Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?
Ooh, I hope not. Thankfully since carts are vehicles and steeds are units, we might get to avoid some undue bloating... I'm more worried about bloats in the mining direction, frankly. Or in workshops, since Toady might want to give us a reason to use carts (besides for bowling with goblins, of course).
On that topic, I think I've figured out a way to make soldiers ride the tracks:
First, get your soldiers into gear and station them (as civilians) in a 'ready room' isolated from the rest of the fort with burrows. There should be at least as many stops in this room as there are dwarves in the squad; each should have an empty minecart in it. Make sure your dwarves have the proper hauling skill enabled, and order each of the stops to push off empty with the dwarf hitching a ride (you may need to stage it to avoid crashes). Don't forget to activate the squad when it reaches the battlezone.
Similarly, it should be possible to build rollercoasters by simply building one stop on a loop of track and ordering an empty cart to be pushed off every so often with the dwarf hitching a ride.
The specifics will depend on some minor details, namely...
Under which of the following circumstances will a dwarf 'bail out' of a cart, if at all?- The cart comes to a complete stop, although not on a stop construction.
- The cart passes through a stop construction without stopping.
- The cart passes off the track.
- The cart is flying through the air.
- The dwarf sees an enemy while riding the cart.
- The dwarf sees an enemy while riding the cart, which is flying though the air.
- The cart collides with an enemy.
- The cart collides with an enemy while flying through the air.
- The cart leaves the dwarf's burrow.
- The dwarf's squad is activated.
- The dwarf's squad recieves an order.
- The job is cancelled from the stop the cart launched from.
- The cart passes through liquid.
- The cart collides with a swimming unit.
- The dwarf gets hungry, thirsty, or tired.
- The dwarf goes On Break.