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[Crosu]

About that beast of burden and feeding station mention.

There needs to be something in the feeding stations. Since beast of burden are most likely guaranteed to be including the ones that drive the caravans at least, that also means that the whole grazer stuff has to be handled differently.

This would mean that grazers dont necessarily need a huge pasture and can be stationed in a small amount of tiles each with a food supply. Seems like this will be the first steps to dwarven industrial livestock farming.
But where does the fodder come from? Suicidal aboveground dwarven scythe-bearing hay gatherers? A new crop for the farms? plump helmets?

[Elone]

Hmm... Despite this being on top of ESV for a long time, and people really really wanting it, and Toady being nice enough to implement it... I dont see that this would change the gameplay a lot. Dwarves are already super fast. You could perhaps double the speed of carts, and perhaps the carts can carry more, but this gain will be all lost during cart filling/emptying phases, and while dwarves more or less have to wait for the cart to be there before they begin work. And "add more carts" is not a real solution... cause you'll only be able to slowly get closer to the "works right", never quite there; it's much like saying "add more dwarves" which is how it's working now, except without a waste of workforce which has to wait for a free cart. You could of course nerf the dwarves to move slower or carry less so as to encourage carts... but then you wont be able to play WITHOUT carts, and some people wont enjoy it being forced on them (much like the immigrants being forced on players past the cap limit, you dont like it, but you arent given a real choice either, only workarounds).

Also I support the earlier question that says, paraphrased, "why bother with carts during mining, if the vein will be dug up and the minetrack abandoned quickly enough?"

Save for the novelty value, minecarts may very well be too awkward to justify their use.

Thoughts?

[Rose]

Shun the nonbeliever!

[Kogut]

Dwarves are already super fast. You could perhaps double the speed of carts, and perhaps the carts can carry more, but this gain will be all lost during cart filling/emptying phases, and while dwarves more or less have to wait for the cart to be there before they begin work.

Probably hauling statues in new version will result in severe speed penalty.

[MrWiggles]

I dont know about carts being equal to none cart labor.

With whats being told us and how it's being presented, it seems like one dwarf is going to be able to do the work of several dwarfs.

If that's true, that already saving us quite a few Dwarf Hours in hauling.

So even if Loading into a Cart and Unloading into a Cart takes roughly the same amount of Time, it's taking less dwarfs to do the same work. So, it's more efficient even if it's not faster.

I dont think that'll need to make dwarf slower or really need to change how many objects a dwarf can carry.(Even though how many objects dwarf can carry is being changed.)

[Cruxador]

Is the new route system based off or related to military patrols, or is it all new?

Also guys, you can ask questions to Toady even about things we're liable to find out soon. It's not like he can't just ignore them if a release drops and invalidates the question.
Are we getting diagonals mine tracks?

Are rails tiles the single lines or something else?

With a series of pressure plates that only go off at a certain weight or higher we could sort things from a single input according to weight. In a computing situation that means we could make a string of "if-then" statements based on type or quantity of input.

Well, the main obstacle that I'm not sure we will get is that you would have to be able to construct pressure plates and rails in the same tile (or else be capable of not building a tile, and letting a cart skip the rails while going over a pressure plate tile without having massive problems).  Toady thus far has only said he was letting you carve rails in floors and ramps. 

Putting constructed objects in the same tile as one another has not really happened before, so it would be a new step forward if you could put pressure plates "under" another object.

Toady said that the rails are carved. I would infer that this is like smoothed/engraved carvings, although that inference might be false. Toady, do rails work like other stone carvings? If not, how do they work?

The notion that rail switches would have to be pulled to manage traffic also raises problems, as if you are going to expect dwarves to be capable of navigating on their own, it would essentially require either that dwarves are capable of understanding how to pull those switches to change traffic flow as they require, or else that it would take the capacity to recognize that the tracks they are on can potentially change by the time that they actually get to a turn.  These are potentially much more advanced AI calculations than we actually have in the game right now...

I don't think things are that complicated by default. The dwarves just know this is the cart they're supposed to put the rocks (or the glass mugs, or the fresh-caught fish, or whatever) in. When it gets where it's going, then they re-path from there. Changes in the track will doubtless confuse dwarves, but I'm sure some people will be able to figure out more complex systems that are more efficient.

Hmm... Despite this being on top of ESV for a long time, and people really really wanting it, and Toady being nice enough to implement it... I dont see that this would change the gameplay a lot. Dwarves are already super fast. You could perhaps double the speed of carts, and perhaps the carts can carry more, but this gain will be all lost during cart filling/emptying phases, and while dwarves more or less have to wait for the cart to be there before they begin work. And "add more carts" is not a real solution... cause you'll only be able to slowly get closer to the "works right", never quite there; it's much like saying "add more dwarves" which is how it's working now, except without a waste of workforce which has to wait for a free cart. You could of course nerf the dwarves to move slower or carry less so as to encourage carts... but then you wont be able to play WITHOUT carts, and some people wont enjoy it being forced on them (much like the immigrants being forced on players past the cap limit, you dont like it, but you arent given a real choice either, only workarounds).

Also I support the earlier question that says, paraphrased, "why bother with carts during mining, if the vein will be dug up and the minetrack abandoned quickly enough?"

Save for the novelty value, minecarts may very well be too awkward to justify their use.

Thoughts?

There are often situations in which a minecart would hugely increase industrial efficiency, especially when a fort is laid out with imperfect efficiency or when a fort is very large for whatever reason. As for mining itself, it would be pointless currently but Toady's said he'll change things, and there have been plenty of mining-related suggestions for him to draw from. I don't think it's going to be as revolutionary as some people are inferring, but I do think it will be a useful tool in many cases.

[Elone]

Shun the nonbeliever!

 I saw this coming. I still hoped for something that uses the post room better. Yours still has a lot of blank space.

I dont know about carts being equal to none cart labor.

With whats being told us and how it's being presented, it seems like one dwarf is going to be able to do the work of several dwarfs.

If that's true, that already saving us quite a few Dwarf Hours in hauling.

So even if Loading into a Cart and Unloading into a Cart takes roughly the same amount of Time, it's taking less dwarfs to do the same work. So, it's more efficient even if it's not faster.

I dont think that'll need to make dwarf slower or really need to change how many objects a dwarf can carry.(Even though how many objects dwarf can carry is being changed.)

But this is more a cause of them having multiple haul jobs merged than carts, so the dwarfpower hauling might be a better option than ever. In other words, this applies to both dwarf haulers and carts, so this does not give an advantage to the carts.

 Let me briefly touch on one further implication. The rocks are currently hardest to haul, because they cannot stack in either the inventories, or the stockpiles. So a cart might have an advantage of carrying multiples whereas dwarf cannot, even with the bin upgrade. However stone hauling is virtually always a dead end job, where you clean up your mined room and the cart tracks become abandoned.
 Now, you COULD use carts for other stuff, like hauling most everything else, but most of those stuff stacks into bins, barrels, bags, for which the dwarves already got a virtual tenfold upgrade. So where the carts would be most useful, a constant repeated use, you're not gonna have much need for them because dwarves already somehow managed those on foot, and with the upgrade, one dwarf can handle even more.

I don't think things are that complicated by default. The dwarves just know this is the cart they're supposed to put the rocks (or the glass mugs, or the fresh-caught fish, or whatever) in. When it gets where it's going, then they re-path from there. Changes in the track will doubtless confuse dwarves, but I'm sure some people will be able to figure out more complex systems that are more efficient.

Actually even less complexity is required here. Make junctions where dwarves can take any turn, but will take the one that they need the most; just like in the traffic designations. I would say that it is safe to assume that dorfs will switch their junctions as they see fit, even invisibly so, just like we assume that the caves are lit with torches even though we cannot see them in game. Same as I would not want to bother with setting torches on walls too much, I would not want to bother opening a track for that dorf who is too mentally challenged to know to switch his own junction when he comes to it. Think of the aforementioned Transport Tycoon! You can pile up a square with tracks that lead in all eight directions, and the train will take one of those as per the need.

However, with each track having those certain 4 directions... the way that I interpret it, each rail tile will have 4 internal directions which can be set on and off. It would be neat if these directions could be individually forbidden or made oneway... For instance, a direction from the west to east could be set to allowed, to forbidden, to oneway from east, and oneway from west. I imagine this being super simple, and would only need to be done at occasional keypoints.

Keep the thoughts coming! ♥

[Jiri Petru]

Elone: The way I understand it, rock hauling needs to be made significantly harder, so that hauling all rocks manually is no longer a viable option - you can do it, but it would just take too much time. You can use minecarts, which requires some effort and, as you say, some players would like a simpler option. For that, you have beasts of burden which seem to be basically the same as minecarts but without having to prepare tracks. And even simpler, you have wheelbarrows which presumably work the same way as hauling works now, and only allow a dwarf to carry more.

I would assume that you would build tracks mostly just to haul ore to smelters, because in this state of the game, rocks can easily be ignored. But Toady might change this, who knows.

In any case, there is till the point minecarts might end up saving valuable dwarf-hours. The dwarves can then do something else – which means even more production and more items than now. I've already asked Toady if he sees this as a problem, so we'll see what he says.

[JimiD]

It will be more efficient when most goods will be moved in bins, bags and barrells.  A single dwarf will empty a workshop into a bin, and empty it into the cart or put the bin in the cart.  Similar at the other end.   If a cart can take a number of bins, then it factors up efficiency much as the current proposal to use containers to move goods does.

Obviously anything not moved by container, such as stone/ore/furniture will need a number of hauling jobs at either end of the cart journey, unless something else changes.  But this should be more efficient, in a similar manner that containers make moving small goods quicker.

I can imagine set ups where tracks run through out a fortress, linking all areas together.  Then mining areas have temporary local stockpiles, to which stones/ore and brought by dwarf.  Then a BoB takes from there to a stockpile next to the tracks, and from there minecarts use the tracks to take the ore down to the smelters.  The the minecarts take the bolts/blocks/furniture back up to the storage levels.

If a minecart can act as a recepticle in a stockpile as a bin or barrel (and even better if it can hold bags / bins), then the loading and unloading is much reduced.  Each time a dwarf empties a craft workshop with a bin, it can put it straight into the cart.

[Elone]

It will be more efficient when most goods will be moved in bins, bags and barrells.  A single dwarf will empty a workshop into a bin, and empty it into the cart or put the bin in the cart.  Similar at the other end.   If a cart can take a number of bins, then it factors up efficiency much as the current proposal to use containers to move goods does.

More like, a dwarf will find two new seeds, put them in a bag, put the bag into a barrel, put the barrel into a cart, and haul the cart away away where it needs to go. Workshops produce constantly, and dwarves haul constantly. There is nothing that would say "Wait until you can fill this cart with more than two seeds before you occupy it and make it unavailable to everyone else". All the 'capacity' and 'efficiency' which seem to be trumpeted over and over again, are going to be moot if dwarves just haul away whatever they have at hand, be it a pair of two seeds and no more, occupying (potentially several) containers for the job, where the carts will be just 'another one of them'. And even for stone, wheelbarrows would be more useful, as they are not restricted to a single path and can go into each dorf's inventory from the looks of it. In which case, I repeat, carts will have no practical advantage over dwarfpower other than some immediate novelty.

And since I foresee someone telling me how dorf carrying capacity itself will be changed in the future, I'll reply that they will still be able to carry pretty much everything aside from mined rock and heavier furniture (and then those in wheelbarrows) unless you weaken them so much that they can barely lift a spoon. Which, this is my best guess, Toady wont do. And you will not route minecart tracks into rooms just to haul furniture to every square where they need to be built.

[blue sam3]

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

I'd argue that the underground changes probably had a larger effect, actually, but yeah, it is excellent.

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Probably just a personal thing then. I tend to build massively overcomplicated mazes of spiral and straight ramps anyway, so I guess it'll just make them actually efficient (or at least, as efficient as you can be when going from one side of the entrance floor to the other requires two entirely separate trips through the first caverns).

[Mr S]

Sometime, very soon, someone on the interwebz will release a Urist the Tank Engine mod.

It will happen.

[Mephansteras]

I like the mention of Beasts of Burden in the latest devlog! Let's put those grazers to work!

The mention of feeding stations is also pretty cool, since I imagine that would also allow for some grazers to be kept inside or chained up without dying.

[zwei]

I like the mention of Beasts of Burden in the latest devlog! Let's put those grazers to work!

The mention of feeding stations is also pretty cool, since I imagine that would also allow for some grazers to be kept inside or chained up without dying.

Yes, feeding stations seem to imply hay harvesting and storage.

[NW_Kohaku]

About that beast of burden and feeding station mention.

There needs to be something in the feeding stations. Since beast of burden are most likely guaranteed to be including the ones that drive the caravans at least, that also means that the whole grazer stuff has to be handled differently.

This would mean that grazers dont necessarily need a huge pasture and can be stationed in a small amount of tiles each with a food supply. Seems like this will be the first steps to dwarven industrial livestock farming.
But where does the fodder come from? Suicidal aboveground dwarven scythe-bearing hay gatherers? A new crop for the farms? plump helmets?

Toady had said he was intending to do something like this when he put grazers in.  When people complained about the elephants all dying off, he said that maybe it would be better when there was animal feed.

Likewise, when he added presses and the rock nut oil, he said the pressed rock nut gunk would become animal fodder, so that's at least one source of feed.  Presumably, you could just feed them longland grass, or maybe when you mill that grass, the stalk becomes fodder material, as well.