"If you launch a wooden minecart towards the ocean at a sufficient speed, you can have your entire dwarf sail away in an ark."
That quote inspired me to do some !!SCIENCE!! on what happens when a dwarf leaves your fortress alive. The fortress of Shiphopper was built for a simple purpose: build a cart track on the edge of the map, and launch the dwarves past the border. The site was selected to contain a river and a shore, for two extra types of borders in case more experimentation would be needed.
For testing platform, a 10z ramp was built as close to the map edge as possible.
First test with an empty cart was a disappointment. The cart gains good speed along the track, but stops immediately on the map edge.
Second test with a ramp one tile away from the edge, same result. The fact that the cart appears on the ground immediately points to a ramp construction error.
For the third test, the old ramp was demolished with one acceptable casualty, and a new one built further away to allow a wall piece behind the launch ramp. The acceleration ramp, now 16 z-levels, was enough to launch the minecart against the map edge at 4 z-level height, at which the cart stopped and dropped straight down to the ground.
Fourth test was a manned cart, launched against the map edge. At the impact, the cart fatally crushed its passenger, who flew an additional 1 z-level before losing grasp of his axe and falling down with the cart. In mid air, the dwarf continued to take hits from both the minecart and his own falling axe. When hitting the ground level, he got propelled away by the force of the blow, instantly teleporting two squares west and unexpectedly turning into a a peasant and displaying his color in white. After two more steps he teleported two squares back east, skidding along the ground and slamming into an obstacle. He teleported two squares west again, this time maintaining his description as a woodcutter and coming to rest.
The test was repeated with a peasant, who in the air was shown in bright cyan. In the air, he proceeded to get pummeled by the minecart, and oddly enough, himself. Upon reaching round, he too got pummeled by the cart, yet died without other anomalies.
The fifth test was over before I realized the expedition leader had gotten the cart to the top of the ramp. It was too late to take notes, other than typical bruising and death.
The sixth test was another one with a peasant, this time promoted to bookkeepper to further study the effects of falling on the dwarven profession colors. Upon hitting the border, he produced a spattering of blood while still airborne. Upon landing, he got mangled by the cart three times before coming to rest and dying.
With two dwarves remaining, the seventh test was supposed to be about a cart bumping into a dwarf standing on the tracks. However, during the redesigns of the launch ramp, the second to last dwarf got hit by a falling rail segment and died of suffocation. The last dwarf then went insane, marking the end of Shiphopper in the early summer of 251. Strangely, the legends show the last member of the test team being slain with a copper battle axe. As the message of settlements crumbling ended the game, there was no way to see what exactly happened to him.
edit: forgot the quote
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Topic: !!Science!! of launching dwarves against the map border. (Read 12844 times)