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[Fleeting Frames]

Five years ago, I put some time in figuring out an unpowered skipping mister (on wiki now).

Decided to look if one could do better with power. Indeed:

Tracks:

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Machinery:

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Rollers are high speed, north rolling southward and south rolling northward respectively.

Operation:

Place a heavy cart on roller tile. I used birchen cart loaded with water.

Pull the lever to link up power.

Watch the mist appear:

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The tiles spend 4-2-3-3- ticks, giving 12 ticks per mist generation tiles and 24 tick round trip time - nearly threefold improvement. 5 or 6 magma all work as well, though higher is better for mist generation of course.

Note that the system is sensitive to start coordinates: Carts starting at wrong position will instead fall in or not generate mist, depending on coords.

Also note that using EW rollers + corner tiles will not work: The cart takes the turn before it gets sent back, and if there's a wall there the coords will get misplaced and it still wont generate mist.

[Alastar]

It's always nice to see new compact designs that could be fit anywhere!
Amusingly, I built something extremely similar for the first time yesterday, with a slightly longer magma channel.
I'm also fond of an extremely basic unpowered version, with impulse ramps in a channel and a floodgate for shut-off:

W==X==W

IIRC, period is 28 ticks with 6/7 magma.
One question, does yours actually makes dwarves happy when used with water? My experience is that mist from skipping carts doesn't create any associated thoughts when there is no falling water involved. I solved the problem by putting a dumping track stop in the middle instead of the floodgate, and carving fortifications into the connecting wall below.

[Fleeting Frames]

Nice to hear others also do these designs. And yup, would need the magma tile 1 tile further out if using highest speed roller....Interestingly, that system also has 24 roundtrip time. Hard to say which generates more mist, but it does have the advantage that for this EW rollers + corner tiles DO work, allowing player to use 10 long rollers instead of 1 long ones, saving labor and material cost.

(Unfortunately, seems attempting to lengthen further to make center wagon-passable via having the roller on track-ramp shotguns out the water - besides, wouldn't be able to turn off power on that one.)


If I read your diagram right, Ws are walls there, correct? In which case the magma is produced not by skipping but by cart falling in. Would work fine with iron carts but unviable for wood cart as in the OP (maybe useful for those volcano embarks with 1st summer siege).

If you do have iron carts, tbh the simple minimal spiral to raise cart out of channel and drop back in might maybe produce more mist? Longer time between mist spawns - however, longer falls seem to have better odds to make large mist plumes. With testing seems 1z fall gets about 0 or 1 tile spread 50-50 in six attempts, while 15z fall is 50% 0 spread 50% 3-4 tile spread.


Yeah, I also noticed mere skipping doesn't produce happy thoughts, which is why I abandoned the idea for a long time, using track stops instead - though I only used 2 submerged ramps to make 4x1 line or circle.


Speaking of which, skips/magma-efficiency wise the OP design is only 25-37,5% more efficient than as the old impulse-powered skipper. The real savings are in space, but..

Hm. Seems I once got ▲▲_++_▲▲ to work and generate skipping mist with both 5-7 water and 5-6 magma (didn't test 7) but can't replicate it, using same weight cart. Maybe got lucky with subtile coords, but that'd make priming/stopping an issue anyway.

[Alastar]

Yes, the Ws were walls. I guess I prefer this over a spiral elevator because of aesthetics and because it fits into how I build my forts - only 2 z-levels, slim, fits neatly alongside corridors. It's also quite tidy, I like things either neat of full-blown steampunk.
It causes sufficient magma mist to be consistently deadly 2 tiles away, hermetically sealed behind fortifications. I guess I will try the spiral staircase for efficiency.
Incidentally, the water version with a track stop works better below the floor - open to the sides, it requires excessive drainage arrangements to avoid leakage.