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[TerryDactyl]

I think people doing large downhill runs are trying to make them too compact.

Or hardly compact enough!
Dig a channel straight down from the top to the bottom of your run, and push your carts into the hole. They'll get there, faster than anything!

[Martin]

Stops can be hooked to levers and pressure plates so you can either deactivate all of the stops when you power the rollers to take the cart back up.

I hadn't realized that at all.  Thanks for posting, Martin.  I had started planning out circuits, which is an arduous way of dealing with the problem, at best.

Presumably, and I haven't gotten that far yet, but you can put a pressure plate set to trigger for full carts vs empty ones and hook that to a stop. If there's anything in the cart, it stops. If not, it sails through. Hook to a door behind a pit or behind a turn, and you can send the empty carts down a level or around a corner and let the full ones jump the pit/go straight by opening the door, or use rollers to reverse the direction of the cart. There's really quite of lot of possibilities here - limited mainly by the sensitivity (or lack thereof) of the pressure plates.

[khearn]

Anyone found a reliable way to make a pushed cart go down 20+ Z-Levels AND being able to use the same Track to go back up again?

I tried doing 3 ramps, then a u-turn, then 3 ramps etc etc and putting Stops with highest friction on the u-turn. Full cart goes down fine but spills itīs contents somewhere on the way. Empty cart stops at the first Track Stop.

I had a track in a that went down about 100 z-levels that I could send carts down with a push. They had to be guided back up, though. This was 0.34.08 or 0.34.09 I think. It was just a simple helix:

Code: [Select]

level 0
XXXXX
X╔▲XX
X▼XXX
XXXXX
XXXXX

level -1
XXXXX
XXXXX
X▲XXX
X╚▼XX
XXXXX

level -2
XXXXX
XXXXX
XXX▼X
XX▲╝X
XXXXX

level -3
XXXXX
XX▼╗X
XXX▲X
XXXXX
XXXXX

Continue ad nauseum.

The walls on the outside of the corners keep the cart on track during the trip down, no matter how fast it goes. I like to imagine it grinding against the walls with sparks flying everywhere.

[eLcHi]

Or hardly compact enough!
Dig a channel straight down from the top to the bottom of your run, and push your carts into the hole. They'll get there, faster than anything!

Wow, i didnīt think about that - and it works, thank you

[Aseaheru]

push it everywhere.

[Urist Da Vinci]

LIVE AMMO SHOTGUN:
Method has been verified with fort mode testing.

1. Make a minecart shotgun (where the cart rams a wall at high speed and the contents are ejected over the wall), but add a second stage (the cart's contents also hit a wall and eject their contents over it).

2. Load a cage containing a creature (animal, goblin, dwarf prisoner, etc.) into the minecart. A single cage holding many animals is best.

3. Fire.

4. Watch as the carts shotgun the cages, and the cages then shotgun the creatures (yes, in a conical pattern) in a parabolic path. The creatures suffer no injury until they land, unlike minecart riders, probably because of cage stasis.

Potential uses:
-Shoot goblin POWs at goblin sieges.
-Shoot zombies (necromancer, not evil region) at goblin sieges.
-Launch impressive swarms of war animals.
-Safely (well, for your dwarves) pit creatures in cages without having to open the cages or link them to levers.
-misc stunts and humor.

[Dante]

LIVE AMMO SHOTGUN:
Method has been verified with fort mode testing.

[...]

-Safely (well, for your dwarves) pit creatures in cages without having to open the cages or link them to levers.

Ohmygod, sweet. This will make my training arena 50x faster if I can get it to work.

[brisid]

Some shotgun comments...

2) General observation: if your ammo can be stored in a bin, and you have the source stockpile for the cannon set to have bins, then dwarves will load up whole bins....including the bin, which defeats the point.  Solution is of course two stockpiles, a binned pile set to give to an unbinned pile, set to give to the cannon.

I have been unable to get the 2-layer stockpile to work.  The haulers won't touch the blocks that're in the bins--it seems that they strongly prefer to keep the whole bin intact rather than separate its parts.  Instead, I have resorted to minecart-filled quantum stockpiles, which are useful anyway to replenish ammo stores after battle.  Actually, a better option might be Urist Da Vinci's work with Live Ammo, which might work for un-binning bins in addition to cages.  That'd cut down the hauling jobs for reloading by a factor of 5!  (5 blocks per bin), though you'd then have to ensure that ONLY binned ammo is placed in the cart.

5) Spikes/Corkscrews: upping the lethality on highly wooded maps.

Have you considered glass corkscrews?  With a magma forge, ammo production would require only time.

6) General Observation 3: Once you have defined a stop, you can remove the launch condition, meaning you can have it loaded ready with ammo to fire.

The high-precision knob I'm using is to change the departure condition to Guide when I don't want it to fire (credit to Xmoffitt).  Because shotguns only have 1 stop, dorfs can't figure out where to guide the cart and will instead just stand ready at the cart when it's fill condition is met.  To fire, you just set it to Push and it instantly fires.  Just be careful not to set it to Ride unless you want a Live Ammo-augmented shot.

[brisid]

Rapid-Fire Shotgun
Building on SmileyMan's and Burmalay's work, I have been researching shotguns for fort defense that have reduced reload times comparable to ballistas.

Design:
Side view:

 $ WWWW
X \ WWW               Legend: $=Track+RouteStop+MinecartStockpile
X  \  #                 \=TrackRamp,    W=Wall,     #=Fortification
X   \.W g g g g         X=Stairs,  .=Channel/hole   g=Victims
X_____W                 _=floor

Top-down view (through multiple z-levels):
      #         (note the fortifications to the "sides" of the shotgun)
X$\\\.#
      #

The "$" is the only hauling stop in this shotgun.  You don't need to build a TrackStop on it.  It should Take from at least 2-3 feeder stockpiles that are dedicated to this shotgun.  Additionally, the "$" is also a 1x1 minecart stockpile constrained to allow the minecart that's assigned to the route.
The idea is that after the shotgun effect, the minecart falls an additional zlevel down to a recovery level, and a dorf wanders down the staircase and thru the recovery tunnel to fetch it. He'll then put the cart onto a minecart stockpile; because the "$" is the closest one, he'll just put it there, saving an extra haul. 

Range and Spread:
Projectiles travel at most around 24 units from the fortification, and around 6 units to either side at a maximum 45-degree angle from parallel.  However, the best-damage range is less than 15 units.  I verified that a target 2 spaces away will get hit (significantly!); I haven't tested with a target right beside the wall.

Other Design Considerations:

• To maximize concurrent hauler jobs/minimize reload times, don't share feeder stockpiles between shotguns.
• The minecart should be built of lightweight materials (e.g. wood).
• You should consider arranging your fort to minimize the distance between the shotgun loading room and your meeting hall (or wherever your haulers idle between jobs).
• The logistics of ammo movement during and after battle can be significant.  You may want to use minecart-fed quantum stockpiles to minimize hauling distances during battle, and a reload minecart track (or two) to minimize the cleanup time after battle.  (or combine both requirements into one)
• Additional shotguns should repeat the entire design, including dedicated recovery staircase and tunnel, to ensure minecarts get returned to the correct "$".

Design Rationale:

• The minecart recovery tunnel is necessary to prevent civilian operators from seeing their scary targets.  To minimize the minecart hauling time, the staircase and tunnel are kept compact (however, the significant majority of time between shots is spent loading the ammo).
• The fortification is 1 zlevel above your targets.  In addition to ensuring non-fliers can't use the fortification to scare/attack your loaders, it increases the range slightly (by 4 units), and may increase the number of hits to the head.
• Note that in the top-down view, there are fortifications to the sides that allow projectiles moving at an angle to get through.  Without these additional openings, a significant amount of ammo will get stuck in the fortification and require deconstructing the fortification to retrieve.
• My experiments indicate that additional ramp zlevels beyond 3 make NO difference to the shotgun effect range or angles.
• The walls completely protect against fliers, and the number of fortifications is minimized.  This may be useful against HFS.

[Rafal99]

From my testing it works well with the fortifications on the same level as victims - that way ammo will hit everything on its path, instead of flying above some of the victims.
Also I use roller connected to lever as launching mechanism (instead of dwarf pushing the cart).

So my setup looks like:

Code: [Select]


 $   W
>    W
 \   W
  \  #___g_g_g_g
   \.W
<<<<<W

$   route stop, cart loading place
    after loaded the cart is pushed to west and lands on roller

>   roller powered by gear activated by lever
    the roller and the ramp are made not accesible to dwarves so they can't grab the cart and put it back to route stop

<<  powered rollers bringing the cart back
    after moving to the left it climbs a ramp with powered rollers and finishes its trip on the route stop where it started


I am now experimenting with setup that has many moving carts on a circular track with rollers. Then after the lever is pulled they all are redirected to the launching track and all shoot their contents. The problem I encountered is that after hitting the wall the cart stays at its place for 10 frames, before it falls down. This causes the next cart to hit the first instead of the hitting wall, and it either shoots stuff too early or doesn't shoot at all. So now I am working on a setup that separates the carts so the second one doesn't go to the launching ramp before the path is clear.

[Uristocrat]

LIVE AMMO SHOTGUN:
Method has been verified with fort mode testing.

1. Make a minecart shotgun (where the cart rams a wall at high speed and the contents are ejected over the wall), but add a second stage (the cart's contents also hit a wall and eject their contents over it).

2. Load a cage containing a creature (animal, goblin, dwarf prisoner, etc.) into the minecart. A single cage holding many animals is best.

3. Fire.

4. Watch as the carts shotgun the cages, and the cages then shotgun the creatures (yes, in a conical pattern) in a parabolic path. The creatures suffer no injury until they land, unlike minecart riders, probably because of cage stasis.

Potential uses:
-Shoot goblin POWs at goblin sieges.
-Shoot zombies (necromancer, not evil region) at goblin sieges.
-Launch impressive swarms of war animals.
-Safely (well, for your dwarves) pit creatures in cages without having to open the cages or link them to levers.
-misc stunts and humor.

My dream of a flaming whalegun lives....

[Urist Da Vinci]

...Actually, a better option might be Urist Da Vinci's work with Live Ammo, which might work for un-binning bins in addition to cages.  That'd cut down the hauling jobs for reloading by a factor of 5!  (5 blocks per bin), though you'd then have to ensure that ONLY binned ammo is placed in the cart.
...

Several pages ago in this thread, I expanded on someone else's MIRV idea, and then theorized animal shotguns.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109460.msg3315406#msg3315406

TLDR; It seems that any container will shotgun its contents when it impacts a surface at sufficient velocity. However, we can only accelerate minecarts on rails at this time.

The bins would be left behind, as well as any non-binned ammo, so it could be loaded into the cart for the next shot.

[SmileyMan]

Have you considered glass corkscrews?  With a magma forge, ammo production would require only time.

The damned map with my cartcannons has by dint of bad luck got no iron (i checked with dfhack prospect, a small cheat I'm sorry for), and not even any tin to make bronze, so glass might be a good option. I'm digging down to the magma at the moment, but it's quite a bad tempered fort due to the constant testing of live ammunition on migrants and the need to sucker the greenskins in close enough with a few decoy dwarves, so progress downwards is slow.  A recent tantrum spiral took out 40 or so.

I'm not sure there's any sand though.  It's going to have to be copper at this rate.  Another alternative I might test is using metal bars - there's quite a lot of platinum about, which is twice as dense as silver, so should pack a punch.

I have the 2-pile system working perfectly; have you made sure the material settings for both piles are identical, and match the desired items for the cannon stop? Also make sure that the stop takes from the binless pile, and the binless pile takes from the binned pile?

[brisid]

I have the 2-pile system working perfectly; have you made sure the material settings for both piles are identical, and match the desired items for the cannon stop? Also make sure that the stop takes from the binless pile, and the binless pile takes from the binned pile?

Yep, I verified all that.  And when I manually got rid and disabled bins, my blocks flowed from one to the other to the minecart as expected.  I remember that my binless pile had a superset for desired items, but it only took from the binned piles, and the minecart wanted the exact same materials as the binned pile.  I wonder what I did wrong.

[Quatch]

So how do minecarts interact with traps (weapon, stonefall, etc?) laid on the trackway?