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[Dwarfotaur]

I've recently been trying (without much success) to build an above ground village in a Terrifying biome. It's taking me too long to get buildings up despite having every single dwarf level 5 in Masonry and two mason workshops with repeat on make blocks next to four 2x2 stone stockpiles with 3 wheel barrows each.

The choke point is moving the stone from the mine to the surface. I wanted to try and use minecarts to get the rocks up there faster and with less dwarf power (I need most of them building not collecting) but I have no idea what I'm doing.

I want the dwarves/minecarts to pick up rocks from underground and deliver them to the surface as fast as possible. Ideally it'd be a repeating chain that doesn't end till the mine is out of rocks. I couldn't even get a simple test track to work and the dwarves were just putting the rocks in the stockpiles and not in the carts.


Edit: Also, I don't want the Mason workshops in the mine as then I have to ship 4x as many blocks to the surface, plus I want all my buildings to  be above ground.

[AutomataKittay]

Did you put the stone stockpile near the cart and hooked it up to the route through route setting? And reduced the wheelbarrow on the aboveground stockpile to 1 each ( or just one big stockpile around the shops with only one wheelbarrow ), so dwarfpower are restricted?

Each cart will carry only 5 boulders, IIRC, so it'd not be as much a speed-up compared to wheelbarrow, though still useful for reducing hauling dwarves

[Deathworks]

Hello Dwarfotaur!

The way I am using minecarts currently for wood hauling is maybe a bit conservative, but could help you a bit.

First of all, you need one stockpile in the mines at the end of the tracks. The idea is that the dwarves haul all new stone to that stockpile, load it from there in a minecart and use the minecart to get it to the workshop stockpiles.

Once you have the stockpiles and the tracks ready, you need to properly set up the 'h'auling route. A new route with two stops which need to be defined ('Return' key in 'h'auling mode when a stop is marked, I think).

Delete all conditions but one. For the mine stockpile stop, set the condition to push (appropriate direction) when full of desired items. Press 'RETURN' (I think) to set the desired items and you will get the same kind of setting screen you have for custom stockpiles. Pick stones, obviously.
Then, link that stop to the mine stockpile (Sorry, I forgot the letter for that one) and make sure that it says Take from Stockpile #??.

For the workshop stop, leave only one condition, namely push (appropriate direction) when empty of any items or when empty of desired items. In the latter case, check the setting for desired items. Link the stop to the workshop stockpile and make sure that it is set to Give to Stockpile #??.

Finally, choose the minecart that is to traverse the track.

That is what you need in hauling mode. Next, you need to set the workshop stockpile to Take only from links. This tells dwarves not to bring stones directly to the stockpile.

Finally, link the stockpile to the workshop, which will set the workshop to Take only from links as well, that is, makes the workshop only use stone from the workshop stockpile and not any random stone from a different stockpile or directly from the mine.

This should set you on your way.

Yours,
Deathworks

[melphel]

To make this minecart route work, you will need two rock stockpiles.  One inside the mine, where dwarves will place rocks next to the loading zone for the minecart.  One outside near the masonry workshops or wherever you are sending it.

You also need two track stops, one for each stockpile.  "Track stop" is a bit ambiguous since there are two kinds: the physical building, and the more esoteric point of interest on a route (for clarity, I will call this second kind a "route stop.")  Basically, you will build the physical track stop (b > C > S) and then assign a route stop for a route over that building.  For this two-stop system, you want each of them to be at highest friction (this will stop the carts from moving when they pass over them, so they can wait to be loaded.)  The track stop near the workshops should also dump contents to an adjacent tile.  This tile should have a 1x1 rock stockpile that your masons will take from (there needs to be a stockpile here or else your dwarves will haul the stone back down to the mines to fill the other stockpile.)

Make a route (h > r), name it whatever you want.
Then move your cursor over to where you want the first stop to be (your first track stop), press s to assign a new stop.
Continue adding stops where appropriate in the order that the minecarts will visit them.  You can name the stops just like the route with n.
A route stop can have two things added to it: departure conditions and stockpile links.

Stockpile links to a route stop work in much the same way links between two stockpiles do.  You tell the stop what stockpile you want to take from, but also what things you want to take.  For example, you could take from a pile that contains rocks and gems, but only load carts with the rocks or even just one kind of rock.  In your system, you could do with a stockpile of only rocks, taking only rocks. 
To make a stockpile link, press s. 
Move your cursor to the pile you want to link to and press p.
Press enter to set the desired items you want to receive from that link.

Departure conditions dictate where a cart should go from the stop, when a cart should go, and how it should leave.
Direction (North, South, East, West) can be toggled with d.
How the cart gets moved from the stop (Push, Ride, Guide) can be changed with p.  Pushing and riding are what their name implies, a dwarf shoves the cart away maybe jumping in as he does so.  This will not work for sending carts uphill without powered rollers, and anything on the track when the cart comes by is in for some pain.  Guide will have your dwarf push the cart down the track the whole way (like a shopping cart), actively avoiding obstacles.  You probably want to guide, unless you are ambitious to set up rollers.
The timing factor is perhaps the most tricky.  You can have it set to go when the cart is at a certain capacity (from full to empty), AND after a certain amount of time (from immediate to any number of days). 
Ideally, you want to send the cart from the route stop in the mine as soon as it is full, so set this to immediate (tT to change wait time) and 'when full of desired items' (c to toggle condition.)  The route stop at the workshops can be sent back as soon as it offloads, which is immediate thanks to the track stop, so set this to go 'immediately' and 'always.'  (You don't really need a route stop here if you make the track stop have no friction and just dump, and have your track set up to loop around back to the mine, but this requires a continuous track circuit or a switchback)

You CAN have more than one departure condition for a route stop (and more than one stockpile link, but only one set of desired items.)  The stop will send the cart away accordingly whenever one of them is satisfied.  Think of it as 'depart when condition A is met OR condition B is met OR ...'  You don't need multiple conditions, but it might be a good idea if you run out of rocks to load and the cart isn't full.  It could default to being sent after X days regardless of how full it is, this way you can get the stone still in the cart without having to get more stone to top it off.

ninja'd.  Deathworks has some good points about stockpile links that I forgot about completely missed.

[Dwarfotaur]

Thanks for the informative posts. I will give them a shot and report back.

One quick question. How powerful are rollers and how much do they benefit over guided carts? I'm guessing the following set up would work

- Stockpile in the mine
- Build and link track stop to stockpile.
- Roller immediately outside track stop.
- Build track to surface
- Build track stop and link to mason's stockpile.

Now if I set the carts to 'push', will the dwarf push the cart, the cart hits the rollers (or rolls down hill if from the surface) and carries itself uphill, freeing the dwarf to carry on other duties? Oh and are rollers bi-directional, otherwise this idea won't work...

[AutomataKittay]

Roller works in one direction, so you'll need two tracks, or have one way guided ( guided ignores roller for purpose of moving carts ).

Otherwise it could work, as long as nobody gets in the way and you have enough rollers and power to run it. I prefer to stick with guided carts for accident avoidance and ease of management

[melphel]

You could still make rollers work without a complete circuit of track if you disconnected power for them when you wanted to send the carts down to the mine.  iirc, pressure plates can be linked to gear assemblies, so the machinery to do it is there.  Or provide switchbacks every time there is a roller.  Of course, that is much more complicated.

Rollers might free a dwarf from the job of guiding a minecart, but they require a ton of overhead.  You need all the machinery and power to implement rollers, and if your mine is pretty deep down, that is a lot of infrastructure.  You will probably finish your surface buildings faster with just guiding than you would taking the extra time to put in rollers.

[cvar]

Most of it's been covered, but I'd really suggest just using guide for now.  Push/Ride will murder dwarves and it sounds like you don't have the population to absorb accidents.

My Stone stockpile is actually 5 stockpiles, 4 5x5 set to 3 wheelbarrows and take from anywhere and one cross shaped one in between them set to take from those 4.  The minecart route pulls from the central one.  The 5th one is probably unnecessary but I'm still learning to work the minecarts too , but with this setup, my fort is cleared of stone insanely quick.

It sounds like you didn't tell the route what to take.  With the stop open, hit enter and it will bring you to a stockpile-like screen to select what items get shoved in the cart.  I have my departure conditions as "guide immediately when full" and "guide in 14 days always" and of course, make sure you've told it which stockpile(s?) to pull from.  Pretty sure you do that by pressing (s) while you have the cursor over the proper stockpile.  At the end of your track, set up a Track Stop (in the constructions menu) and make sure you tell it which way to dump!  I forget all the time and then have to tear the damn thing down and rebuild it, I decided to make it obvious that I fucked up again by setting the departure condition for that stop as "only when empty" that way it will sit there and give me a visual clue.  Wherever you set it to dump to, put a 1x1 stockpile there that takes from the source stockpile and only accepts from links.  This will keep them from dragging all your stone back down to the stockpile again.

If you turn off hauling for your masons you can just have the non-mason dwarves slave away shoving stone into a cart and pushing it to the surface.




Got the idea from the quantum dwarven industrial complex thread, though my layout's a tad different since I like it this way visually.  Idea's the same though.

[Dwarfotaur]

I've got movement!

I fail at making it go up hill though... I have it like so:

S = track stop
T = EW track
U = EW ramp
. = soil

Side View:

Code: [Select]

.......TTS
......U...
.....U....
....U.....
STTU......
If I push the minecart down, it makes it fine... However the dwarves are carrying the minecart up the stairs totally ignoring those ramps. Can someone do a similar diagram to me but actually explaining how you go up/down z levels ?

Edit: I pushed the cart down a second time and took a dwarfs leg off. >_> Guide it is!

[cvar]

You can't push a cart up a ramp, try it with guide.

As long as the ramps are connected properly (I think the route would have a yellow ! if there was an issue there) it should work fine

[Dwarfotaur]

You can't push a cart up a ramp, try it with guide.

As long as the ramps are connected properly (I think the route would have a yellow ! if there was an issue there) it should work fine

There is a yellow ! and it says to connect the track. Problem is I dunno how to do it uphill...

[Gentlefish]

You need an extra length of track in order to guide it up ramps. Think of it as buffer ground.

[Mr S]

You need an extra length of track in order to guide it up ramps. Think of it as buffer ground.

A buffer length at every Z-level++ ?

[Halceon]

Yeah, I haven't tested it with longer ramps, but I'm guessing you would need something like this.

Code: [Select]

....._/
..._/..
__/....You'll still need guide, because a minecart slows down too much going up ramps.

[Taugosz]

Edit: Also, I don't want the Mason workshops in the mine as then I have to ship 4x as many blocks to the surface, plus I want all my buildings to  be above ground.

I haven't used minecarts yet myself, but according to the "Capacity" section of the wiki, a minecart can hold 5 boulders (x 4 = 20 blocks) or 83 blocks. If that is true, having your mason's workshops below ground would be several times faster. Although, you did also mention that you want all your buildings to be above ground, so I guess you can rationalize a boulder-breaking station not being a serious subterranean structural commitment if the lost increase in efficiency is likely to haunt you in your sleep.