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[DuckBoy2]

Lets face it, these are !!fun!! times, and there are simply certain environments in which you can't afford to have any Building Destroyerable doors into your fortress.  Sometimes you can't even be arsed to lower the drawbridge for migrants.  But I have a solution.

Combining Live Ammunition Dwarven Rounds (LADR) with Fortification Induced Atomic Transubstantiation (FIAT), worthy migrants can enter your -Completely Sealed- fortress!  But how do these Dwarf Only - Non Pathable - Completely unpowered entrances work? 

Well all it takes is a minecart, a pick, and a beard. 

As you might have read from the excellent minecarts thread, a dwarf (or any other creature or item) contained in a minecart of sufficient speed when the minecart hits a wall will go flying out of the minecart.  As the minecart hits the wall, they will be magically teleported one tile up, and then launched in the general direction the minecart was traveling, with a deviation of up to 45 degrees. 

What you may not know however, is that a dwarf in midair is not a solid.  A falling dwarf can fall through fortifications, floor grates, fly through wall grates and vertical bars, and then resolidify on the other side completely unharmed. 

The final construction, viewed from the side, looks like this


T.
 R.  W
  R..F   (Your Fort!)
   RTW

'W' is wall, 'F' is fortification, 'R' is track ramp, 'T' is track  '.' is open space
The top T is set to ride toward your fortress, the bottom T is set to guide back up


So there you have it, a unpowered, dwarf only, reusable, completely sealed, unpathable, indestructible entrance in an unassailable fort, all in the space of maybe 7 tiles, constructable with an engraver and a miner in the first minute of fortress construction. 

And all with only a minor ~50% casualty rate due to floor skidding and walls, all of which are preventable with even copper mail and helm, and the vast majority of which are non fatal!

And finally, when your fort has reached capacity, you need only replace the fortification with a wall (or volcano), increasing the casualty rate to a staggering 100%

[Urist Da Vinci]

An flying minecart will also pass through a fortification, whereas a rolling minecart will collide with the fortification. A minecart can be made "flying" by having it drive at speed over a 1-tile-wide hole just before the fortification. This allows you to send minecarts with items or riders through a fortification wall without injury.

[DuckBoy2]

Can I assign a route through a fortification with a single minecart?  One major benefit of my version is that the single minecart is reused by every migrant, and you don't have to go to the routes screen to assign new vehicles.  It would be amazing to be able to assign the same mine cart to be pushed back through the fortification when done.  If you don't care about having to reassign vehicles to the route, then I guess another fortification higher up with a mine cart full of minecarts that shoots minecarts back outside would work.  I don't want anything that would force me to reassign vehicles.  Otherwise you'd need a minecart per migrant, and I usually just put the entrance directly adjacent to the hospital to train up doctors on the road rash  

[Panando]

Maybe the causality rate (to blunt force trauma) would go down if you landed them in a pond.

[DuckBoy2]

Urist Da Vinci, You are absolutely right!

You can get an ever so slightly less compact design that does not cause casualties!

From above

WRT.FTTS
STTTF.RW

W = Wall
R = Track Ramp (EW)
T = Track (EW)
. = Hole
F = Fortification
S = Track Stop (turns

Stop 1 is on top of the northwest wall, orders are to ride east
Stop 2 is at the northeast track stop, orders are to guide south
Stop 3 is on top of the southeast wall, orders are to push west
Stop 4 is at the southwest track stop, orders are to guide north. 



I believe you can just leave out everything after stop 3 on the outside of fortress side, and the migrants will just go grab the minecart and bring it back to stop 1. 

(Casualty rate not guaranteed to be 0%, especially if anyone pushes towards a ramp, you may need more track stops.)

[Mistercheif]

Duckboy, I think the future robotic overlords like you. ^

And more on topic:

I did not know flying creatures/minecarts ignored fortifications and such.  I'll definitely have to try this when I get around to figuring out exactly how minecarts work...

[Xenos]

I will now construct these in all future fortresses to be siege proof.