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[MrWiggles]

Can fluids be put in minecarts?

Will minecarts passing under a waterfall automatically fill up with water?

If the first two are true, WILL IT WORK WITH MAGMA?

If it works with one fluid, it'll work with all fluids.

[Farmerbob]

Does one remember the Old Gummybears show from disney? They had those underground railway with occasional jumps  the only way in and out my fort will be exactly that! For ‼Science‼ (magma-moat not included, for Magma suitable for this product please call you Local dwarfs)

I hope water works as emergency break for this things if one is needed. A cart with leadbars will pack more force and would need more time to come to a standstill then a cart filled with feathertree wood. A reliable way to stop both at the roughly same place would be great. It would also be the softer landing.

If the carts can be powered with chains/gears/screws and if they can carry a certain amount of water i could see a new kind of pump here althought thats still in the stars.

Well, it's very easy to handle stopping and starting of a low speed system by basic design.  Gravity speeds it up going downhill, slows it going uphill.  Toady is implementing this to at least some degree.

An ideal cart with no friction and no air resistance will come to a stop on the same track at the same time no matter what it's mass, if gravity is the controlling force.

Dwarf Fortress has perpetual motion machines, so by default there cannot be either friction or air resistance 

Something about using the existence of perpetual motion to prove anything just feels... wrong.  LOL

[NW_Kohaku]

Dwarf Fortress has perpetual motion machines, so by default there cannot be either friction or air resistance 

Not particularly true; It's just that DF operates by bizarre rounding physics.  By the same token that you can shoot a stack of 25 bolts made from a single bar of metal into single individual bolts that you then melt down into 2.5 bars of metal, watermills give you 100 units of energy regardless of whether you are mounting them on top of Niagra Falls or you have a watermill hooked up to a completely still pool where the only motion comes from a single turtle swimming around the water. 

Since any movement in the water counts as enough movement to power a watermill to 100 power, and pumps that power that only take 10 power, the whole system just has completely absurd constants from the start.

[Mel_Vixen]

We actualy have friction on tracks according to the last devblog:

[...] They (the carts) gain speed going down ramps, get slower going up, lose a little speed on the rest of the track, a bit more on corners [...]

Axles and gears are not 100% efficient either.

[Farmerbob]

We actualy have friction on tracks according to the last devblog:

[...] They (the carts) gain speed going down ramps, get slower going up, lose a little speed on the rest of the track, a bit more on corners [...]

Axles and gears are not 100% efficient either.

Err, gravity would cause acceleration on ramps, not necessarily friction.  I'm moderately certain that Toady does not do friction calculations.  (Yet?) Agreed that axles and gears are not 100% efficient since they bleed power from systems.

I'm just saying that we shouldn't expect ral world physics to be anything more than a loose guideline for what we end up getting!

[Greiger]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about the they loose a little speed on flat ground bit.

[Footkerchief]

04/06/2012 Toady One I added track "stop" constructions, which greatly increase the friction in a square and cause (most) carts to stop (say, blocks, narrowing grooves, whatever might work). These stopping points will generally be where the hauling jobs take place. There are constructed tracks, and bridges now also act as tracks. Pressure plates can be given a weight range for being triggered by carts. I tested it out by making a retracting bridge system that sorted carts by whether or not they were loaded. I knew it was working when I started making little kerchunk sounds at the screen. There are powered "rollers" placed in strips that increase the speed of minecarts in a given direction, up to a point (more than enough to get them up a ramp, anyway). I don't have an engineering sense at all, so you can imagine the rollers to be... whatever you like. Perhaps they even make sense. Carts can also collide with each other, whether they are on the ground or in the air, and are generally one-cart-per-tile, though that can be violated where the code treats them more like general items (I doubt I'll be able to catch all of the cases, but I'll try to get the ones that matter). It will require a bit of tweaking to look good, but I did stack some carts vertically and shot a cart through the air into the middle of the stack, disrupting it, so that was fun.

As a dedicated follower of DF, all I can think is "what the fuck?"  I know Toady can really tear through new features sometimes, but he's been working on mine carts for four days and he's already got physics and collisions and stuff.

[Jacob/Lee]

Never underestimate the Toad. On good weeks, things like this happen.

Also: since we will eventually be able to use animals to haul things... What about pressing our prisoners into hauling things for us? Since this is slavery, and dwarves are against slavery, I couldn't see this happening with them, but what if you changed the ethics or your civ?

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them? Humans can use their slaves to build monuments or other sites, if they do so eventually. They could force their slaves to fight wars, as cannon fodder for the real soldiers. The possibilities are limitless with slaves!

Since this provides absolutely no real addition to the dwarves, I don't see Toady working on this until a later date. But still, it would be pretty cool.

[Rose]

Clearly, unlike other dwarves, he can have multiple strange moods.

[Willfor]

The thing about minecarts is that they are not only concrete objects that can be viewed and tested easily in a simple fortress mode start up, they would be remarkably easy to debug. Being physical objects, the parts of their design focus on easily quantifiable things. Combine this with the fact that he seems very excited to be doing this, and the fact that he's likely been planning this part out with ThreeToe for a while -- and what makes what we're seeing the release of a large amount of potential energy against a job that he knows how to do very well.

I'm optimistic about this release's schedule, but realistic about the chances that this will bog down a little if he hits more abstract things on his way to pushing out the Hauling Improvements.

[MrWiggles]

Smexy.

We don't have switch tracks yet though. I dont think we'll get OTTD style logic gates, but track switchers and lazy Suzan would be neat.

[monk12]

Clearly, unlike other dwarves, he can have multiple strange moods.

I think he's been abusing the Planepacked glitch to make DF.


Also, HOLY CARP THIS IS AWESOME. Hell, this isn't just #1 Improved Hauling, this is now a fair stab at #6 Improved Mechanics as well! I really didn't expect to see powered minecarts, but here we are.

[G-Flex]

Since "rollers" increase the speed of carts, will they require power of some form to operate? It would be pretty hard (well, impossible) to justify a mechanism that adds energy to something like that without requiring energy input, so I'm curious if wind/water power was or is being considered for their operation. Personally, I'd be interested in them requiring power, since if you have to actually significantly worry about whether or not your minecarts can make it up a certain number of z-levels, it adds an element of gravitational logistics to how players plan their fortresses, which would be nice since right now dwarves have no more trouble moving stuff/themselves across the z-axis than they do on the other axes.

EDIT: misread the devlog, never mind

[Greiger]

Alright a use for dwarven water reactors realistically designed and placed waterwheels and windmills outside of liquid transport!

Also with the minecarts I'm predicting a huge decrease in the number of fortresses based around a few endless up/down staircase pillars, and more actual ramping setups.

[mnjiman]

Will minecarts be able to hold water or magma(if the minecart is made of metal of course)?


Edit: darkrider2 already asked the same question