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[Minnakht]

Has anyone suggested some way of making minecart bouncers?
Basically: If I had a 2x2 passage suspended in the air as a way to enter my fort, could I build two strands of track on the passage, connect their respective ends to form loops, and then put a hellish lot of rollers on there, and finally, send a minecart to each loop?

Sort of like...

Code: [Select]

...XX.I.
.TTTTTT.
.R.TT.R.
.R.TT.R.
.R.TT.R.
.R.TT.R.
.R.TT.R^
.R.TT.R.
.R.TT.R.
.R.TT.R.
.TTTTTT.
...XX.O.

X - floor, T - track, R - rollers (the shape is meant to be two separate, 3x10 loops) I and O - indicators one way is inside the fort and one way is outside the fort, caret - indicator of cart direction ('upwards' on the outer parts of loops)

Basically, I'd like it to work like this - when a lever is pulled, one (or more) minecart per loop starts being rolled by the rollers and going around the loop at an everythingbreaking speed. Goblin invaders or whatnot try to walk on the bridge and get smashed by the minecart. When the lever is pulled again, the rollers depower and the cart stops somewhere, preferably on the outer side of the loop.

Is this doable somehow, and if yes, would it be efficient? Would I need more rollers?

[EvilTwin]

[...]
Would I need more rollers?

You know you want to add more rollers.

[chewie]

Basically, I'd like it to work like this - when a lever is pulled, one (or more) minecart per loop starts being rolled by the rollers and going around the loop at an everythingbreaking speed. Goblin invaders or whatnot try to walk on the bridge and get smashed by the minecart.

Problem is, as soon as the enemies get hit, the minecart stops (or doesn't it?). You might want to put rollers everywhere so it keeps running. But [BUILDINGDESTROYER]s will be able to deconstruct them, I guess.

You could also shoot the carts over a little moat at the enemy and down in the moat are rollers installed that bring the cart back up again.
Will rollers bring a cart that falls on them back on track?

[khearn]

You're carts are probably going to be moving too fast to make the turn onto the bridge. The other turns can be done by having walls on the outside of the turn, but there's no room for walls there.

[xmoffitt]

Pothole Boosters

As an unintended side-effect of my ramp research, allow me to introduce Pothole Boosters!  A Pothole Booster is just a down ramp followed by an up ramp.  However, due to an unintended truncation effects of the physics engine, a cart will often exit the pothole faster than it entered!

As a demonstration, here is a cyclotron that gets up to (and maintains forever) an average speed of about 600 millitiles/tick from a  single push (East from just under the door).   _{Warning, attempts to replicate may be hazardous to the health of your dwarves.}

[Di]

Pothole Boosters

They work indeed, I have one going at near tile per tick right after acceleration. Strangely, down the ramps cart spends 3 ticks on downward ramp (accelerating one) and one on the upward.
It is length sensitive though:
The one which had 10 straight tiles and two turns between accelerators didn't work, but when I had shortened it to 7 straight and two tuns just like in xmoffitt's one, it worked nicely.

[Shoruke]

I need to try this sometime.

Also, will the weight of the ammunition influence damage? So candy stuff might not be so good, but platinum blocks/statues would uberdominate?

Also, if you have an evil area, load up a cart with body parts, shotgun the siegers with them, and then the body parts spontaneously reanimate and keep attacking. (you might want to have a P:FTW type thing handy to deal with the mess of perma-zombies that's going to leave you with, but it would still be funny)

[Sutremaine]

I've never even attempted a pump stack (or anything else requiring 'power'), since as I understand it all the methods used to generate the 'power' in the first place take a huge toll on your FPS, which I can't afford.

The one-wheel reactor can be filled up to the point where the all the tiles have a fixed amount of water but the ones under the waterwheel are still classed as 'flowing'. If you have like 200 levels to move the magma then that's a lot of bucketloads, but anything less than a hundred levels shouldn't be too irritating.

Pulling 2/7 of magma one cart at a time up from the magma sea may not be terribly fast, but it seems like something I could set up very quickly and simply, and just let them slowly fill up a surface reservoir over the course of a few months.

Are you using the magma for offence, or for workshop power? If it's the latter, you only need twice as many cartloads as there are magma workshops.

[ohgoditburns]

I need your help guys.

I have this setup: (side view)

Code: [Select]

HS===
.
^


Where:
^    quantum stockpile of stuff, has pressure plate set to be activated by citizens
.    empty space
H    hatch cover
S=== minecart track with track stop that dump contents into the hatch

And the question is what sort of logic / mechanics should I add between the pressure plate and hatch cover to ensure that contents of the minecart never drop on a dwarf's head.


I was thinking about a simple NOT gate but the issue is that the hatch cover will close 100 steps after dwarf enters the pressure plate and this is enough time for an accident.

I was also thinking about installing two hatch covers - one above another, in such a way that when one opens then other closes. The bottom one would open and drop stuff when the plate sends off signal. The problem is again with the fact that NOT gate would sends open signal immediately while CLOSE signal is sent after 100 frame, so for 100 frames both hatches would be open, and again accidents will happen.

So I am thinking and thinking and can't think of a good design.
I already lost my best Mason when 15 stacks of prepared food dropped on him, don't want it to repeat...

Any ideas?

Here's what I'm currently using. No casualties yet, and very similar to yours.

Code: [Select]

.
.Drop Chute
.
.
# Hatch cover
=+^ Stockpile, Door, Pressure plate linked to stockpile

When a dwarf enters the room, it opens the hatch, and the items fall into the stockpile right before he gets there. (Happens again as he hauls things out.) I'm not sure if single tile stockpiles accept more than one simultaneous job... if it does, then multiple dwarves going in and out could complicate things.

There's an easy way around this though. But a secondary stockpile right outside the quantum drop. Give this one a wheelbarrow and have it only take from the quantum stockpile. This should force there to be only one job active on the quantum drop at a time.

[Xen0n]

I've never even attempted a pump stack (or anything else requiring 'power'), since as I understand it all the methods used to generate the 'power' in the first place take a huge toll on your FPS, which I can't afford.

The one-wheel reactor can be filled up to the point where the all the tiles have a fixed amount of water but the ones under the waterwheel are still classed as 'flowing'. If you have like 200 levels to move the magma then that's a lot of bucketloads, but anything less than a hundred levels shouldn't be too irritating.

I'm actually looking into just covering the surface river with waterwheels, as from your explanation, I take it the river counts as 'flowing' even though the entire river is constantly completely 7/7?

Pulling 2/7 of magma one cart at a time up from the magma sea may not be terribly fast, but it seems like something I could set up very quickly and simply, and just let them slowly fill up a surface reservoir over the course of a few months.

Are you using the magma for offence, or for workshop power? If it's the latter, you only need twice as many cartloads as there are magma workshops.

Yeah, I'm imagining mostly for magma furnaces, so that actually seems pretty fast to get them set up, using guided carts on a 1-tile wide spiral ramp track as soon as I reach magma.  I haven't had much luck with decentralised forts due to all the job cancellation spam due to burrows.
I typically end up turning Temperature off a few years into my forts, before I even reach magma, due to FPS concerns, so I have not done much experimenting with magmatic weaponry (undwarflike, I know :C ).  But I figure if I ever do get to a point someow via tweaking worldgen etc. where I can handle it, I figure setting a cart to dump into an ever-expanding reservoir (keep it small at first to prevent evaporation), could get me a decent amount over the course of a few years, which is how long it'd probably take me to get magma to the surface via convential means, but this has the benefit of only needing a miner to carve out the inital ramps, and then a single hauler to dump magma while I use the rest of my dwarfpower elsewhere.  I suppose multiple tracks dumping into the same reservoir could go even faster.

[ohgoditburns]

I'm actually looking into just covering the surface river with waterwheels, as from your explanation, I take it the river counts as 'flowing' even though the entire river is constantly completely 7/7?

Nope. If you embark on a major river, you'll notice that the tiles on the 'out' end never get to 7/7.

[Xen0n]

I'm actually looking into just covering the surface river with waterwheels, as from your explanation, I take it the river counts as 'flowing' even though the entire river is constantly completely 7/7?

Nope. If you embark on a major river, you'll notice that the tiles on the 'out' end never get to 7/7.

Yeah, that did happen when I first embarked.  I set about putting a floodgate just in front of that area to keep all the remaining river at 7/7 (which worked), but for some reason, now even when I leave the floodgate open the entire river is at 7/7.  I guess I fixed it?  It is a mystery.

[Rafal99]

Yeah, I'm imagining mostly for magma furnaces, so that actually seems pretty fast to get them set up, using guided carts on a 1-tile wide spiral ramp track as soon as I reach magma.

I wonder if it is possible to just build a simple staircase, and have the dwarf simply haul the minecart with magma. Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that the hauling dwarf would have his hands burned or would even die.
But what is I assign him to a squad and give him +Steel gauntlets+ ?
Even if this wont work, how far would such a dwarf haul the magma minecart before his hands burn? Perhaps he long enough so he could climb the 70z-levels staircase? Then I would both have magma in the suface and patients for my doctor to train on.

Going to test hauling of magma minecarts in the arena now.

[Xen0n]

Yeah, I'm imagining mostly for magma furnaces, so that actually seems pretty fast to get them set up, using guided carts on a 1-tile wide spiral ramp track as soon as I reach magma.

I wonder if it is possible to just build a simple staircase, and have the dwarf simply haul the minecart with magma. Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that the hauling dwarf would have his hands burned or would even die.
But what is I assign him to a squad and give him +Steel gauntlets+ ?
Even if this wont work, how far would such a dwarf haul the magma minecart before his hands burn? Perhaps he long enough so he could climb the 70z-levels staircase? Then I would both have magma in the suface and patients for my doctor to train on.

Going to test hauling of magma minecarts in the arena now.

You're doing Armok's work there, Rafal99.  :salute:

[Sutremaine]

I'm actually looking into just covering the surface river with waterwheels, as from your explanation, I take it the river counts as 'flowing' even though the entire river is constantly completely 7/7?

The few tiles at the end aren't, but most of the water isn't moving in a way that eats FPS (items that end up in an undisturbed river don't get moved around. Contaminants do, but not anything that's a haulable object. Compare that with the way pump operators can get pushed around by backwash, or the difference in the arena between the water near the map edges and the water near the top of the waterfall). Water created at one end of the map doesn't move from one tile to another, displacing other water as it goes, but looks around for a tile that isn't full of water and appears there instead. For an average four-tile-wide body of water, this means about a dozen squares actively moving water from tile to tile in a way consistent with normal physics.