional cart-exclusive rampway for magma carts across 100z before.

For these, I'm fond of using alternating T (with hole to alternatively one or other side) and straight ramps, ensuring a pushed cart will be able to travel both down and up with 1 step per tile.

You could also drop things directly down a shaft with a quantum stockpile set to dump into one and system for avoiding hitting dwarves under (such as water flushing out from constructed fortification), but you'd still need a way to get things up, which means you need at least 2x2 rampway (alternating 1-1-2 ramps per z-level being easiest to designate with a macro) to move goods up. Doing things that way also allows you to do things like request additional food when out.

WanderingKid's minecart ore hauler (linked on wiki) demonstrates the basic principle.


PS:Pushed carts don't pass through each other but collide - it is possible you meant guided carts?

[andrei901]

I'm working through a similar problem, except I've been trying to split my fort into five separate districts. One at the surface, one at each cave, and one at magma. Each will be specialized to a specific industry, steadily increasing in value as you go deeper. So far, this is farming, then cloth/hospitality, then stone, then a bit of a catch all I'm still trying to distinguish built around the grand library, and of course metalworking. My ultimate idea is to have a society stratified into six levels: The most important people: the nobles, the too maimed to fight but not maimed enough to die war heroes, and the metal workers get burrowed at the bottom, the next most important people are cave 3 level, etc. Ultimately, I think roughly 30-50% of my population will end up being in the sixth class, the "untouchables", who for the purposes of fort lore will be the most hated and actively disrespected class, which consists of haulers. At least until I figure out minecart logistics. My factorio tendency to make every rail connected to everywhere else for future convenience may prove to be a hindrance, here.

Also for the purposes of fort lore, I'm not separating the forts completely, but instead centralizing and focusing production, and relying on the haulers for distribution. For example, *all* food is cooked on the farming floor, and then carried down. No self respecting metalworker would ever demean themselves by working something as menial and pedestrian as a stove, and No self respecting metalworker would allow someone willing to work with such shameful materials to live anywhere near them. The dichotomy being that in theory, every part of the fort should be in a constant power struggle in an effort to gain dominance (except the haulers, who just want somewhere they can sleep and eat without being subject to the lawlessness of the central staircase, which I think I will open to all the caves and the surface with no active defenses past the potential drop), while simultaneously completely relying on every other section of the fortress for it's very sustenance.

Also, all five main levels should have their own military squad, as well as a larger flex squad that moves everywhere. Ideally, haulers and citizens (one of the levels) should never be allowed to see each other, and haulers should not be allowed past the gates to any of the five citadels. Lore wise, I figure the citizens look at the haulers as subhuman beasts that can do basic tasks for food but should never be interacted with, so they leave out scraps in return for things being carried where they need to go.

So far I have the five citadels built, each with their own tavern, temple, and sleeping quarters, (Grand Library is on the 4th floor, and I don't really know how to split up books between libraries, and I have a *large* collection already anyway...) as well as a "main hall" of sorts. I also have maybe half my magma level populated. I don't think I split my fort fast enough, because right now everyone is friends and gets depressed as soon as they get burrowed...

[saintclair]

I usually just move magma upstairs...

Yeah, I thought about doing that, but I have violent fear reactions to pumping liquids over any distance, much less something as dangerous as magma. This is also something I haven't tried before, I wanted to give it a go.

PS:Pushed carts don't pass through each other but collide - it is possible you meant guided carts?

I did mean guided carts, yep.

Well, anyway, for an update, I've constructed the outpost and I have a cart system to move stuff up and down. They move food from the upper levels down to the lower level, and dwarves that are nearby will haul it to the diner. I'm having a few problems:

• There are only about 10 dwarves assigned to the burrow but there are regularly lots of other dwarves down there. Is this becuase the 210 other dwarves are not in a burrow? Do I have to put all the other dwarves into a burrow that's defined as everywhere else on the map but the outpost burrow to keep them out?
  
• It's very tedious to define all the stockpiles and workshops in such a way that dwarves don't transfer stuff from other stockpiles or use stuff much further away. It took me a while to knit it all down, and I'm still not sure it's done.
  
• I'm having a hard time getting dwarves to load the minecarts back up after they arrive at the lower level. Do minecarts work if the desired items are different at each end?
• Do dwarves obey burrow assignment when they're on military duty? I have one large, central complex where my entire military of 80+ trains, so I don't want to re-build that unless I have to.

[Fleeting Frames]

You don't need to pump anything to move magma upstairs.

Of course, if you now say you also have violent fear reaction to non-guided minecarts, that's to be expected.

Though you've already started so moot point. And yeah, the other dwarves problem is why the suggestion for walling off.

Desired items are per stop, so can change, which is useful with give-to links if you don't want to unload whole minecart or something. I haven't experimented with this, though.

For burrows on duty, iirc they do not, but you could have just placed one of your military into a temporary burrow outside the barracks and seeing if they train.