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[Broseph Stalin]

- have the flux and ore stockpile at the bottom give to the smelters (and maybe 1 smelter where you only melt items which doesn't take from either stockpile, which seems like a good idea anyway, due to the fractions of bars thing). There should be a way of setting it up right, you just haven't done so. This is totally unrelated to whether you're using minecarts or not.

I think there may be (at least recall having some trouble with it) some issues with the stockpile in the square the cart dumps to (also applies to bottom of chute, I guess), namely that the game doesn't necessarily recognize stuff dumped there as being in the stockpile. I thought it was resolved though. In any case, with a multi-z-level minecart dump chute, I'd probably go for the locked doors+pressure plates+fall-speed-braking intermediate hatches to avoid/lessen the fatality of head injuries, assuming falling distance/speed have any effect on the level of the injury...

On that though, would helmets reduce falling damage from items? In Nethack, a hard helmet could be pretty important for this purpose. It would be good training for your armorcrafter, just put the smelterhaulers in a squad and give them a uniform with copper helms. The problem with this is that until burrows can be set to "only these dwarves", you'll get haulers from elsewhere going in there as well. Unless of course you do as someone claimed to have done: magma industries as a completely isolated fort complete with magnificent dining and sleeping quarters. Food, booze, ore, etc. delivered via minecarts, magma industry endproducts sent out via powered minecarts.

Being struck by falling stone is no different than having it thrown at you during combat, there's no reason it a helmet wouldn't act as armor against head injury. It also negates falling damage for clumsy miners.

[DJ]

I haven't actually played the version with carts yet, so I don't know if this is feasible, but if it is I can see them being plenty useful for ore hauling on large embarks.

Set up a rail grid on one z level, with regular stations. Dwarves use wheelbarrows to haul ore to a station from the volume (not area) surrounding the station (ie it covers many z-levels). Then a cart takes the ore from the mining station to the grand central station (ie workshops area). The ore should, in theory, make most of it's way from mining site to the smelters on cart, which should be more efficient than wheelbarrowing it all the way.

[Rakushun]

Hey, if you dump stuff down a chute and there's a cart at the bottom, will it go into the cart? That would be useful. Also, can pressure plates be activated by stone in the square?

[Urist Da Vinci]

Hey, if you dump stuff down a chute and there's a cart at the bottom, will it go into the cart? That would be useful. Also, can pressure plates be activated by stone in the square?

No, and no.

[Sutremaine]

That's... really ingenious, if it works.

I've used two linked stockpiles to shift stone out of an area I wanted clear for further construction. There were no minecarts involved in that, but it shows that it's possible for dwarves to limit their hauling range.

[King Mir]

In my fort I have various industries connected by minecarts. For instance, my smelters create nickel. This gets hauled up to the decoration floor to be studded on something. The stonecrafter also sends his product to the decoration floor. Then the forge on the decoration floor takes from both the nickel and stone crafts, studs them with nickel, and outputs to a 3rd stockpile on the same floor. That stockpile sends the goods up to the trade depot.

I'm planning to have a drop-to-bottom minecart arrangements for ore, rock, and maybe more. They are in progress.

Minecarts are great at bringing materials together from far off places. I wish I could find a way to use them to distribute materials in the other direction. Specifically, for construction it would be nice to have a small block stockpile on every floor. But although stockpiles will split evenly between the stockpiles they're linked to, mine-carts don't. Maybe it would be possible to make mine-carts spill a few blocks at a time by making them go at high velocity?

You could always configure the stops so the minecart continues along the route when it's a certain percent full. If you have ten stops, you have the minecart move on from the first stop immediately when 90% full, the second when 80% full and so on, until the last stop at empty. So 100/X where X is number of stops, that's how much you subtract from 100% on each stop. You can't just have the cart dump then, but do you really expect dwarves to set up a system where a minecart dumps precise quantities of things automatically?

You can't set the percent full granularity less than 25%. So that only works for 4 stops.

[clem131]

- Metalsmiths travel all the way to the second level below surface, grab chalk, then head down to make steel. There is a stockpile full of limestone, chalk etc like 10 steps from the smelters. So, not useful for steel making.

- have the flux and ore stockpile at the bottom give to the smelters (and maybe 1 smelter where you only melt items which doesn't take from either stockpile, which seems like a good idea anyway, due to the fractions of bars thing). There should be a way of setting it up right, you just haven't done so. This is totally unrelated to whether you're using minecarts or not.

It IS related in that, assuming minecarts speed up the hauling process, the entire process is useless if dwarves don't pick the closest object. At least, it would make sense for this to be the default behavior if no piles are set to give to the smelter/workshop. I did not know you could set a pile to give to a given smelter so thanks for the suggestion.

I think there may be (at least recall having some trouble with it) some issues with the stockpile in the square the cart dumps to (also applies to bottom of chute, I guess), namely that the game doesn't necessarily recognize stuff dumped there as being in the stockpile. I thought it was resolved though. In any case, with a multi-z-level minecart dump chute, I'd probably go for the locked doors+pressure plates+fall-speed-braking intermediate hatches to avoid/lessen the fatality of head injuries, assuming falling distance/speed have any effect on the level of the injury...

Regarding the fall distance: I had the hatch just above the various stockpiles, so everything fell 1 z level below only. I think multiple small object all clustered together count as a huge heavy object, as injuries where almost always fatal.

Unless of course you do as someone claimed to have done: magma industries as a completely isolated fort complete with magnificent dining and sleeping quarters. Food, booze, ore, etc. delivered via minecarts, magma industry endproducts sent out via powered minecarts.

This sound so awesome and so insane to design I'm not even trying

[SmileyMan]

This sound so awesome and so insane to design I'm not even trying

I've done it, and it's very practical.  They're not completely separate - there's a staircase from the main fort just below the surface to the iron mines between the caverns and the foundries on the magma seas.  But I have happy dwarves in the foundries, and happy dwarves at the surface, and happy miners in the mines.  Burrows being used for what they were originally intended......

[Xen0n]

That's... really ingenious, if it works.

I've used two linked stockpiles to shift stone out of an area I wanted clear for further construction. There were no minecarts involved in that, but it shows that it's possible for dwarves to limit their hauling range.

That 'making a stockpile over existing stones and linking it' thing is a really nifty trick (even for older versions with only the 'take from' option)!  I'm still in 34.07, so I'm wondering, will dwarves still use wheelbarrows to move stones in that situation?  I heard something about wheelbarrows only being used to fill up stockpiles, not take take things from them.  But, in this case you're doing both, so I'm not sure what would happen :?

[Urist_McArathos]

I'm still tweaking how I want to use them for mining, but I've found them useful for moving things efficiently across z-levels when you have workshops on one level, but finished goods going to another.  For instance, my agricultural quarter is always near the surface (so I can pasture my animals and grow surface crops and subterranean crops without having to breach the caverns).  As a result, I have my stockpiles set so that my kitchens recieve all cookable items (except plants that can be brewed, seeds, and rock nut paste), my stills get all brewable plants, and a third stockpile recieves the finished items.



I then have my living quarters about 10 to 12 z levels down to prevent noise from waking my dwarves.  There, another stockpile that only accepts prepared meals and drinks allows dwarves to eat and drink without climbing upstairs.  Before minecarts, I'd have it set to take from the agriculture quarter's stockpile.  Now, I have a minecart linked to fill up with food and drink and get kicked downhill either every 10 days or when its full.  It's then guided back upstairs by a lone dwarf whenever it empties, so I don't need power.  The whole track runs in a loop so nobody every gets hit.



I like it a lot more than the old system; instead of an army of haulers constantly ferrying barrels of food and drink up and down the stairs, the food just arrives safe and sound like clockwork.  I'm thinking a chute system for heavy industry will be great once I reach the magma sea.  I'm forseeing a sand bag stockpile and a clay stockpile close to their collection points, and a minecart periodically picks them up and dumps them down chutes to the magma kilns, while an easily extended system will let me strip mine flux and iron.  Maybe some wheelbarrows move ore and flux to temporarily established stockpiles on a given level, and the minecarts come along and dump it down to the sea.  I agree with the earlier statement that they're more an end-game setup.  You don't build a minecart system with efficiency in mind when you're just starting or for small pockets of items.  It's something you only bother with for fun, or for larger scale work once you're established.  That said, I feel they are definitely worth the effort.

I particularly liked the idea of a garbage man setup where all my various workshops and junk-creating sites can instead just dump their refuse indoors, and a minecart can make its way around the ring and then dump it down to the sea.

[Xen0n]

This sound so awesome and so insane to design I'm not even trying

I've done it, and it's very practical.  They're not completely separate - there's a staircase from the main fort just below the surface to the iron mines between the caverns and the foundries on the magma seas.  But I have happy dwarves in the foundries, and happy dwarves at the surface, and happy miners in the mines.  Burrows being used for what they were originally intended......

I'd be really interested in hearing any details about your setup!   A decentralized fort system is something I've always flirted with but could never quite get to work properly.  When I don't use burrows, the dwarves are terrible at choosing which dining hall / booze stockpile / clothing pile / stone to put in stockpile etc. to use, only picking the closest one about half time; otherwise they make the 100 z-level trek to the opposite site of the giant staircase, wasting tons of time and defeating the purpose of the separate forts.

When I do use burrows, it's arguably worse.  Since burrows just restrict which jobs a dwarf can actually do, but not which ones they attempt, I get flooded by job cancellation spam from dwarves frozen stock-still holding half-empty beer barrels, because they've chosen the drink stockpile at the magma sea to deposit their drink (which is outside their burrow), instead of the stockpile 1 tile away they just picked it up from.  Similar situation for putting other items back in stockpiles (worn clothes, used thread from hospital, seeds, etc.).

Is there a way to make a pathway of some kind that minecarts can traverse, but is literally inaccessible to dwarves?  I feel this would solve a lot of my woes (albeit with a bit more of a complicated system), since the dwarves wouldn't attempt to put an item in a stockpile that they physically can't path to (I hope?).

EDIT: I imagine using roller-coaster style jumps via ramps that sent the cart flying in the air over a chasm could fulfill my requirement of allowing cart movement, but blocking dwarves.  Are minecart ramp-jumping physics reliable enough to make this a consistent system?


EDIT II: The legend of Curly's Gold:

I think I'm over-thinking this.  I could just make the magma-forge fort a sealed cube, with a hole in the ceiling, and a hole in the lowermost floor.  A minecart automatic quantum-dump can dump raw materials and food into the hole in the ceiling, and a similar setup can dump the finished metal goods out the hole in the floor (which could then be scooped up into yet another minecart to bring it all back to the surface).  This would keep dwarves totally sealed inside, but allow materials to automatically and easily flow in and out of the magma work area. 

I'm still in 34.07 so... would this work?

[cainiao]

they really need to add this into minecart system

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Rafal99]

EDIT: I imagine using roller-coaster style jumps via ramps that sent the cart flying in the air over a chasm could fulfill my requirement of allowing cart movement, but blocking dwarves.  Are minecart ramp-jumping physics reliable enough to make this a consistent system?

If you want minecarts to move but block dwarves you just do this:
(side view)

Code: [Select]

=== ===           = - track     _ - floor     O - wall (not needed)
  O_O
Minecart will pass over 1 tile long channel without any problems. The only exception is when the channel is directly next to the track stop from which the dwarves push the cart - in this case the minecart will fall into the channel, so you need to have at least one tile of track before the channel.

I use this to effectively block all my tracks from dwarves passing through them, so no risk of anyone getting hit by minecart.
My usual track looks like this:
(side view)

Code: [Select]

S= ============== =S           

S - track stop     = - track

[Xen0n]

EDIT: I imagine using roller-coaster style jumps via ramps that sent the cart flying in the air over a chasm could fulfill my requirement of allowing cart movement, but blocking dwarves.  Are minecart ramp-jumping physics reliable enough to make this a consistent system?

If you want minecarts to move but block dwarves you just do this:
(side view)

Code: [Select]

=== ===           = - track     _ - floor     O - wall (not needed)
  O_O
Minecart will pass over 1 tile long channel without any problems. The only exception is when the channel is directly next to the track stop from which the dwarves push the cart - in this case the minecart will fall into the channel, so you need to have at least one tile of track before the channel.

I use this to effectively block all my tracks from dwarves passing through them, so no risk of anyone getting hit by minecart.
My usual track looks like this:
(side view)

Code: [Select]

S= ============== =S           

S - track stop     = - track

Excellent! That seems very useful as a general track rule.  Is there some minimum speed the cart needs to be at in order to jump the gap?  (still in 34.07, so don't quite understand how momemtum of just pushing a cart and letting it slow down compares to using lots of rollers to maintain a constant speed.)

Spoiler: Stupid Edit (click to show/hide)

I just noticed your first diagram looks like a surprised face with enormous eyebrows.  I apologise.

[Sabreur]

I take back my earlier anti-minecart comments. My latest fort has tons if usable flux and ore, but its all far from the magma forges. Even with tons of wheelbarrows and haulers, I still can't keep my smelters running at anywhere near capacity. Just putting in a minecart for the flux has worked wonders - I can't wait to see what a couple ore carts can do for my production.

I'm also noticing that my dwarves take forever to haul heavy metal furniture all the way up the stairs, so an output railway to the near-surface furniture stockpile might be wise.