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[FearfulJesuit]

Finishing up some random things to make carts worthwhile. You can hook up track stops to levers to disengage them and you can also set the friction amount when you build them. Workshops can be set to give only to selected stockpiles and stockpiles can be set to only accept goods from their links (other piles/workshops/vehicles).

Sounds like this is it for the carts, then. It's been, and I really do not mean (well, OK, I do mean) a pun, a wild and fun ride. Wonder if he'll choose to release now, or keep going with new awesome shit.

[Eric Blank]

Set the friction... Hmm... I wonder if it will be possible to cause carts to suddenly stop and send their contents flying loony toons style.

[rridgway]

Set the friction... Hmm... I wonder if it will be possible to cause carts to suddenly stop and send their contents flying loony toons style.

I wonder if through modding one could edit the limits to allow negative friction...

[Lielac]

Set the friction... Hmm... I wonder if it will be possible to cause carts to suddenly stop and send their contents flying loony toons style.

I wonder if through modding one could edit the limits to allow negative friction...

Isn't that just called a roller?

[Urist Da Vinci]

Finishing up some random things to make carts worthwhile. You can hook up track stops to levers to disengage them and you can also set the friction amount when you build them. Workshops can be set to give only to selected stockpiles and stockpiles can be set to only accept goods from their links (other piles/workshops/vehicles).

How will YOU setup your stockpiles?

Pre-minecarts, we can setup stockpiles for certain items only, and can have them kept full in a certain order by having them take from other stockpiles. We can have several stockpiles feed into one, but AFAIK can't automatically have one feed into many.

[Garath]

maybe he's changing that too?

[Sadrice]

Whether he's changing it directly or not, it will be possible by linking the stockpiles with minecarts rather than the 'take from' command.

EDIT:  I wonder if he will also make it so workshops can only take from selected inputs?  That would make crafting things from a specific material a lot more reliable.

EDIT 2:  Mechanically linkable adjustable stops will make it a lot easier to get exactly the desired trajectory out of a minecart launcher.  You could have a number of lever linked stops set to different friction settings at the bottom of the launch ramp to range in your minecart artillery while still having the reloading apparatus feeding into a single point.  You could probably even link the stops to pressure plates in the target area to automatically aim it at approaching invaders, though setting it up to correctly lead the shots would be a right pain.

[Psieye]

Whether he's changing it directly or not, it will be possible by linking the stockpiles with minecarts rather than the 'take from' command.

EDIT:  I wonder if he will also make it so workshops can only take from selected inputs?  That would make crafting things from a specific material a lot more reliable.

As far as I'm concerned, it's already a lot more reliable to craft things from a specific material just by having minecarts be able to jump (since dwarves cannot). No longer will I need to micromanage dumps to deliver a specific material to an isolated workstation.

[MrWiggles]

Finishing up some random things to make carts worthwhile. You can hook up track stops to levers to disengage them and you can also set the friction amount when you build them. Workshops can be set to give only to selected stockpiles and stockpiles can be set to only accept goods from their links (other piles/workshops/vehicles).

How will YOU setup your stockpiles?

Pre-minecarts, we can setup stockpiles for certain items only, and can have them kept full in a certain order by having them take from other stockpiles. We can have several stockpiles feed into one, but AFAIK can't automatically have one feed into many.

I think we're expecting to much from this stockpile changes.

I wouldnt really be surprised if the Stockpiles still have the limitation of only One Link.

[Sadrice]

But if minecarts can be loaded from a stockpile, the tracks can be set up to deliver to any number of substituent stockpiles. You might need to set up a minecart logic counter to make it so each successive cart is delivered to a different destination, but that wouldn't be that hard.

[FearfulJesuit]

The real question is, can you set it up in such a way, for example, that although it might be possible for Urist McUnemployedHauler to drag a piece of leather from Tanner's Shop #3 to Leather Stockpile #4, he'll only use a minecart and wait until one comes along?



The fact that this will put an entire class of dwarf completely out of work sort of worries me, to be honest. It's not unlike what happened to the old system of poverty relief in Britain in the nineteenth century- industrialization created mass unemployment and the parishes were too stressed to handle it. However, we may see the caste of unskilled grunts replaced by the minecart industry, which strikes me as being possibly as large. You need the miners to carve out the tracks- well, your two or three regular miners can do that. But then, you need maybe three or four engravers to care the floors. You'll need an army of masons to create the aboveground tracks. You'll need carpenters (and therefore woodcutters) and blacksmiths (and therefore furnace operators) to make the minecarts. And above all, you need mechanics. Rollers have to be hooked up to a source of power, and we only have two of those, both of which by default can only be found aboveground, which means that we're going to have to have a huge army of mechanics.

So perhaps it's not that bad- replacing the army of haulers with an army of mechanics with actual skills is a move in the right direction, I think. Still, they're not needed indefinitely. If you have a walking route from your still to your food stockpile, you'll need people to drag the booze for as long as the still produces and the food stockpile accepts the booze. Once you've set up a minecart route between the two and have powered it, you don't need anyone to maintain it.


This is going to lead to the possibility, however, of far more decentralized forts, which I'm going to have to think about, because all my forts are based on the same exact design which is crafted to minimize walking times. Now that that's less of an issue, I can experiment... Minecarts can go faster than a dwarf, right?

[Old Greg]

I think there will still be plenty of need for haulers. I'm not gonna use minecarts to take stonecrafts two floors up, or to empty out small gem clusters. Besides, haulers will still be needed to operate the carts. It seems like the only thing that will really demand them is stone/ore transport.

[Psieye]

There is no such thing as an 'unemployed hauler' in my forts. Anyone who is permitted to do hauling is also permitted to do a large range of things. A monumental minecart system will be a megaproject. Once that's constructed, it's time to move onto the next megaproject. Even if that's less of an architectural challenge and more of an artistic one (e.g. "make me 1000 exceptional+ statues of only this motif").

When the economy comes back? That's when the concept of unemployment will show up again.

[Exponent]

Finishing up some random things to make carts worthwhile. You can hook up track stops to levers to disengage them and you can also set the friction amount when you build them. Workshops can be set to give only to selected stockpiles and stockpiles can be set to only accept goods from their links (other piles/workshops/vehicles).

Sounds like this is it for the carts, then. It's been, and I really do not mean (well, OK, I do mean) a pun, a wild and fun ride. Wonder if he'll choose to release now, or keep going with new awesome shit.

From the Dev Log on the 16th, list of remaining stuff, and my guesses about what is sufficiently complete for the upcoming release:

Overall, to wrap up the hauling changes, we still have to do unit/minecart collisions, fluid/minecart interactions, some speed-related accidents, add some more support for setting up carts at stops independent of routes (for use in traps, etc.), consider a few more efficiency changes for routes/items in carts, add some more information to tool definitions to control how carts are made and stored, update mining, consider wheelbarrows, handle work animals... that's probably not everything. So there's a bit left to do, but it should be cool.

[MrWiggles]

I dont think we've had efficiency changes yet.

The stockpile linking, is more about functionality, and not efficiency.