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[lap101]

Hey
In my new fort I've decided to try out minecarts (they seem interesting), but I've been wondering, how do I make minecart "spirals", so for example I can get magma from the depths to my workshop level, to fuel magma forges etc.

Also how can I fill the cart from a magma sea? Do I need to create a channel and make the minecart "roll" through it? Do I need to create tracks in the channel?

Also I wonder is there any way other than screw pumps to neutralize water pressure?

Thanks.

[AutomataKittay]

Can't answer the other questions since I don't have enough experience, but you can neutralize water pressure by having it flow through a corner, instead of directly NESW. It's a 'feature' of water pressure that it only leaks at corners, but pressurizes NESW.

[GreatWyrmGold]

One method for filling minecarts with magma is to put a minecart in a room, flood the room with magma somehow, drain the magma, and finally move the minecart elsewhere.

Minecart spirals, as you call them, are probably either tantrum spirals started by minecarts or some kind of twisty, rampy passageway down, with carved tracks everywhere.

[rhesusmacabre]

A powered roller can take a cart up only 3 levels at a time, so the quickest spiral to build is a 2x2 one, with 3 ramps followed by a flat bit. To go down, you can just use a pit.

z=0           z=1           z=2
#X☼#          #Xo#          #Xo#
#╔▲#          ##▼#          ####
#▼##          ##▲#          #▲▼#
####          ####          ####

where ☼ is a gear, o is a vertical axle, X is the access staircase to build the axles, and ▲ and ▼ are carved track ramps.

EDIT: the roller here goes on z=0, on the ramp and facing south.

EDIT2: while this design works, tests have shown that a cart can be pushed up much more than 3 levels at a time. Having 7 ramps instead of the 3 here seems to work best.


To fill a minecart, it is best to drop it into a 1x1 pit of magma, pressurized with a screwpump, with a powered roller on a track ramp to take it out. Just rolling a cart through a channel may not fill the cart, because the cart may be going too fast.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Doesn't magma slow down minecarts?

[rhesusmacabre]

I've not tested the minimum length of a channel to slow down the cart enough (it certainly isn't on a 1 tile long channel). It's simpler just to get the cart to hit a wall then drop it downwards, to make sure it's slow enough.

[CaptainArchmage]

I think if the minecart is magma-safe, you only need to send it down, through an area flooded with magma, up onto a dry section, and then use a track stop. From the track stop you can have a dwarf guide the cart up to the surface (or however far up you have tracks or want it to go) without using any mechanisms or power.

[Triaxx2]

Simplest method is to have a track running into a two wide pit. The three squares before the track ends are three ramps up, so it drops down three ramps, and then shoots up a ramp on the other side. Guide it to just before the ramps, have it Pushed, and it will shoot through the magma and can then be guided up from the other side.

[Sutremaine]

A powered roller can take a cart up only 3 levels at a time

What's your setup for this? I just made a no-flat spiral with a powered roller at the very bottom to see how far it would push a minecart, and it shoved both a candlenut and a platinum cart from level 81 to level 87. I then used DFHack to add water to the platinum minecart to raise its weight to 1315L, and it did exactly the same thing. Same for magma, which raised the weight to 1855L. The two filled platinum minecarts paused on the first ramp tile for a couple of ticks and ascended the ramp at a rate of one level per tick until they reached level 25, at which point they hung there for about seven ticks before descending at the same speed at which they ascended.

Very quick diagram:

Code: [Select]

Level 31

 ^R
  *
+Pp.
wWw

So, roller right next to a gear right next to a water reactor. The ramp spirals up clockwise, and there is nothing special about the level 87 ramp that it would halt the progress of the cart.

[rhesusmacabre]

The 3 level thing is something someone said in one of the early minecart threads, and as no-one contradicted it I assumed it was the case. I haven't tried spirals myself until recently.

It's good to now know different, thanks!

[Sutremaine]

One follow-up detail: removing the ramp on level 87 and putting some flat track in does some rather odd things (though they'd likely work out all as planned if you had access to the maths, which has been detailed here somewhere). The cart was initially pushed through the roller from two tiles away and allowed to roll back down and bounce off the rollers again, and then I replaced the corner ramp track with corner flat track to make sure that the cart would hit the roller tile correctly. On the initial push the cart travelled up the ramp and onto the flat corner and then rolled back downhill, bouncing off the roller as it had previously. Once it had done that, it travelled up the ramp and onto the flat corner before moving another 7 tiles. A roller placed on that flat corner and leading into another flight of spiral ramps will push the cart up the next flight even on that weaker initial boost, so while it doesn't matter here it might in other circumstances.

That was with the magma-filled cart.

Edit: You don't actually need any flat track for roller placement, so this whole post is an aside. Maybe I was thinking about track stops, or was distracted by the design that assumed only three levels of pushing.

[CaptApollo12]

<<[]<<<<<<<
[]^<<[]

Then have a dwarf push the cart to your Magma cistern. It really helps making macros for track placement or carving. Make sure you have  magma safe gear assembly, minecart, and rollers in the magma channel. The wall at the top is nessesary for the minecart to not just skip over the magma.

[WJLIII3]

Hitting a wall slows the cart, so spirals up can only go so far.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Not if they go down!

[Sutremaine]

More results: rollers are now pushing platinum minecarts up nine levels of spiral. I have no idea what caused this sudden change. If I can get that working consistently, that would be really good.