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[Martin]

We're going to need a fast, automated reloading system to take care of the larger sieges. And possibly multiple 'cyclotrons' to accelerate the carts depending on how log they take to get up to speed.


Since we haven't heard if derailed carts spill contents, we may need a catch track with automated dumper at the end of the shooting gallery.

[Uristocrat]

We're going to need a fast, automated reloading system to take care of the larger sieges. And possibly multiple 'cyclotrons' to accelerate the carts depending on how log they take to get up to speed.


Since we haven't heard if derailed carts spill contents, we may need a catch track with automated dumper at the end of the shooting gallery.

Some good points have been raised about magma safety.  We might have to go with iron or attempt to fill them with magma while shooting them at the goblins/elves/whatever.

As for reloading, I *did* put that into the design.  Remember, I envision a bridge and a logic-controlled roller at the top of the ramps/acceleration zone.  So we use rollers to advance all the carts up to the bridge, then power a single roller at the front to zoom a cart down, then put the bridge up and reload.  With proper logic and timing, that should allow us to blast goblins with flaming carts of death.  You'll want a long, narrow, straight hallway at the bottom of the ramps (nowhere to dodge), though having the carts force them into a dodge trap is also viable.

And yes, the exact details will have to wait until we have actual minecarts to use in a Dwarven Railgun.  Platinum minecarts are very dwarfy as well.

It wouldn't be Dwarf Fortress if we didn't try to weaponize everything.  Dwarfkind has come a long way since losing to a named bush.

[Uristocrat]

Why not platinum. It's magma safe, super heavy, and very valuable!

I think the point is to avoid making bullets that are stupidly expensive.

Actually, I think it gives us an excellent use for platinum, given that these are probably reusable.  Though lead minecarts that melt while slamming into goblins is so very, very tempting.  Having their corpses burn up due to hot lead would just be a bonus.  I'm trying to think of a good backstop for the walls.  It should probably be obsidian (shiny black!), steel (durable!), or cinnabar (already red), I think.

We just need Toady to finish up and release this so that we can work on the !!SCIENCE!!

[i2amroy]

I would say slade for mass, or bluemetal for velocity.

Adamantine would probably be fairly worthless in a cart, as a cart will probably function fairly similar to a blunt weapon, meaning adamantine won't carry really any force in it at all (even if it blurs across the map in a single tick). Adamantine carts would probably work great as a fast transport system though, if you really wanted to splurge.

[Uristocrat]

I would say slade for mass, or bluemetal for velocity.

Adamantine would probably be fairly worthless in a cart, as a cart will probably function fairly similar to a blunt weapon, meaning adamantine won't carry really any force in it at all (even if it blurs across the map in a single tick). Adamantine carts would probably work great as a fast transport system though, if you really wanted to splurge.

The devlog talks about damage using the same function already in game, so you're probably correct that incredibly heavy objects are the best way to go.

I wonder what putting a cage full of sperm whales into a minecart would do (I had to one-up the elephant idea)?  And also if carts will be able to hold objects + magma both?

When the platinum minecart filled with magma and a cage full of sperm whales comes barreling down the highway to hell, the circus won't know what hit them.

[Martin]

Some good points have been raised about magma safety.  We might have to go with iron or attempt to fill them with magma while shooting them at the goblins/elves/whatever.

I'd be inclined to try to shoot the carts through a recirculating magmafall located right before the ramp. With a 1 tile gap in the track, they'd clear it easy. The magmafall should minimize mess if designed right. The challenge is building a fall that reliably delivers 7/7 magma and whether the cart can pick up a full load of magma on the way out when at speed - I think it should. Is it reasonable to assume that the top speed of a cart is one tile per tick or does the derail functionality come as a result of the cart being accelerated beyond the time granularity of the game (I hereby define as the speed of sim)? So that it could get up to 2 tiles per tick, and so when the game calculates the cart's next position, it's then 2 tiles away, skipping over one which would be the curve in the track? If so, a railgun accelerated cart would suffer 2 additional problems:


1) By skipping tiles, it's also skipping rollers, so it gets increasingly expensive to accelerate your cart past that 1/1 threshold.
2) By skipping tiles, it'd possibly also skip things like the magma load, or the collision event at the end. We'd have constructed a Dwarven Tunneling Railgun.


I'm also thinking that in the interests of maintaining the utility of the entrance for wagons, that 3 parallel guns that release carts simultaneously would work best.


And I think the idea of using non-magma safe carts in this arrangement and having them melt on impact is highly desirable. You'd need to work out the rough timing of how long the cart can function as a cart while it melts, and load the magma shot at just the right time.

[Uristocrat]

And I think the idea of using non-magma safe carts in this arrangement and having them melt on impact is highly desirable. You'd need to work out the rough timing of how long the cart can function as a cart while it melts, and load the magma shot at just the right time.

Indeed.  Much !!SCIENCE!! will need to be done.  Covering one's enemies with blobs of boiling lead and magma sounds very !!FUN!!

I only wish that you could dump water on them and end up with obsidian/lead statues....

[King Mir]

Why use a magma fall, when you can just send the cart through a magma filled ditch?

[Martin]

Why use a magma fall, when you can just send the cart through a magma filled ditch?

Devlog:
Projectile units and vehicles have more resistance moving through water and magma now, and they can skip across the surface of liquids. That'll leave intermittent splashes at the points of contact depending on the speed and nature of the objects.

The ditch will slow down the cart, and since you'll need to descend into the ditch, a high speed cart is likely to just skip over the top - plus the splash effects interfering with who knows what. How will splashed magma affect the rollers, etc? The ditch would work fine if we're filling the cart before accelerating it to speed, but I suspect that for the non-magma safe cart shots it wouldn't give us enough time to accelerate it before it melted.


The magmafall, just given the nature of how falling liquids tend to be, I think is more likely to just fill the cart without affecting its trajectory, slowing it too much, or creating too much mess. And you could have the fall immediately before the ramp if needed. Plus, the magmafall would protect the railgun barrel as an approach for fliers.

I only wish that you could dump water on them and end up with obsidian/lead statues....

Why not? Have the entrance come from the side, so you have a solid wall in the killfield at the end to shoot against that's a dozen or so tiles past the side approach. Build a 2nd rail line a z-level above the solid wall at the end that sends a cart full of water a short delay after each railgun shot to auto dump the water there at the end. Each shot then gets followed by a water dump, makes obsidian, and forms a new wall for the next one to slam against. Eventually the water won't flow out to reach them, but you'd get a few good tiles to mine out. Would make a nice exercise for timing two lines.

[Uristocrat]

The items and units fly out of carts now on major collisions. It gives the objects a little lift and spread sometimes to make the happenings more entertaining. Accidental grapeshotting of the dining room should be possible now. The debug tests on massed goblins were fairly devastating and left a large conical skidmark.

Accidental?  Come now, Toady, you know us better than that.....

[Himmelblau]

Contents spreding on collision makes magma-filled carts a lot more desirable. They're basically incendiary missiles, that fly parabolically too. Forget catapults.

I wonder if contents remain in the cart when it's removed from the track, when hauled to a stockpile for example. Then if you could place multiple magma-filled carts into a single lead minecart...

[Uristocrat]

Contents spreding on collision makes magma-filled carts a lot more desirable. They're basically incendiary missiles, that fly parabolically too. Forget catapults.

I wonder if contents remain in the cart when it's removed from the track, when hauled to a stockpile for example. Then if you could place multiple magma-filled carts into a single lead minecart...

Put minecarts in my minecarts?  I love the way you think.  Assuming they can hold one object each, it would be fun to put a platinum minecart full of magma inside a lead minecart inside a lead minecart inside a lead minecart inside a...

Also, I definitely need to figure out how to trap sperm whales.  I don't remember if they die in cages and I don't much care.  So long as they cause the minecart's weight to go through the roof, it's all good.  I just hope that we don't hit some sort of integer overflow when DF calculates momentum....

[Jeoshua]

Dwarven Tunneling Railgun.

Quantum Mining.

[Himmelblau]

Assuming they can hold one object each

It would be clumsy to use minecarts for hauling if this was true. They must be able to hold multiple objects, but this might be limited in a rational manner, like based on weight or item type. Can't find a devlog or FotF quote to support this :P Something like 5 bins/barrels per cart was speculated in the Holy Crap Minecarts -thread. Might be that minecarts can't be placed in minecarts at all, but then again it would be a bit gamey that boulders and statues and cages can be.

[Martin]

Now if we can just get cages to break on impact we could load the carts with caged clowns.