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[Rhaken]

I believe I have found a neat little shotgun setup.

Three minecarts, side by side, set to fill up with ballista bolts. Ideally, once all the bugs are ironed out, you'd put these directly on deactivated rollers. At the pull of a lever, these rollers flip on, flinging the carts down the tracks and into fortifications some 3 z-levels down, spilling their contents. I built a roof 2 z-levels above the fortifications to allow the massive bolts to fly out, straight into a wide entrance hallway that invaders have to pass through to get into the fort.

Ballista bolts are sufficiently massive that they can shatter bones AND fling most living things they hit for a few tiles. Each minecart carries some 16 bolts, making it far more efficient than a traditional ballista battery - and simpler to design too! I'm currently using the spread of the ballista bolt volley to figure out where exactly to stick a backing bridge for them to smash into. Then it's time to play the waiting game - almost 3 years and the goblins still haven't shown up.

[Sadrice]

My main efficiency gains have been in the wood, charcoal, and furniture industries.  A cart runs from the forested part of the map into a tunnel where the wood is dumped down a chute to the room with the carpenter shops and charcoal furnaces (no direct path to the fort for non fliers).  Then, from that room two short tracks collect furniture and charcoal and dump it down into my quantum furniture pile and foundry rooms, respectively.  I also have a finished goods cart that dumps into the depot room (the only internal path from the depot room to the main fort goes through a usually locked hatch), and a food and cloth cart that leaves the depot room.  If I bought metal things to melt, I would also add a track for those, dumping into the foundry.  You can also add a surface track to dump meltable goblinite to the smelters, and another to dump waste goblinite into the magma.  Someone mentioned a cart that dumped reanimateable refuse into magma for automated zombie control.


I haven't found carts to be very useful for ore or stone in most situations, but I had a fort in which I had an obsidian layer that was used for all stone objects, and a track linking it to the stone shops, and I can see carts being useful for magnetite or kaolinite deposits.  Also, dwarves use wheelbarrows for moving stone to stockpiles, but not for dumping, so if you want to clear all the loose stone from an area, carts are the way to go, either for taking it to the surface/magma, or just to quantum dump it in a corner.


Overall, I have found carts to be less useful for their obvious purpose, transporting goods over a longer distance, and very very useful for automatic quantum stockpiling.


pre edit: Carts can be useful for lumber if your fortress is on a treeless mountain side, with a somewhat distant thick forest (which is my ideal embark).  It's also useful because it automatically quantum stockpiles it next to your workshops.

[NW_Kohaku]

I haven't found carts to be very useful for ore or stone in most situations, but I had a fort in which I had an obsidian layer that was used for all stone objects, and a track linking it to the stone shops, and I can see carts being useful for magnetite or kaolinite deposits.  Also, dwarves use wheelbarrows for moving stone to stockpiles, but not for dumping, so if you want to clear all the loose stone from an area, carts are the way to go, either for taking it to the surface/magma, or just to quantum dump it in a corner.


Overall, I have found carts to be less useful for their obvious purpose, transporting goods over a longer distance, and very very useful for automatic quantum stockpiling.

Perhaps try using them with sand or clay and transporting those to magma kilns.  That is the obvious thing I would try to set up, especially as people have mentioned that they don't try to use stone for crafts or furniture anymore.   

One of the first things I wanted to try was to set up a chute to drop clay and sand down to magma kilns using a shutter system to try to reduce possible injuries from falling sand.  However, I then thought about how it might be better to use a full cart loop so that the goods could be transported all the way back up to surface-level dwarves on the return trip. 

It's just... I haven't gotten around to making a two-lane corkscrew track 100 z-levels tall. 

[Techhead]

I'm surprised there haven't been any attempts at minecart logic yet.

[Uristocrat]

One of the first things I wanted to try was to set up a chute to drop clay and sand down to magma kilns using a shutter system to try to reduce possible injuries from falling sand.  However, I then thought about how it might be better to use a full cart loop so that the goods could be transported all the way back up to surface-level dwarves on the return trip. 

It's just... I haven't gotten around to making a two-lane corkscrew track 100 z-levels tall.

Why don't you just transport a few tiles worth of magma *up* 100z and use it to place magma workshops near the surface?

[The Grackle]

Have there been any accidents with drop-chutes? I like the idea of them, but with falling objects now striking creatures, I feel they're inevitable murder machines.  Your smelters will eventually get a load of magnetite dumped on their heads.  I haven't thought a good way to have  bridge appear over a worker's head while he's on quantum stock pile. Pressure plates would work if you could reverse their On and Off signals.

[Burmalay]

The way to avoid enemy horde of flying beasts down the shaft when you works on the surface:

                          Ш                       T
Upper             []                           TTT
Fortress          []     []\                 TTTT
_____________[]___[][]\====Ш_____T

_____ - floor
=== - track
[] - wall
T - tree
Ш - minecart

Just shoot the cart over the fortress wall, makes the way much safer & only then drops it down to shaft.

[TerryDactyl]

I'm surprised there haven't been any attempts at minecart logic yet.

No kidding. Mechanical logic memory cell. No more fussing around with pump stacks.

[webber]

That will indeed work IRL.

OK. I was still thinking about simultaneous drop.

If you pick up a magma cart or pick up the magma[833] stack, fiery death ensues.

Objection! My haulers were moving magma carts pretty well just a day ago. Did Toady change this in 34.09?

[TerryDactyl]

A simple repeater - inspired by the 'particle accelerator' seen above.
┌─┐. ║
^  ,  rgg
└─┘L║
where ^ is a pressure place on a loop track, r is a roller, and g's are both gear assemblies. ║ is a power source from elsewhere. L - lever toggles power to the circuit (disables gear).

Generates a pulse configurable to various speeds.

[TinyPirate]

If you minecart dump onto a stockpile, the stockpile is not counted as holding the goods, right? When I was testing a minecart dump stockpile would feed workshops happily but seemed to be ignored for hauling to other pile jobs. This is handy, but makes minecart chaining (cart to dump to cart to dump) hard, correct?

[NW_Kohaku]

Why don't you just transport a few tiles worth of magma *up* 100z and use it to place magma workshops near the surface?

Because that's not as fun!

What do we have minecarts for at all if we aren't going to do unnecessarily complex giant logistics circuits with them?

[elcr]

Is there any way to get dwarves to always ride minecarts whenever possible, even if they aren't doing a hauling job, and even if there's nothing in the minecart? It would save a lot of time to line the halls with tracks and have dwarves simply take a cart instead of walking.

[NW_Kohaku]

Have there been any accidents with drop-chutes? I like the idea of them, but with falling objects now striking creatures, I feel they're inevitable murder machines.  Your smelters will eventually get a load of magnetite dumped on their heads.  I haven't thought a good way to have  bridge appear over a worker's head while he's on quantum stock pile. Pressure plates would work if you could reverse their On and Off signals.

I've seen some designs that are based upon "one way door" approaches.  They were used to prevent vampires from getting in.

Basically...

Code: [Select]

#####
##=##
#.#.#
#^#.#
#+#+#
#.#^#
#.#.#
.....
Where # = wall,
. = Floor,
= is the dump point with a retractable bridge or hatch in the tile above it to shield the dwarf,
+ is a door,
and ^ is a pressure plate.

The idea is that when no dwarves are entering the chamber, the chute's hatch/retractable bridge is retracted so items can fall, the left door is open, and the right door is shut.  This means the dwarf coming to pick things up enters on the left, which triggers the left pressure plate.  This triggers a state switch in a distant pump, causing it to pump water onto a pressure plate that is set to activate with water on it, and trigger the shutting of the safety hatch, closing of the left door, and opening of the right door. 

When the dwarf has picked up all the junk, they will re-path, and notice that the door they came in through is shut, but the right door is open, so they will go that way, and step on the other pressure plate. This opens the floodgate (or activates the pump that drains the water back to the initial position) in that remote pressure-plate water chamber, resetting the state after the dwarf has left to initial conditions, and letting more junk fall.

Note that you can use a raised drawbridge and floodgate combo instead of doors if you make the passage stretched out a little further to save yourself trouble on making a "not" gate. 

You should also take steps to ensure no more than one dwarf will enter into this area at a time, such as making only one dwarf have burrow privileges to this dump and be a dedicated hauler to a stockpile on the other side of this chamber.

[mdqp]

I have been reading this thread for a while, but I might have missed a post or two, so I apologize if this was already asked/answered, but has anyone already used minecarts to bring magma from the magma sea to the surface to create magma based workshops and furnaces? If the answer is yes, how long did it take, and was it considerably easier than putting together a pump stack or creating a small colony closer to the magma sea?