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Author Topic: Usefulness of Minecarts?  (Read 9435 times)

TinyShenanigans

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Re: Usefulness of Minecarts?
« Reply #30 on: May 18, 2012, 07:50:37 pm »

Messed around a bit more with the above fort, extended the z-level drop a bit, set a carpenter up down there with a 1 tile wood stockpile directly under the drop, and have had him making beds on repeat so he'd have to be accessing the pile as often as poss, he's managed to avoid getting hit up to now but i guess it's only a matter of time before he'll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, after all the carpenter has to be lucky every time he wants to make a bed, the flying pile of lumber only has to be lucky once, then it's bye bye carpenter.

With wood i guess you aren't chopping trees all the time, so there comes a point where the cart's not being filled until i designate more trees to be felled, so i guess locking the stockpile behind a door for a little while when you're logging works or other similar ways of making it inaccessible for a time, with your quarry and stone though i assume your gonna be digging a lot more than i'll be chopping trees, and your carts are gonna be dropping much more frequently, could you put a hatch perhaps at some stage of the drop that you link with a lever so you are choosing when stuff falls?

Maybe a more elaborate pressure plate system that blocks the minecart or the drop at some point triggered when your crafters head over to pick up an item so when they are stood on the stockpile there's no way for stuff to drop on them, then opens up again when they leave? (i don't know if that's possible, i've never really played with pressure plates but it sounds sort of reasonable i think)
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Usefulness of Minecarts?
« Reply #31 on: May 18, 2012, 08:14:25 pm »

I figured out my issues with my system with the simple but clever solution of actually telling them dwarves to draw from the wood stockpile. My wood is dropped into a secondary stockpile just off the main one, which in theory gives its wood to the main one, which is right next to the carpenter's workshop. In practice, they seem to prefer dumping wood down the hole. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that they get to ride down the track when they do so>
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Martin

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Re: Usefulness of Minecarts?
« Reply #32 on: May 18, 2012, 09:47:05 pm »

Maybe a more elaborate pressure plate system that blocks the minecart or the drop at some point triggered when your crafters head over to pick up an item so when they are stood on the stockpile there's no way for stuff to drop on them, then opens up again when they leave? (i don't know if that's possible, i've never really played with pressure plates but it sounds sort of reasonable i think)


Yeah, I think a pressure plate/hatch system could work. With multiple dwarves it'd break though, since a 2nd dwarf could wander through between the open and close signals and arrive at the pile just when the next load lands on him. Limit to one dwarf in some way (that stockpile feeds multiple others and only has one wheelbarrow, all workshops only take from the others) and it could work.


I like to dig out massive vertical quarries. 20x40 or so and sometimes 100+ z levels deep. I was thinking about digging a shaft to the bottom of the expected quarry, drop everything down there, and send it all back up along the same track no matter what level of the quarry they're working on. I'm thinking that a boulder striking a dwarf in the head from a 100+ z level plunge would be epically lethal. So, I'm trying to avoid that most of the time.


Alternatively, we have a new good solution for vampires. Put them to work down in a segregated section of the fortress and exchange materials exclusively through cart dumping. They don't need food or booze, and if you drop a log on them, no biggie - they heal fast.
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