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[Clotifoth]

I always wanted to have it so that there were two cities of dwarves, a productive and noble city, and that the productive ones would drop food to the nobles.

How do I do that? :|

[CursedBurger]

The easiest way I've found is to designate a food stockpile next to a garbage dump (from the zones menu), then mark the food for dumping - dwarves will throw things in the nearest garbage dump, which can thereby be used for a food chute. Reclaim the food once it's fallen down.

But that's probably one of many solutions.

[Girlinhat]

Dumping works, if you're willing to unforbid at the bottom of the chute.  There is, unfortunately, no easy way to automate it.  In fact there's few difficult ways.  All attempts for automated chutes have been met with intense complications.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

a) "Put it in the hole, Stewart."  Garbage zone and dump.

b) Airlock.  Can be automated, but to my knowledge never has.  Food's especially difficult, because it comes in variably sized stacks and ends up rotting when hauling tasks get interrupted.

c) City of the Damned.  Neither vampires nor werebeasts ever starve to death.

[DuckBoy2]

A question I myself have often pondered.  Time now for SCIENCE. 

It begins.

[Cellmonk]

b) Airlock.  Can be automated, but to my knowledge never has.

You know what, I'm gonna change that. A one way, buffered, and automated system. I'll try to figure out how to post video, but pictures might apply better. 

[Girlinhat]

Water may be used to "flush" stockpile contents to another area without having them forbidden.  The advent of the "vampire monthly clock" may be applicable for frequent flushing.

[tommy521]

Water may be used to "flush" stockpile contents to another area without having them forbidden.  The advent of the "vampire monthly clock" may be applicable for frequent flushing.

Hmm, you might be onto something here...

[Girlinhat]

There is a bug where items pushed by water will "vanish".  You can reduce losses by making it a no-barrel stockpile.  Any food lost would simply be lost.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

b) Airlock.  Can be automated, but to my knowledge never has.

You know what, I'm gonna change that. A one way, buffered, and automated system. I'll try to figure out how to post video, but pictures might apply better. 

It's a good idea.  I think there are multiple ways to approach the problem.  I bet a single vampire omelette chef could keep a fortress of 200 fed, regardless of how you burrowed those 200.

I had a desert fortress once where I captured so many wild camels that I just put them in a big pen with a system to isolate individuals over a drop hatch that fell 10 levels to a butcher shop.  Wasn't entirely automated-- hard to isolate something wild on a drop hatch automatically-- but something like that would work well for feeding physically isolated burrows as well.    (EDIT: Just close a bridge at the level you want the meat to show up at!)  The camels bred plenty fast enough to feed the whole fortress.

[khearn]

"vampire monthly clock"

That sounds disturbingly, um, gynecological.

[TinyPirate]

I wish we could stockpile over bridges and open spaces. Toadyyyy!

[Sadrice]

I think I have a working airlock design, and built it, but I mislinked two doors on the set/reset latch (I used this one, but just about any design would do) and should really be working on my O Chem lab report rather than trying to fix it without flooding everything (again).

Code: [Select]

#################
==#########^###==
==   h^d=d^h   ==
==###^#########==
#################
h - hatch
d - door
= - stockpile
Middle stockpile takes from lefthand one, righthand one takes from middle.
The initial state has stuff on the left stockpile, and no stuff in the middle, and
at least one empty square on the right, lefthand door is open, righthand is shut.

There is an S/R latch that sets from the lower left plate, and resets from the upper
right. It controls the two doors, with the left being open and the right shut while set.

The innermost pressure plates are linked to the hatches next to them, thus when a
dwarf from the lefthand side carries some food to the middle, and on the way back
out steps on the pressure plate, opening the hatch (its actually still open from when
he stepped on it), causing him to step on the offset pressure plate, which toggles
the S/R latch, shutting the door behind him and opening the other door.  Then a
dwarf from the right side takes the food from the center stockpile and carries it to
the right, doing the same thing as on the other side, stepping left around the open
hatch to toggle the latch again. 
I haven't actually tested it (screwed up my latch), but I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work.  Food (or whatever) should (somewhat slowly) move from the lefthand stockpile to the righthand one until the righthand one is full or the lefthand one is empty.  There will be a slight hit on fps when the dwarf repaths around the plate, but there shouldn't be any job cancellation spam, and it ought to be fully automated, with no need to restart it if it halts, or unforbid anything.

[Aoi]

"vampire monthly clock"

That sounds disturbingly, um, gynecological.

Vampires DO drink blood, after all.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I think that's a good start, and would generally work, but eventually you'd run into problems.

1) There is a period of time when both of your doors are open at the same time, because open signals propagate faster than close signals.  This is 100 ticks, plenty of time for a dwarf to get across if it feels like it.

2) Not being familiar with that latch design, I'm concerned about its speed of operation, and vulnerability to being retriggered or toggled too soon.  I would use something like this one-- it's pretty much instantaneous, doesn't rely on flow (although it needs power), and is set up for the right kind of signals you're sending it.  But thanks for the link to that latch, I'll play with it a bit.

3) Food attracts vermin, vermin attract cats, cats kill vermin and leave it in doorways of logical circuits.

I would probably do something similar, but it worries me the way you have the entrance set up-- I can imagine things going wrong with that set up, and the dwarf triggering the latch before he brings the food, getting caught in the middle and transferred between burrows.  You can fairly easily make it one way:

Code: [Select]


 #######
 #^h^###
  ###d=d
 # h^###
 #######

which is probably how I'd first approach it.  To prevent dawdlers coming along for the ride, I'd probably latch up the entrance hatch as well.

Actually, let me revise that a little bit.  To prevent the problem with the doors being open at the same time, I'd make it more like:

Code: [Select]


 #########
 #^h^#####
  ###dh=dh
 # h^#####
 #########

When the door on one side is open, the hatch is closed.  This gets rid of problems due to the difference in open/close signals-- even if it takes 100 ticks for the close signal to reach the door, it's not a problem, because an instantaneous open signal has reached the adjacent hatch.  Actually, because delay isn't an issue, I might use raising bridges/retracting bridges in pairs instead, as that way, vermin wouldn't break the system (unless they landed on the stockpile square).

EDIT: duh, two bridges wouldn't work, what was I thinking.  Well, they'd work if you used retracting bridge over ramp to block access, but that's unnecessarily complicated.  Raising bridge and retracting floor grate would make good pairs instead.