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[Girlinhat]

gF-^^^^^=====#
This is my design, poorly explained.  - is rail, ^ are ramps up, = are rollers, # is the constructed stop.  Keep in mind that the ramps actually go up, so this isn't all flat, it's spread over several Z levels.
1: The cart is on the stop, with the orders "Load spears, wait until full, push south" (my actual design faces north to south but it's the same thing).
2: The rollers are bugged and always on, so as soon as the cart hits the rollers it gains speed at "Fastest".
3: The cart goes downhill very fast.
4: The final piece of track at the very bottom is a 1 long N/S rail - NOT just north NOR just south.
5: The cart hits the fortification and contents spill out violently.

This is currently triggered by me manually editing the hauling route and changing it to "at 0%".  When rollers are fixed, then the rollers will be on a lever so that the cart rests atop the rollers idly until the lever is pulled, power is supplied, and the cart is launched.

The only things I can think to note here are that the cart slams directly into a fortification while on a N/S rail, and that the cart is traveling about 2 ticks per tile.  I followed it, paused, and hit . to count, it obtains ludicrous speeds.

[flieroflight]

Excellent. I was contemplating a ramp then rollers to allow large speeds over a long distance, as i was planning to have a long corridor with a deep pit at the end. the goblins enter at the side of the corridor, and are allowed to some way down before triggering the minecart launch. mine carts fly down, hit them, the aim is to send them skidding into the pit where they blow apart. the bottom of the pit is lined with windows and is next to the dining hall.

Classy entertainment!

[Psieye]

gF-^^^^^=====#
This is my design, poorly explained.  - is rail, ^ are ramps up, = are rollers, # is the constructed stop.  Keep in mind that the ramps actually go up, so this isn't all flat, it's spread over several Z levels.
1: The cart is on the stop, with the orders "Load spears, wait until full, push south" (my actual design faces north to south but it's the same thing).
2: The rollers are bugged and always on, so as soon as the cart hits the rollers it gains speed at "Fastest".
3: The cart goes downhill very fast.
4: The final piece of track at the very bottom is a 1 long N/S rail - NOT just north NOR just south.
5: The cart hits the fortification and contents spill out violently.

This is currently triggered by me manually editing the hauling route and changing it to "at 0%".  When rollers are fixed, then the rollers will be on a lever so that the cart rests atop the rollers idly until the lever is pulled, power is supplied, and the cart is launched.

The only things I can think to note here are that the cart slams directly into a fortification while on a N/S rail, and that the cart is traveling about 2 ticks per tile.  I followed it, paused, and hit . to count, it obtains ludicrous speeds.

Yep, I've got shotgun action working in my test fort with this setup, but replacing the fortification with a track ramp pointed North only (to continue girlinhat's example) and a wall to make the ramp valid. Since I'm loading rocks, this sometimes means the minecart itself isn't launched, just the contents (dwarf and rocks). There is some randomness in the horizontal component of velocity, i.e. they spread out, grapeshot style as advertised.

[Girlinhat]

In my tests I got 100% shotgun every time.  A nice spread and some Z level movement.  Some projectiles would skip over the depot, or over my whole for in extreme cases.  Civilian casualties very high.

[Psieye]

Oh, I just remembered: there may need to be an absence of ceilings for shotgun to work. Let me test that right now...

[Uristocrat]

Two sets of 10 rollers and then 2 tiles then fortification. Was all on the flat though. I also think that 10 rollers is the max acceleration you can provide - well, off a cliff 10 rollers pushed a cart no further forward than 20. In any case, perhaps it's item dependent. Refuse and corpses didn't fly either

Per devlog, rollers only take carts up to a max velocity.  You have to use ramps to break the cap, as far as I can tell.

So yeah, make sure you have a nice, long roller coaster down to the circus before opening it and sending your whale-filled carts down there.

[Psieye]

Two sets of 10 rollers and then 2 tiles then fortification. Was all on the flat though. I also think that 10 rollers is the max acceleration you can provide - well, off a cliff 10 rollers pushed a cart no further forward than 20. In any case, perhaps it's item dependent. Refuse and corpses didn't fly either

Per devlog, rollers only take carts up to a max velocity.  You have to use ramps to break the cap, as far as I can tell.

So yeah, make sure you have a nice, long roller coaster down to the circus before opening it and sending your whale-filled carts down there.

Agreed: minecarts can't achieve 'escape velocity' on just rollers. Use ramps afterwards to really get speed going. I only needed some 6 z-levels, I'm sure SCIENCE will be done in short order to find out the right z-levels for the most popular 'shotgun payloads'.

Oh, I just remembered: there may need to be an absence of ceilings for shotgun to work. Let me test that right now...

Confirmed: no shotgun if there's a ceiling above my 'launch pad'.

[Sadrice]

I noticed something rather odd.  I have a short track in a room adjoining my carpenter workshops that takes furniture and dumps down a hole into a furniture closet on the z below.  Everything works great, stuff goes down the hole, it's infrequent enough that no haulers have gotten beds dropped on them yet, but I just issued a large order for wooden minecarts.  There was already a steel minecart in the furniture closet, as well as a number of wheelbarrows.  When 5 wooden minecarts were dumped down the hole, they did not fall.  Looking at the hole with k shows 5 carts and open space.  This doesn't prevent other items from being dumped through the carts, but when I assign vehicles from the h-v menu, they appear with a red X to the right of them, which I think means they are inaccessible, as no one would haul them.  I sent a sacrificial hauler to go fetch the steel minecart.  One cedar minecart fell, missing the hauler, but 4 are still floating.

I assume this is related to the stacking behavior toady mentioned, allowing us to make automatic minecart guns, with a vertical clip of carts over a roller or dwarf kicker (would this injure the dwarf?  My hauler was fine, no injuries or combat reports).  The games physics tries not to allow more than one minecart in a square, causing the carts to float above the lower cart, but the auto dumping forces the carts to pack together over the hole.  I tried channeling the square above the hole and dumping another cart, to see if it would teleport up the stack, but no such luck.

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

-A dwarf carrying a baby will drop it when they board a cart.

How could anybody miss this? It's the perfect way to reduce fort population!

[Uristocrat]

-A dwarf carrying a baby will drop it when they board a cart.

How could anybody miss this? It's the perfect way to reduce fort population!

Do they drop the baby on the rails?  !!SCIENCE!! must know....

[webber]

Is manual unloading of minecarts via "give to stockpile" broken for everybody or it`s just me doing something wrong? The only way I can empty the minecart is to dump the contents on a stop.

[dhoovr]

My research provided absolutely crazy result. Again.

So, I have a water-filled channel with ramps and a roller. Minecart number one stands on the end ramp. Minecart number two is pushed into the channel from the beginning.
Guess what?
They do not collide. When minecart 2 touches the roller, minecart 1 suddenly gains speed and flies up the ramp.
They are 50 tiles away from each other.

So I noticed no one replied to this (except the Dwarven Quantum Entaglement remark) and it would seem that water effectivly transfers KE like a newton ball. Can someone confirm?

[webber]

So I noticed no one replied to this (except the Dwarven Quantum Entaglement remark) and it would seem that water effectivly transfers KE like a newton ball. Can someone confirm?

I suspect that the water isn`t our problem. Will test this on a dry track tomorrow. Possibly, this happens when two minecarts share the same track.

[SmileyMan]

I haven't got a shotgun working yet due to shoddy building practices, but assuming the GIH railcannon design works, what do we do for ammo?

Spears seems the obvious choice, but what about picks? And while the sharp stuff has obvious appeal, has anyone shotgunned a cart full of silver maces?

[Burmalay]

gF-^^^^^=====#

Thank You, but I don't understand how this thing works...
I have tried 5 & 6 z-high ramp with 5-tile roller booster powered & unpowered, I have tried loop booster with 5 & 6 z-high ramp & nothing.
What kind of magic did you use? =)