Weaponization aside, I wonder what will be the impact on the industry and storage. (in the good sense of course!)
- If minecarts are going to be needed to haul ores, boulders, rock and other bulk materials efficiently, then this might lead to quite different layout for "buffer" metal ore stockpiles - instead of typical square it might be more efficient to create long line-ish stockpile with tracks all along the sides.
- Is there going to be special job "cart operator" or each dwarf will use the cart when he needs to?
- Can the carts collide? Would be great to have hauling accidents and stuff
If no, then all will be quite simple - you just lay one lane and carts will go in both directions, different speeds, all on that one track. But if they can, then this gets interesting. Each direction will need its track, but also you would have to take care and not mix too fast and too slow traffic (how efficient brakers dwarfs/animals are?). And there would have to be some sort of logic for junctions to disallow entering in wrong direction and to give right to traffic coming from e.g. right hand side etc... Stuff gets complicated for implementation. Probably wont going to happen, but one can always play OpenTTD :-)
- Will the carts have their depot where they will return? Feeding stations were already mentioned, I guess this is the equivalent? Or will they accumulate at the workshops instead? If only one cart is allowed per tile, those depots might get
huuuuuuge sufficiently dwarfy.
so many possibilities!