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[TerryDactyl]

Not much of a scientist, I suppose. Oh well.

I've learned that multiple carts can share a stop and load simultaneously, provided they've been 'guided' into place.

Also, that guiding carts uphill appears to be a perfectly safe practice.

It might not be much of a contribution, but injuries, even imagined ones, tend to upset me terribly.

Oh! With regards to general efficiencies, I recommend burrowing a dedicated loader/unloader at your stations, with amenities close at hand, to prevent having some dwarf haul ass from the other side of the map to unload one block and defeat the purpose of having a cart system set up in the first place. Probably best to disable loading duties for most dwarves, too.

edit: Wait.. not sure that loading duties CAN be turned off. Hauling/pushing can be, yes....

[Urist Da Vinci]

I have confirmed that carts still don't go up ramps properly.

For anyone who doesn't know what this means, to get a cart to go up a track-ramp, you have to make the ramp's track direction only go in the uphill direction. For instance, if you have a cart going north up a hill instead of building a NS track-ramp, build a N track-ramp.

One dwarf was harmed by a minecart in the confirmation of this fact.

Perhaps NS track ramp are for going uphill to the north and uphill to the south, not uphill to the north and flat to the south? Not like that's a useful way to place rails.

[penguinofhonor]

edit: Wait.. not sure that loading duties CAN be turned off. Hauling/pushing can be, yes....

I think loading duties would all be the relative haulings. So food hauling lets you load and unload food, wood hauling lets you load and unload wood, etc.

Perhaps NS track ramp are for going uphill to the north and uphill to the south, not uphill to the north and flat to the south? Not like that's a useful way to place rails.

No clue. The way the track-ramps are organized makes them seem like they're supposed to work exactly like the regular tracks. As well as the placeholder for when they're being built looking exactly like an identical non-ramp track.

[PoodleIncident]

Seems more likely to be coded as what direction you can enter the ramp from.

__/|00                 East

00|\__                 West

_____                 East/West

Put another way, you can't actually enter a west ramp from the east side on that z-level. Seems more overthinking things than a bug to me.

[jwest23]

I have a NS ramp that seems to work just fine.

It only took one roller to move a cart fully loaded with stone up one level.

And I can also confirm that guiding that same cart up works well.

[Sadrice]

While doing some roller science, I encountered an interesting bug.  Carts get stuck when they try to take u turns at high speed (if you contain it so they don't derail).  Rather than getting stuck and stopping, they bounce back and forth at top speed forever.  Also, the only necessary walls are the diagonals.

Code: [Select]

#  wall
/,\,-   tracks
C - cart


#
 /------C
 \-------
#
#
 C-------
 \-------
#
#
 /-------
 C-------
#
#
 C-------
 \-------
#
 
The cart goes forever, and if creatures will happily path through it.  Striking creatures does not slow the cart.  I ordered a dwarf to pasture a pig there, and he passed out on the track and was struck 20 times before I could pause.  He managed to get out of there somehow, but another dwarf came to try and pasture the pig, and was killed in seconds.  You could conceivably use this as an invader trap, though you would have to be careful to keep pets and dwarves out.


I'm quite certain it didn't do this in 34.08, I was using high speed U turns last night in my cart speed tests, but that no longer seems to be an option.

[Psieye]

We need a way to describe a cart's speed.  The obvious is direct velocity (tiles per tick or the inverse, whichever is more convenient), but since pushed cart travel seems to be at uniform speed, with cart weight, material, and dwarf strength and speed having no effect, I think a more useful descriptive unit would be how far the cart will travel in a straight line.  Thus a pushed cart travels at a speed of 200.

Stop - do not call that "speed". Call it momentum, impulse or even displacement-if-straight-line. Anything but "speed" as that will confuse the heck out of readers. What you've described is definitely a useful standard to measure on various minecart scenarios, but "speed" is the wrong word for it.

[Sadrice]

I was wondering about that...  Impulse is much better.

[DanteThanatos]

Has Toady said something about the Profile Management of a Track Stop? I mean...To allow only a single dwarf to use a certain track stop to load/unload/ride?
I was thinking about a locked up fort and the only way in/out beign through minecarts...but with the profile management i could send out only my woodcutters or only the militia, without all the fuss of burrowing a single dwarf for every ocasion.

[Commiesalami]

Two Questions:

On a linear track, Sometimes when a dwarf pushes the cart if flys off in a diagonal.  Ive seen this occur on multiple embarks and in both .08 & .09  Does anyone have any idea why this occurs.  All tracks are aligned properly

In the .09 Im suddenly having trouble filling carts with magma by running them under magma, longer 'dives' dont help.  Is anyone else noticing the same thing?

[penguinofhonor]

Has Toady said something about the Profile Management of a Track Stop? I mean...To allow only a single dwarf to use a certain track stop to load/unload/ride?

This is a good idea but I don't think anything's been said about it.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Minecart Arena Fun!

1. Create a creature (i.e. dwarf) in the arena who starts holding a minecart "tool".
2. Drop the minecart on the ground.
3. Press "u" to interact with the cart.
4. Select to Ride in a direction of your choice.
5. While riding, select push or ride in the same or other directions, causing you to gain (vector) speed.
6. Enjoy jumping chasms, skipping on liquids, running down creatures, and vaulting your sorry corpse over the arena castle when you ram into the wall at high speed.
7. Enjoy Putting items into the minecart while you are holding it, and then kicking it down test ramps or at fortifications.
8. Enjoy jumping out of moving/flying minecarts (passengers retain momentum realistically, so this is just as dangerous as jumping out of a car on the highway)

FYI when you run down goblins in your battle carts, the dwarf passenger is unharmed. If you ram a wall, you will be ejected and either collide with your own cart, or get vaulted over the wall in a parabola.

PS - you can mod the arena layout in the data\init\arena.txt to make interesting testing grounds.

[Socializator]

My ramps are working fine as well.  I have contructed (not carved, not sure now if it is even possible?) the NS ramp (for line going north-south) on the lower floor only. Initially I have constructed on both levels, but that was obviously stupid. rest of the tracks are however also constructed, so I didnt have to do any overlap etc, just built the | line on the tiles next to the ramp.

[Burmalay]

You know what? I finally did this *&^$&^@ shotgun! =)
My problem was: The ramps which I built was only  1-directional (N,W,S,E) but not (EW,NS)

[rhesusmacabre]

Now that minecarts can be specified in stockpile settings, it's possible to load a minecart with other minecarts, up to twelve at a time. With a bit of fiddling, you are then able to load that and similar minecarts onto another minecart. Etc.

If you happen to have a lot of gold or silver lying around, this could lead to a very heavy cart indeed.

I have contructed (not carved, not sure now if it is even possible?) the NS ramp...

To carve an NS (or similar) ramp, you need to designate across the tile, starting 1 tile north/south then over the ramp to the opposite tile.