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[Mudcrab]

I'm just jacked you can assign stockpiles to workshops!

Yeah man its gonna be sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet 

[Telgin]

The only real problem with it I can imagine is I still won't really be able to make a magma moat out of it since it will probably work pretty slowly, and magma would evaporate faster than I could fill the moat.  Still, one can dream, and it's a way to set up magma forges close to the surface or on the surface.

Segment the moat using bridges. If one cart dumps 7/7, start with a 3x1 segment, which will give you two 2/7 tiles and a 3/7. No evaporation. Two more carts fills them to 7/7, open the bridge to reveal a 3x3 segment, which should all be 2/7 or 3/7 deep. 6 more carts, open the next bridge to reveal a 3x9 segment. 18 more carts, open the next bridge to reveal a 3x27 segment. Keep going until you're full.


If you want a 1x passage, 1x3, then 1x9, then 1x27, etc. using floodgates. Make them non-magmaproof and the magma will destroy the evidence of your trick.

I had considered something like that but dismissed it as being too much work.  Well, I suppose it can't be any worse than 90 z-levels of magma safe pumps, can it?

Still, it's going to depend a lot on how fast carts can transport the magma.  It would probably be fairly trivial to make a dual or wider magma cart track if you were building a single lane anyway.

[Sadrice]

The flow rate is determined by the number of carts in a track, so once you build it you can scale up by making more magma safe carts.  You could fill wider containers by running your cart line to a narrow but tall cistern and then using gravity to dispense as much as you need to wherever you need it.  The cistern could have a network of "pipes" radiating out, allowing you to dump a bit of magma wherever you please, whether it be in your moat or your trade depot.

[Torham]

You would really just need a two-chamber cistern. Smaller one as a "primer" witch would be quick to fill and hard to evaporate, say 2 zlvls deep, so you eliminate accidental overflow. Once the primer is filled, release it into the main cistern, witch, if you do the calculation right, should just fill it enough to stop the magma evaporating. then you can fill your main cistern at leisure pace. I imagine the minecarts will be travelling roughly as fast as a dwarf moves, so it would only take maybe dozens of seconds for a minecart to travel to the surface. Introduce 5 - 10 minecarts and you are looking at a flow of 1x7/7 magma square every few seconds. That would definitely fill a moat at a reasonable pace. If you put a powering roller every second zlvl this would potentially be MUCH less challenging than a pump stack, not to mention a pump stack is a fps hit and must be magma safe. The only thing that would have to be magma safe with minecarts is the minecart itself + floodgates on your cistern(witch would have to ne either case). The tracks could just be carved into the rock itself, so assembly would be quicker as well.
For your magma forges, just fill few minecarts manually a let the dorfs push them up.

[slothen]

There's no way a single cart should hold 7/7 liquid.  7/7 fills a tile, and a volume of a single tile is quite large.  On the other hand, 7/7 is just 7 bucketfuls of water.. so who really knows?

[greenskye]

Seems like you could also make a less FPS intensive waterfall this way as well. Just have some water filled minecarts autodump over a hole in the ceiling and enjoy the mist!

[Torham]

I think it would be OK if minecart holds 7/7 liquid. It can transport boulders the size of 1 tile through a tunnel of the size of 1x1xX. It would be far more realistic than quantum stockpiles.Shame Toady wants to keep the technology level pre-steam era, otherwise we could see steam engines pulling trains around the map, dumping trainloads of magma/sharp weapons on unsuspecting elves.

[Martin]

I had considered something like that but dismissed it as being too much work.  Well, I suppose it can't be any worse than 90 z-levels of magma safe pumps, can it?

It scales really fast as each segment is 3x the size of the previous one. If you wanted to moat an entire 4x4 embark, you'd only need 5 bridges/levers. And that last segment would have evaporation problems no matter which way you did it simply due to the low gradient from the source (be it cart or pump) so you'd need to segment it either way.

Still, it's going to depend a lot on how fast carts can transport the magma.  It would probably be fairly trivial to make a dual or wider magma cart track if you were building a single lane anyway.

You should be able to put multiple carts per track. I think one of the early important experiments will be a way to regulate the distance between carts - so you can dispense one (and only one) and then after a predictable delay dispense another, and then have them return to the start, stack up and repeat - and be fully automated. I'm guessing some kind of either retractable bridge/falling pez dispenser kind of thing, or a door/floodgate retracting stopper. It'll depend on whether automated doors/floodgates destroy carts and how close we can work out the timing. Possibly if we can activate/deactivate rollers, or whether they're always on things.


This is going to be a hell of a lot of fun to play with. A predictable system of moving carts gets us all the clock precision we should need as combined with pressure plates they become analogues to gears.

[Uristocrat]

Given that pressure plates can trigger based on carts, this should lead to tons of !!FUN!! new ideas.

And yes, I absolutely *have* to make a Dwarven railgun now.....

[Psieye]

I'm imagining it's 1/7 per minecart. Since cart dumping is automated, you just need to have the carts coming in at a fast enough rate alongside an expanding reservoir to ensure no magma is lost to evaporation. You can bet there'll be enough !!SCIENCE!! done as soon as the next release hits to know exactly how many z-levels of down-ramp you want to get enough momentum for the minecart to come back up to the surface for X number of powered rollers.

[slothen]

Shame Toady wants to keep the technology level pre-steam era

except water reactors (either aquifer powered or self-contained) are centuries more advanced than even modern generators (they're called reactors for a reason) and who needs trains when the powered track-rollers toady has described will basically function like magnetic accelerators?

[jborynec]

I can see lots of entertainment value if a cart dumping a stone from a station can drop that stone into a different cart one level down.

[Friendstrange]

Who needs balistas and catapults when you can have giant railguns that shoot magma-filled minecarts that menace with spikes of steel?

I cant wait to start designing internal highways, arterial ways, bypasses, and cringe at the inevitable rush hour traffic of goblin christmas.

I'm just jacked you can assign stockpiles to workshops!

This, so very much.
Now if only we had pipes that can actually be used as pipes so that my waterways stop getting clogged with fungiwood trees I will be a happy man.

[Sadrice]

I believe putting custom stockpiles set not to accept anything will stop trees from growing.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm just a teensy bit disappointed that you can't actually make "conveyor belts" that run through a workshop so that a crafter can just dump their finished products and grab extra supplies as they go by, but I think I'm going to try to make a "no hauling" fortress in general. 

All goods managed by carts on automated rollers.  From supply dumps to workshops to storage yard next to the trade depot.

Basically, I'll make my fortress look like one of those UPS commercials.  Everything's always being passed from one thing zipping around to a guy just tossing it onto another mechanical contraption.