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[Blizzlord]

Apparently, if you drop a cart onto a ramp it doesn't move.  It treats the ramp as a floor.  But you can drop a cart onto a roller just fine.

Does that happen with dropped stones too? If it does then my plans for an Indiana Jones trap are frustrated.

Yes, your trap is screwed. That is, unless you use a loaded minecart to substitute it.

[Bronze Dog]

What's the latest word on what it takes to push a cart up a ramp in .09? I've also got the idea of a spiral cart track, with rollers powered by a central mechanism.

Ideas for others to test, but may have been tried already:

1. A 'taxi' mine cart track with multiple stops near important areas of the fortress. I imagine its utility depends on the dwarves being smart enough to use it.
2. Ambulance: Send injured dwarves from the battlefield straight to the hospital. Risk: The goblins might try it. Probably best to seal it off until after battle.
3. Hell in a handbasket: Quick way to send a noble to the ~circus~. May not be worth the inevitable loss of mine carts.
4. Gladiator transport?: Can transport cages into arenas, though it might be pointless if you still need a mechanic to "build" the cage and install a mechanism to open it.

General stockpile ideas:
Auto-drop off bolts and siege ammo at defense towers.
Watering hole route: Multi-stop for each stockpile, returning to be filled at brewery each time. Might be simpler to have multiple two-way tracks instead.
The Artisan's Retreat: Keep your legendary crafters isolated from the riffraff who are no longer needed to hand deliver materials.

[MrBaker]

Everyone is missing out on a major part of Minecarts.. Training your doctors to take care of the poor fool who walk out in front of it.

[Blizzlord]

Everyone is missing out on a major part of Minecarts.. Training your doctors to take care of the poor fool who walk out in front of it.

That is just a side effect of weapons testing regarding minecartian mining pick shotguns and magma slugs. It has little to do with actual minecart transport usage unless you want to transport the wounded to the execution grounds hospital.

[Martin]

One thing to consider is that carts don't require a continuous path to function. That allows them, with some clever pressure plate/bridge usage, to be open to the outside map while making pathing along the track impossible, even for building destroyers. If you can envision scenarios where that'd be useful, you have your use.

[TinyShenanigans]

I have an embark with a couple of necromancer towers on its borders, i hadn't played enough of the previous update to have encountered vamps, werewolves or the necros yet, so had my usual outside refuse stockpile used as a weapon against me by a sieging necro...painful.

I've since built a minecart track leading from the stockpile to an open volcano, the minecart is set up to take raise-able stuff from the stockpile and shoots them off every 14 days to be incinerated. ^^

That's my best use of them so far, other than that i've got them dropping wood down a few z-levels to my carpenters from a large outside woodpile.

I've been restarting then redesigning my fortresses quite alot since the minecart update, i think i will have to change a few building habits and it'll be a while before i get to grips with working them into my fortress designs.

[CodexDraco]

Apparently, if you drop a cart onto a ramp it doesn't move.  It treats the ramp as a floor.  But you can drop a cart onto a roller just fine.

Does that happen with dropped stones too? If it does then my plans for an Indiana Jones trap are frustrated.

Yes, your trap is screwed. That is, unless you use a loaded minecart to substitute it.

Well, that's unfortunate. I know I can use a minecart but there is certain charm in using a rolling boulder of doom. Hmm... maybe if I do it with a cart derail...

[GreatWyrmGold]

That's my best use of them so far, other than that i've got them dropping wood down a few z-levels to my carpenters from a large outside woodpile.

I'm trying to do exactly that. Praytell, what are you doing to achieve that end goal?

EDIT: Tyops are silly. Fixed.

[khearn]

So is anyone using a minecart for, you know, mining? It seems like my miners can dig faster than my mason/engravers can lay track. So it's still faster for the dwarves to haul the ore/stone out with wheel barrows than to make a track. Plus the fact that you have to have a stockpile and a stop in order to load the cart, so they're even less useful for picking up mining spoils.

[Jalen]

I never use minecarts for hauling stone in my fort. I usually build a gigantic stone quarry and have multiple tracks bringing food, taking stone and the like.

[TinyShenanigans]

To GreatWyrmGold

I restarted my fortress again but just built this example real quick:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before placing a track stop it should give you a couple of options, the one we're after is 'Dump on arrival' controlled by d

So in this case when laying the tracks before placing stop 2 i hit d until it selected dump North on arrival, enter the hauling menu, create a new route, move cursor to stop 1, create a new stop, then [Enter] for define stop, personally i clear the default conditions with x, create a new stockpile link, move to the woodpile hit p to select it, [Enter] to Set desired items (wood in this case), i then set a new depart condition, you can use c to change the condition, change direction or use p to change whether your dwarves push, ride or guide the cart, for this i chose 'push north when full of desired items"

When you're happy with the conditions hit [ESC] to go back a page then assign a vehicle and you're done.  This way will work fine, the dwarves will carry the cart back in this example, but you could easily add another stop to your route with a condition push south when empty.



Probably over explained lol but i wasn't sure where you were getting stuck, that's how i set mine up anyway hope this helps.

[Broseph Stalin]

Minecarts while awesome don't seem to be super practical. If there's a major difference between three dwarves with wheelbarrows taking stone from a digsite to a stockpile and one dwarf hauling stone from a digsite to a nearby stockpile then loading it into a cart then sending the cart to a stockpile I haven't noticed.

[Martin]

I restarted my fortress again but just built this example real quick:

I thought about setting up my quarry to dump stone downward, but I was worried about the dwarves at the bottom getting killed by the falling items, now that they do damage. How do you manage that problem? Or do you just like training carpenters and surgeons?

[roughedge]

The only thing I did so far with minecarts is telling everybody to sit on the rails and another dwarf come riding along on a !FUN! ride. I<m surprised how easy it is to squash a complete dog kennel to pieces and keep going in those carts. So as you see I guess it could be seen as a quick butchering tool... in a way its useful for survival. Can dwarves get good thoughts from riding a cart -question mark-

[TinyShenanigans]

I thought about setting up my quarry to dump stone downward, but I was worried about the dwarves at the bottom getting killed by the falling items, now that they do damage. How do you manage that problem? Or do you just like training carpenters and surgeons?

I never said it was a safe method...

In the hastily scrobbled together example above i only had a 1 z level drop and left the ramp that was also the only acces route down there, about 30 seconds after i finished posting i unpaused it and a dwarf was instantly squished by a bunch of logs ^^

TBH like i confessed earlier i've been restarting alot to play with different designs so only ran the wood dropper thing a couple of times before i restarted, i imagine you could manually alter the conditions of the route so they dont launch and when you're ready to start dumping go in and change it back.

I'm sure there are lots of ways around the problem though.