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[zwei]

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.

Well, I think it is long overdue to have dwarves (humans, elves) with scythes roaming surface, cutting down grass and letting it dry for few weeks.

Main motivation being, of course, Adamandine scythe wielding milita wearing straw hats.

And straw crafts. And strawmen which we can set on fire.

[Caldfir]

Man, I really need to stop reading the devlog.  I've generated probably the most badass world I've ever seen, but now I don't want to start srsfort for fear of missing out on new potential awesomeness. 

Why does Toady have to keep adding stuff I want so bad?

[Mel_Vixen]

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.

Longland and Cave-wheat hey would indeed be quite nice. Maye even pressing them to blocks for easy storage ashing or live fertilizer.  Straw and hay can also turned into crafts or be used as building material (say for roofs). Hehe scarecrows XD. Hm thanks to rotting (if it would produce like in Rl) it might be thought a mayor fire hazard.

[PTTG??]

Hey, it's some hay.

[dreiche2]

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.

I would assume there to be some benefits to carts over wheelbarrows the way Toady implements it, we just don't know. Apart from that, yes, maybe you are right, maybe any true efficiency increase comes from the implementation of hauling things in bins, whereas carts are just the bins stones use and are more for novelty. It is difficult to say at this point though without more information, so why not pose this as a question to Toady rather than being so pessimistic about it? Although to be honest it might be more sensible to simply wait for what the devlog updates over the next few days reveal.

As for your concern that dwarves might not use the carts etc. to their full potential by not filling them up: even if there is no way for them to wait (which might be implemented in some way for all that we know), as long as items pile up at their point of origin there should be an improvement. You say that workshops produce constantly and dwarves haul constantly, but whether items pile up or not up depends of course on the number of haulers assigned. If the new systems works, then you can assign less haulers and allow for produced items to pile up, temporarily that is.

[Mel_Vixen]

Hey, it's some hay.

Shit damn spellchecker!

[NW_Kohaku]

I would assume there to be some benefits to carts over wheelbarrows the way Toady implements it, we just don't know. Apart from that, yes, maybe you are right, maybe any true efficiency increase comes from the implementation of hauling things in bins, whereas carts are just the bins stones use and are more for novelty. It is difficult to say at this point though without more information, so why not pose this as a question to Toady rather than being so pessimistic about it? Although to be honest it might be more sensible to simply wait for what the devlog updates over the next few days reveal.

As for your concern that dwarves might not use the carts etc. to their full potential by not filling them up: even if there is no way for them to wait (which might be implemented in some way for all that we know), as long as items pile up at their point of origin there should be an improvement. You say that workshops produce constantly and dwarves haul constantly, but whether items pile up or not up depends of course on the number of haulers assigned. If the new systems works, then you can assign less haulers and allow for produced items to pile up, temporarily that is.

There's nothing wrong with a little pessimism, so long as you keep perspective. 

I remember seeing several threads around when people were expecting older major releases to come out, in which posters were encouraged to guess what the new bugs would be for the new features going in.

Something like that might seem rude at first glance, but if Toady actually just read that, and looked at it as a checklist of "make sure this doesn't happen", it would actually be quite helpful. 

Stress-testing an idea before it is fully implemented (and hence, changes are cheaper and easier to make) is more useful than play testing, which is much better than just leaving the bugs in there. 

So never shy away from a good pro vs. con argument.


Anyway, yes, from what the devlogs look like, this will be more akin to a "train station" setup, where carts merely have stops, rather than are capable of being moved anywhere the rails allow. 

That could potentially allow for a "loading platform" that acts as a stockpile, itself.  If the objects that are meant to be shipped "miss their train", they just sit in the loading platform until the "next train comes in".

[loose nut]

FWIW upon reading the devlog I think minecarts make more sense as furniture-type items produced at the carpenter's workshop or forge than as a craft item. They're big, like bins with wheels, and not in any way delicate! Exciting stuff, though. Looking forward to shipping burning lignite to the front lines

[PTTG??]

anyone remember the chutes from a few months back?

Here's one such discussion.

[tahujdt]

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

[dreiche2]

There's nothing wrong with a little pessimism, so long as you keep perspective. 

I remember seeing several threads around when people were expecting older major releases to come out, in which posters were encouraged to guess what the new bugs would be for the new features going in.

Something like that might seem rude at first glance, but if Toady actually just read that, and looked at it as a checklist of "make sure this doesn't happen", it would actually be quite helpful. 

Stress-testing an idea before it is fully implemented (and hence, changes are cheaper and easier to make) is more useful than play testing, which is much better than just leaving the bugs in there. 

So never shy away from a good pro vs. con argument.

I never said anything against a pro vs con argument, and I don't see why my suggestion of framing it as a question to Toady wouldn't fulfil the purpose of letting him know about these issues just as well. It was just a minor comment directed at Elone, so let's not get into a general discussion about the merits of pessimism, shall we?

[Cruxador]

Something nobody's asked yet that I'm curious about is how this will all look. Will wheelbarrows and carts all have their own tiles adjacent to the dwarves or beasts that pull them, or what's the deal there?

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.

A wall of text isn't inherently good.

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.

It could be that junctions work like that by default unless the player manually attaches it to a lever or other trigger, sort of like how doors work now.

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.

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

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.

Ah, yeah that makes sense as an interpretation of what the four directions means. I'm kind of curious what the interface for this could end up looking like.

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.

Realistically for moving most furniture, you would want to use a furniture dolly. In practice I reckon a wheelbarrow will be more of a hand truck that can be used to move furniture too, rather than the slope-sided wheelbarrows we think of as normal in the modern day.

I would assume there to be some benefits to carts over wheelbarrows the way Toady implements it, we just don't know.

I would guess that wheelbarrow hauling is still based on the strength of the dwarf, with the wheelbarrow making the effective weight of the carried item much smaller.

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

I'm gonna guess "no" on this, because it's outside the time period. And also because transferring power from a stationary source like a waterwheel to a mobile source like a cart doesn't really seem possible without advanced technology such as electricity.

Hey, it's some hay.

Shit damn spellchecker!

FYI you also wrote "mayor" instead of "major".

[MaximumZero]

Not sure why I haven't done this yet, but I'm PTW.

[Mel_Vixen]

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Actually another reason is that we dont have a Fire-AI for dorfs and lighting is a computational ball of yarn. 

[thvaz]

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Actually another reason is that we dont have a Fire-AI for dorfs and lighting is a computational ball of yarn. 

Toady said that after hauling he will add fire awareness for dwarves.

Yeah, although it might depend on how you characterize the hauling changes since some of those'll be coming pretty soon, with fire AI sometime after that (since I promised both of these for the bug fix cycle, along with some other stuff).  Regular bug fixes will also continue.  I might be busy until the first with the typical month-end stuff (crayon etc.).