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[hlavaczech]

I just started with some sixth, seventh fortress after the introduction of the carts and I realized that for last 2 forts I completly avoided using carts. Not because I wouldn't like the idea of them, but rather because I didn't see any reason in using them (for transportation). Even though the weight of stone is now being taken in account, I can handle: I modified my design patterns accordingly.
Now - the question is: is this an exception or do you also percieve carts as "unneccessary design bonus"?
I would love to learn from the community how significant change the introduction of cart was and how do you incorporate them within fort design.
One caveat: please comment on carts for transport issues, I don't doubt their role as trap components or weapons...

[Stromko]

Carts as in wheelbarrows, or carts as in minecarts? I think minecarts are pretty much just useful to construct giant shotguns that fire boulders, that's as much as I can figure since I've never tried them.

I have found wheelbarrows useful though. When it came time to build a road, I constructed a metal (lead) stockpile within the surface portion of my fortress and assigned wheelbarrows to it. That way, only a few dwarves busied themselves ferrying bins full of bars up there at a time and my whole fortress (and FPS) didn't suffer from dozens of dwarves slowly dragging lead to the surface one bar (or fantastically heavy bin) at a time, all the while constantly dropping bars halfway there because they needed to eat or drink.

The stockpile proved quite useful, as when I started construction of the lead-bar road, the bars were quite close and my builders didn't have to drag them far at all.

So there's two uses for wheelbarrows right now from what I can tell. One, they limit how many dwarves at a time will fill a stockpile. Two, they allow heavy items to be moved at full speed.

As far as non-killing purposes, minecarts would fill much the same role, they just take a lot more preparation and don't necessarily need a dwarf pushing them all the way. From what I've heard they can catch liquids and transport them, and they can be very dangerous since when they get up to speed they can run creatures right over. The lethality index of minecarts would actually make them really useful if you could get to grips with the system.

[nanomage]

You can use minecarts to build shotguns and water-/magma-guns. Obsidian gun should be possible, too. Also, you can use minecarts like buckets to haul some magma in them.
Minecarts can be turned into perpetual motion goblin grinders. In adveture mode, you can ride a minecart and pretend it's youe warhorse.
 As for intended hauling purposes, I never had any reason for advanced hauling - sheer power of hundreds of idlers overweights any advantages of hi-tech approach for me

[Flying Fortress]

I didn't use them much to start, and still ignore them mostly in underground forts.  However, I'm working on an above ground fort right now (completely made out of earthenware bricks using clay + a volcano so I don't have to dig and haul massive amounts of rocks ) and suddenly carts have become very important to me.  I hate building large structures above ground since they require a massive amount of micro-managing. So the smaller buildings can be the better, but how do you keep massive stockpile rooms small?  One like my food stockpile just got placed underground since cart stockpiles hated it with barrel restrictions, but the rest of my stockpiles are kept small using minecarts.  Instead of a 20x20 block stockpile to hold all the building blocks my potters make I have a 3x5 stockpile and cart setup.

====
=≡-≡=
====

= is a stockpile
≡ is a minecart stop (the one of the right dumps to the stockpile on the east)
- is a E/W track also put under each stop

Using this setup, and many variations, I can keep above ground stockpile buildings to a minimal size.  The stockpile around the track is set to place everything in a cart on the stop to the left.  Once the cart fills up it gets guided to the east and dumps into another block stockpile, then returns and starts it all over.  Like I said up top though, underground I still don't use them much since size isn't an issue most times.

[smirk]

minecart auto-quantum piles

Aye, I'm pretty sure those are the best non-weapon use of minecarts so far. And you can make 'em even more compact than 3x5, in fact. All ye need is a setup like so:

Code: [Select]

121
1M1
1111 and 2 are stockpiles, say furniture. M is a minecart on a track stop. The track stop is built to auto-dump minecarts to the north, onto stockpile 2. A single-point minecart route is designated on top of the track stop, and told to take furniture from stockpile 1. The minecart assigned to this route just sits on the track stop and is thus in a constant state of dump-to-the-north-ness. Stockpile 1 takes from anywhere, and stockpile 2 takes from/gives to links only. Voila! Automatic quantum stockpile. Also, you can make stockpile 1 as big or small as you'd like (I usually make the entire thing 2x3).

[Flying Fortress]

I just tried to implement that design into my furnace room, and every time I try to condense it down to your design of 1 stop the game crashes.  Apparently my dwarves cannot comprehend the awesomeness that is the constantly-dumping-bucking-bronco-cart-stop. 

[megahelmet]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=114602.msg3513918#msg3513918 The Quantum Industrial Complex is in every fort I make these days. Huge space saver, probably even helps out FPS. I've yet to play with powered minecarts though. That's coming up in this fort as I try to use them to cart magma to the forges instead of bothering with pump stacks.

[smirk]

I just tried to implement that design into my furnace room, and every time I try to condense it down to your design of 1 stop the game crashes.  Apparently my dwarves cannot comprehend the awesomeness that is the constantly-dumping-bucking-bronco-cart-stop. 

Odd; works fine for me. Does your stop only have a take-from-stockpile-1 command and nothing else? Maybe leaving a movement command on there that can't/won't be used is confusing the AI.


That Quantum Industrial Complex looks awesome.

[hlavaczech]

No matter how useful quantum minecart stockpiling might be, this probably wasn't Toady's original intention.
Carts as weapons and traps - fine.
Cart to transport stuff - that's where I am really concerned. Should for example the weight matter even more than it does now.

[HammerHand]

I've used minecarts a bit, yeah.  Wheelbarrows have been exceptionally helpful, especially with stone/metal.  Minecarts... well, they took a long time to set up.

For example, my first minecart route was from the Magma Sea to my main fortress complex - about 150 floors up.  Setting it up took forever, mostly due to ramp-based shenanigans and carving mistakes ("user error").  It made it so that I could just have my smiths and smelters pump out metal objects at the Magma Sea, then someone would guide a cart full of those objects further up to the fortress proper, where they could be taken to other stockpiles or fitting uses.  Despite all its problems, the main bonus of this was that I never had to build a magma pump stack.  Rather than pump all that magma up 150 floors in a consistently aggravating process, I could just set a bunch of plebs to carve tracks, then assign a few vehicles and stockpiles.  It was SO much easier.  Powering this particular track wouldn't be as easy or as necessary, but it worked and worked well.

Then I started messing with other minecart tracks - one from my industrial complex to the trade depot, for instance.  Worked like a dream!  Then I made a circuit of it and powered it, and suddenly it wasn't such a big deal to supply the caravans with my useless junk valuable trade goods.

But then I tried to make a track to refill my catapult ammunition stockpile (Siege Weapon training ground).  I had a raised bridge that faced the siege entrance through some fortifications, so my practicing catapult-users could just keep firing at will when I was besieged.  When raised, the bridge was over a channel, so the fired rocks would drop into a stockpile below.  The idea was that a minecart would be filled from this stockpile, get pushed back to just under the catapults, and they'd load the catapults from the resulting stockpile.  Powered rollers would send the cart on its way as necessary.  What actually happened was that the cart full of stones got pushed to the refill properly, but then it was carried back to the spent ammunition instead of sent around the track. :/  Still haven't figured out what I did wrong there.

Smaller cart tracks could be useful for any major construction project that requires moving a lot of stone or blocks, such as clear-mining your flux stone, or if you come upon magnetite deposits.    But mostly... I've found that it can really clear up a lot of your haulers for use in industry or military pursuits.  The old "1/3 population=Haulers" rule no longer need apply.

[Gigaz]

I use minecarts in my current fortress for two things:
Hauling magma to the furnaces in the early game (before I had enough dwarfs to build a pumpstack quickly)
and to dispose my refuse and used clothing. The refuse goes from the minecart 10 z-levels down into a pool of 2/7 magma.

I've never seen refuse in a minecart producing miasma, though. That might not be the way it is intended to be.

[GreatWyrmGold]

My favorite use of minecarts is dumping things to the magma level. Sandbags, clay, ore...everything that needs fuel.

[hermes]

I've been predictably unsuccessful in using minecarts.  I guess I feel there is a lot of forward planning and preliminary digging involved for a rather minor advantage.  My forts are generally quite small so hauling distances are always short.  I can totally understand not making mining a chore, but unless there is some stuff that requires minecarts I doubt I'll ever use them fully.

As a real world example, on Japanese TV there is a program where a pop group is trying to make a small island habitable.  They want to move a bunch of rubble to make a house.  It takes one of them a whole day to carry a dozen large rocks a few hundred yards... so they go to the trouble of building a railroad and a man powered flatbed trolley just to move these rocks.  That's the kind of incentive I'd need to really implement minecarts.

[Cabbagetroll]

I'm afriad I simply haven't bothered with minecarts. I also use idlers for massive dumpage, so there's no real reason to use them in my forts. Wheelbarrows, on the other hand, are wonderful little tools that everyone should use.

[hermes]

I'm afriad I simply haven't bothered with minecarts. I also use idlers for massive dumpage, so there's no real reason to use them in my forts. Wheelbarrows, on the other hand, are wonderful little tools that everyone should use.

Yes, wheelbarrows are great... do they suffer a penalty/get a bonus for the groundtype over which they travel?  Because that could make minecarts more useful.  If the ground isn't flat and hard, wheelbarrows can be worse than carrying.