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[GPeter]

Hello there! So, here's the situation:

I've got a fort running right now, and I'm moving the fort that usually was around layer 15 - 20 to the magma sea around the layer 145 - 150. I've already dug everything and moved all the supplies, but, when thinking on how to bring the Trade Depot AND the Wagons down here, I thougt on diggind a tunnel for the wagons, so here's what I did:


I dug the first level, 3 channel designations and got me 3 ramps:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the Depot Access screen:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the Z-Level right below the surface:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And this is the Depot Access screen:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And this is the Z-Level right below that one:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And the Depot Access screen:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before anything, I'm using DFHack's multilevel view, so It looks like there's up ramps both sides, but those are acctually the up ramps from the level below, I already checked and there are downward slopes where they should be.
And it goes like this, inacessible for the rest of the tunnel, which by the way, is dug completely the same (I used a macro to dig it).
So what am I doing wrong? Why won't the wagons go through my tunnel? Does boulders on ramps stop the movement of wagons? HELP!

[Fleeting Frames]

*squints eyes* Is it just me, but do your ramps snake back and forth left and right?

Wagons don't need for ramps to have supporting walls, but I guess they do need space to do a 180° turn.

[Ulfarr]

If I understand this correctly, you built your ramps going this way:

 U>>>D
 D<<<U
 U>>>D

(The arrows repressent how a unit is supposed to move in each level, U is upward ramp and D is downward ramp)

From my experience the above way doesn't work.

Do this instead, it definately works with caravans but it needs a bit more space because you are basicaly making a spiral.

U>>>D
      WU>>>D
                WU>>>D  (W is a solid wall)

[mikekchar]

Yes, exactly.  The key is that there are *no down ramps in the game*.  Once you understand that, it makes a lot more sense.  The graphic showing the down arrow is massively misleading and in my own slightly modified tileset I replaced it with a very small up ramp.

What am I talking about?  A ramp is always an up ramp.  Where you see an up arrow on the screen it is a ramp.  You can only move in one direction on a ramp: east to west, west to east, north to south or south to north.  If there is an empty space to the west of the ramp, there needs to be a wall to the east of the ramp.  Above that point to the east there needs to be an empty space.  Let's see if I can draw it in ASCII:

Code: [Select]

    ___
___/

Same thing if you are going east to west, north to south or south to north (I won't bore you with the pictures).  Let's put the picture of the ramps there.  I will use ^ for "up ramp" and "v" for down ramp.

Code: [Select]

   v___
___^

Hopefully you can see that where there is an up arrow (^), there is *actually* a ramp there.  If you go from west to east you will go up the ramp.  So it's really an up ramp.

But where there is an down arrow (v) there isn't actually anything there.  It's just empty space with a ramp below it.  When you move from east to west, you walk into open space and then you *fall* onto the ramp below.  In adventure mode, if you fall in this way to a ramp below that's in water, you can actually slip and drown, so you should always "walk carefully" onto "down ramp" (alt-movement key), because you are actually falling onto the ramp below.

Let's make a ramp that doesn't continue in the same direction:

Code: [Select]

   ___
   \___

As you walk from east to west on the top corridor, there is no space for you to fall down on.  When you walk fro the east to the west on the bottom corridor, there is a ramp, put it hits the ceiling and you can't go up.

I hope that makes it easier to understand.

[GPeter]

Thanks everyone!

Do this instead, it definately works with caravans but it needs a bit more space because you are basicaly making a spiral.

U>>>D
      WU>>>D
                WU>>>D  (W is a solid wall)

I will try to dig it like this! Thank you!

[Fleeting Frames]

@mikekchar: Mostly correct. There are actual down ramps in game, and they can exist separately from upramps - such as with the bug where one caveins a natural ramp and have it remain behind. In addition, they function: tested that miner can then go down these ramps to mine a tile, but can't go back up.

(Don't know it's effect on fps and stability, though it can't be good given pathing map assumes all connections are two-way.)

[PatrikLundell]

And another addition to mikechar's post: Ramps are actually weirder than this. In real life a ramp is a slope, but in DF it's a function that allows you to go up in any direction where there's a wall to the side and a floor above that wall, so if you channel a single tile hole on level ground, you get a ramp one level down, and you can go up in any of the 4 cardinal directions. If you build a wall on the surface at one of the exit "floor" directions, that blocks the ability to use the ramp in that direction, and if you channel away another tile to the side, that ramp up path becomes a side moving path (which in its turn now has ramp exits in 3 directions and a side exit back in the fourth), but if you then build a wall to replace the newly dug tile, you automatically gain a ramp up access in that direction again. A ramp magically adjusts to the surroundings without any explicit action by the player (and usually disappears when there are no side walls left, but sometimes those "ramps" remain, and constructed ramps remain until removed).

[mikekchar]

Ha ha!  Always good to be corrected by more experienced players!  It's interesting how one internalises one's own interpretation of something and it becomes a kind of canon.

[GPeter]

BTW, It worked, so thank you every1! My only problem is that a 75 goblin siege decided to go into the tunnels while I haven't built the defenses there yet :/ Lost 18 Military dwarves and a couple haulers, but the fort survived tough...