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[Ravendarksky]

I use minecarts for:

- Dumping things quickly
- Creating deathdealing traps
- Removing annoying dwarf children
- Training Swimming
- Making obsidian/magma at the surface without FPS loss and removing the need for stack pumps.
- Dwarfputing, especially levers which cause the same affect when pulled each way and accurate clock timers.

[Snaake]

The point of this thread was not about minecarts being useless. They're invaluable in every area but mining.

Magma hauling indeed works. Someone has even come up with an automated version:
1) Set up a stockpile for minecarts only.
2) Build a trackstop tacking from it and dumping into a magma moat.
3) Build three-tile long medium rollers in moat. The exit ramp should be covered by rollers.
4) Place second minecart stockpile so that cart exiting moat would stop on it.
5) Place third cartpile where you need carts to be hauled assign wheelbarrows and set it to take from the second.

(1-week necro only)

While this seems really promising, it seems to have one fatal flaw: you can't set track stops to take from anywhere, it's the route that the minecart is assigned to. And you can't set a route to automatically take new minecarts once it loses the old one, or have I missed something?

Ah, the ambiguity of "dumping in magma moat" got me. The track stop is set to dump in the direction of the magma moat, and it has it's own minecart on it, which then gets loaded with empty minecarts from the stockpile, which then get automatically dumped in the moat.

This system is really quite nice, and has the great side of being able to stockpile magma-filled minecarts wherever you want, without any oversight needed. A bucket chain method for magma, really. And now I'm envisioning magma-cannon setups (with manual loading, not like the pressurized-water-requiring autocannon one).

P.S. if this method can be used to fill the minecarts, you don't even need to power the rollers. Might be tricky to get to work with the fact that the scheme above requires that the minecarts end up in magma after being dumped out on on a cart stop (the ending up in a minecart stockpile full part is easy, just derail into one). One possibility might be them falling down a dump chute with track ramps at the bottom, which hopefully will "catch" the minecarts, if they're treated the same whether they're previously-on-a-track minecarts or minecarts as items which were being hauled. I'll have to test this, once I get around to digging deeper from all my moat-fiddling and siege cleanups.

[maluraq]

The point seemed to be that mine carts are fairly useless for their intended purpose -- hauling. The prevailing attitude is that setting up track and routes is more trouble than it is worth from a hauling perspective.

I've gotten really good at setting up the routes personally ... now that I understand the process.  When mining out large areas, I designate 3x3 stone piles with 3 wheelbarrows each and engrave a mine track from each to a central dump hole (with built track stops set to dump) that dumps all the ore/stone many Z levels down to where it will be smelted in the forges.

PS I set a hatch one Z level up from where I want the stones collected, and attach it to a pressure plate at the entrance to the lower storage room so the pile of stone waits one Z level up and falls just as the dwarf enters instead of landing on his head from 50+ levels up

[flameaway]

malurg,

Yeah, I do that small stockpiles with 3 wheelbarrows myself.  I just bag the track and have my dorfs use wheelbarrows to transport the loaded mine-carts.  It's fast in game time, but fairly micro-managey. Have to setup a lot of mine cart stockpile.  I use macros, And I use a lots of wheelbarrows.

I also like using mine cart as stock piles.  So each of my shops has one.  And these I use track for.  Guided.  I can put everything in a really small area doing this.  And my goods move around really fast. I've generally got my trade goods to the depot before the traders arrive.  No special Depot stockpile.  Everything is just where I use it.  I also don't generally have specific stockpiles as such.  I have a lot of 1x1 specific stockpiles with a mine cart attached.

[callisto8413]

If they were easier to program I might use them but -

1. I like to try to keep workshops near stockpiles so there is no need for minecarts...
2. Wheelbarrows seem to work very well...
3. By the time you set up the tracks and such, the ore has been removed already...so...yeah...
4. The Union of Haulers gets mad when I talk about minecarts....

[flameaway]

Callisto,

"1. I like to try to keep workshops near stockpiles so there is no need for minecarts..."

Rather: with minecarts there's no need for sprawling stockpiles.  One mine cart can hold 83 blocks, or 500 food.  That's space, time and FPS savings.

Plus they make awesome item filters.  You can tell a cart to pick up only plump helmets or any other subset of items that you wish. 

Mobile stockpiles, just like a railroad.

My forts are much more organized with minecarts than without.