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[treczoks]

As electricity, magic and internal combustion engines won't fit into the spirit of the game - how about something nice and simple, a fitting mechanical gadget: The conveyor belt? Driven by the same forces as pumps, it could move items from one end (which would be like a dump zone) to the other, where they are actually dumped off.

It would require a marking similar to "dump", but dropping the item off the belt should not mark it "forbidden"

Building one field of conveyor belt would need a mechanism (installed by an engineer) and a piece of leather (installed by a leatherworker), and would use a certain amount of power TBD. Could be hand-cranked like a pump, or connected to an axle or gear box.

[Starver]

I don't want to sound like one of those "you should have searched for the idea, it's been suggested already" people, but...

I think somewhere in the conglomeration thread called something like Mechanics Wishlist should contain a few mentions of conveyors from myself, and there are others of mine dotted around, with any number of other people who have postulated this.

I don't think I brought anything new to the subject, either, except perhaps for the suggestion that, along with mechanisms/etc, bins are also a construction item, to be termini to the belts.  Perhaps one to put stuff into (although you might want it to be accessible throughout its entire length) but certainly one at its output or the end that transfers onto a new stretch of beltway, which could fill and thus 'backlog' the rest (tripping the belt to stop, if necessary), to avoid quantum stacking unfairness.

Anyway, find that Wishlist thread, is my advice.

[rephikul]

conveyor belt already exist in the game. Flowing water pushes stuff away. The only issue is the limbo bug. They only need to fix that.

[Silverionmox]

I'd dislike out-of-the-box conveyors. As something you can build out of separate elements, great! So we need walls that shift between two squares horizontally or vertically when powered, pushing stuff on the squares they move on aside. Or trapdoors that open upward and shove stuff on it onto the adjacent square. Or walls that move up and down between two squares when powered. All these elements would also have trap, maze, secret door and puzzle room applications.

(You will find, anyway, that soon your supply lines to the start or from the end of the belt become the bottleneck instead...)

[Sphalerite]

I build a conveyor system in my last 40d fortress using a massive array of retracting bridges arranged just right to fling objects down a corridor.  Slow, inefficient, and expensive to build, but it worked.  Would have worked a lot better if there was a way to push objects in a preferred direction rather than fling them randomly with bridges.

I'd prefer to see the bug where objects get pushed into limbo fixed so we can build working pressurized water delivery tubes instead.

[Safe-Keeper]

I imagine a system where you have a stream, pipe, river or whatever going from point a to point b, and placed stuff in baskets which would then float with the current to where they were needed. A net or grate at the end would ensure the goods stopped where they were supposed to.

[Gamli]

I support this idea, I wonder if it would reduce the load on path-finding.  Similarly allow construction of pipes, not pipe sections, but entire pipes for moving water around the map and it would almost certainly reduce the load fluid dynamics demands.

Conveyor belts also give you one more thing to build and be proud of and then get peeved when a mega-beast stomps on it inciting you to release tons of lava from a "floating tanker in the sky" upon all living things in a furious rage.

Tell me that isn't fun.