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[Sus]

Put walls at the turns, exept for one corner. Put a floodgate there.
If something hostile (goblins, elves, children) wanders past the floodgate open it. Minecart gun.

+1 Dorf to you sir, you've just perfected the Dwarven Railgun. 

[Niyazov]

Put walls at the turns, exept for one corner. Put a floodgate there.
If something hostile (goblins, elves, children) wanders past the floodgate open it. Minecart gun.

haha BRILLIANT

bonus- use a pressure plate

gotta try this

[krenshala]

Use a bigger loop, with multiple roller stages to maintain speed, and you can put multiple carts on the track at one time.

Bonus points for having a siding to "reload" the loop.

BTW, OP, that typewriting looking button next to the one for subscripts converts text to fixed width fonts.  Not that your diagram was in any way confusing.

[saltmummy626]

thanks for the advice on the walls and the forum function stuff. ive been experimenting a bit with power, it seems that even the smallest amount of excess power can really send a cart flying. I added the walls some of you recommended, and that has made some improvement. the carts on my left hand rail can go for a very long time without having to be pushed. as was mentioned, I think the multiple rollers will keep the momentum up powering them should be no problem as I have learned the art of the windmill battery. the new release, 34.10, should help with keeping the carts on the rails. im thinking of a sort of loop that stretches across my entrance now, the booster would have been cool, but it just isnt viable. ill put two access wagons that go under the loop for when wagons and traders come.  to keep the unmounted ones out of the loop, Ill build a set of 4 raising bridges that will completely seal the loop off from the outside. once the wagons and traders are in, I lower the bridges and extend the path covers. how does that sound?

I should probably be trying this in an area with no enemies first...

[Sadrice]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your design, but what's moebius about this?

[Martin]

I think I have a design suggested over on the How Does Minecart thread that would qualify. Haven't built it yet, but I'm pretty sure it will work. Basically the cart would run a figure 8 back over its own track and using pressure plates and bridges would keep alternating two paths into the fortress, so invaders would always see an open path, but they could never actually reach the inside of the fortress. Plus there's a mine cart trying to constantly run them over.

[SharkForce]

i wonder if you could make your dwarven railgun self-reload. what happens if a cart gets launched and slams into a wall... does it just drop onto stuff below, wheels down? (ie, will it land on a track?)

if so, you could design a long entry hallway, send a cart (or 3 carts, side by side, or a series of carts, 3 carts across, for a trade entrance), have the railgun opening at one end, and a hole at the other end, which can drop the cart onto rollers. the cart would then simply loop back around and up two stories, then drop down another hole into your acceleration track (onto another roller, of course).

of course, that will call for a few more windmills (or perhaps just use dwarven perpetual motion machines), but uhhh... self-reloading dwarven railgun sounds like it would be worth it. (also, depending on what happens with the corpses, you should either get a location where you can seal off the railgun to prevent it from firing, and loot the corpses, or maybe wind up with cartloads full of your enemyes' corpses that you use to crush your other enemies. what's not to like?)

of course, i haven't really tested any of this... but i can always *hope* it will work

[Martin]

Yeah, I think you can get it to reload. I've successfully dropped carts onto roller tracks and sent it off. I think the challenge with most of these self-sufficient tools is that the carts will collide with each other, so we need to develop some kind of system to regulate the introduction of carts, unless you want to rely on just one - and what's the fun in that?

[Sadrice]

Carts stack vertically, so at the reloader you can have a vertical shaft that they drop down, providing a nice clip of minecarts.

[Martin]

Nice. But if you activate a roller under the stack, does only the lower one fire off?

[Sadrice]

As soon as the next one falls it will fire too.  You can use a hatch to hold the rest of the stack up until you want to chamber another round.

[omg_scout]

google mobius loop and please change the topic, cause i was disappointed to see normal loop. anyway, great job!

[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

Mobius Loop?

You mean time travel is possible in Dwarf Fortress?

[Martin]

As soon as the next one falls it will fire too.  You can use a hatch to hold the rest of the stack up until you want to chamber another round.

Ok, I'll build that in my rail testing fortress and test it out. Alternatively, since the rollers have to be powered, don't gear assemblies trigger instantly and escape the 100 tick reset time? Have the departing cart turn off the rollers by disengaging a gear assembly so the next cart isn't powered, then either manually trigger the assembly back on, or put another pressure plate farther down the track to reengage the assembly. You should be able to time out a machine gun that way. Put a 2nd gear assembly on a lever or a floodgate at the end of the rollers to turn the automatic fire on or off.