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Total Members Voted: 200

[DVNO]

Crushing occupying goblins with a bullet cart like bugs on a windshield?

Things are finally getti'n interestin'!

[Timeless Bob]

Why not set up impulse ramps at each edge of the embarks, which would accelerate the minecarts to jumping the track, coming to rest on the next set of tracks , the next embark over?  Each embark square is 48 fortress squares wide.  So long as you can make a jump arc reaching its highest point 25 fortress squares horizontal to the initial jump ramp, an an adventurer riding a minecart will be able to traverse the remaining 25 fortress squares and be re-captured by tracks 2 embark squares away.  Wash, rinse, repeat and you'll give armies and other traveling types enough ground to journey across while also having a set of contiguous tracks cutting perpendicularly to that flow.

[DVNO]

mind = blown

[WillowLuman]

...Except in the extra areas created by building upwards won't be preserved between sites.

[Yuli Vlasi]

Why not set up impulse ramps at each edge of the embarks, which would accelerate the minecarts to jumping the track, coming to rest on the next set of tracks , the next embark over?  Each embark square is 48 fortress squares wide.  So long as you can make a jump arc reaching its highest point 25 fortress squares horizontal to the initial jump ramp, an an adventurer riding a minecart will be able to traverse the remaining 25 fortress squares and be re-captured by tracks 2 embark squares away.  Wash, rinse, repeat and you'll give armies and other traveling types enough ground to journey across while also having a set of contiguous tracks cutting perpendicularly to that flow.

Until I read this I thought it would be impossible to build rollercoasters out of multiple fortresses because you aren't allowed to build at the very edge of the map.
Now I have hope.

...Except in the extra areas created by building upwards won't be preserved between sites.

I don't understand that. Please explain.

[Ruhn]

It might be in reference to something I read about sky levels only being 'created' when a construction is built in it (dwarven space program?).
SCIENCE would be wise before building too many of this kind of jump.

[Eric Blank]

I imagine trees are going to become a serious obstacle to this kind of jump, and neither of the two fortresses on each side of the gap will be able to see the trees in the gap, or do anything about them. For all you'll know, you're going to be launching adventurers right into the trunk of a great oak tree at 75kph.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

For all you'll know, you're going to be launching adventurers right into the trunk of a great oak tree at 75kph.

I don't see the problem. If we set up two fortresses two sides away from the gap, we should be capable of creating a device that will flood one end of the gap with lava and the other end with water, obsidianizing the gap, not stopping armies from crossing the area.

EDIT: Here's a visual representation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before activation:
    W

==  ==

    L

= is an embark with minecart railroad.
W is the water-flooding fort.
L is the lava-flooding fort.

Activate the appropriate levers in adventure mode (first water, then lava, although making a multi-story flooding device might be necessary to get this to work properly). After:
    W

==O==
   O
   L

O is obsidian blocks.
There might be some overspill, but it should work as intended, considering you've technically never embarked on any of the "O" squares.

[WillowLuman]

But those trees would still be as tall as ever, and even if you obsidianized them all the way to the top, there'd still only be one z-level above them, not enough to make a jump and it would be too long to coast over.

[MDFification]

But those trees would still be as tall as ever, and even if you obsidianized them all the way to the top, there'd still only be one z-level above them, not enough to make a jump and it would be too long to coast over.

This is true. I'm fairly certain nobody's ever successfully jumped one full embark tile.
Try it out. Make a 2x1 Embark, use half the map to accelerate a cart, and see if you can make it to the edge without it touching the ground.

EDIT: The reason I'd want to see this track automated is based on purely practical reasons. If you want to move a significant quantity of material from one fort to another, you'll probably have to do it in adventure mode as otherwise the game probably won't keep track of the minecarts. It's not the entire world being kept track of in DF2014: I'm pretty sure it allows worldgen to continue after you start fortress mode, alongside army movement mechanics.
So, if you're doing it as an adventurer, you're going to have to put a lot of minecarts on the track yourself to send them where you want them to go. If every so often you have to take them off the track, push it an entire embark tile, and repeat this for the entire minecart train, it'll be incredibly frusturating to cover any distance.
And this is assuming enemies can path through a 16x16 embark region if it's only partially used in a fort. If they can't, that's 16x the distance to push each cart.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

That's why my plan was to obisidianize several levels over them, although you could simply make sure the only elevation you need is one z-level, although that still allows hills to block the minecart, so here's an improved design to allow you to obsidianize more levels more reliably:
Before:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  M  M  M
W          W
===  ===
M          M
  W W W

After:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  M  M  M
WOOOOOW
=== O===
M          M
  W W W

Activate the levers in pairs, first the ones at the "corners", then the central two.

[WillowLuman]

But then there's a giant wall of obsidian blocking the minecart. Also, how do you make sure the lava stays in place long enough to get cast if there's nothing to hold it in place?

[Dwarf4Explosives]

You just continue to add magma. It's all about putting the "spouts" at the right height. If you get that done properly, you can fine-tune the height of the obsidian so it doesn't block the minecart but merely provides a perfectly flat surface for it to roll over.

EDIT: If you want to test this, there's always the !!SCIENCE!!-bonus world that's going to be running concurrently for you to test this in. And the magma physics won't change, so technically you could test this with DF2012.

[WillowLuman]

Mind, it would take painfully long and require a very beefy computer in adventure mode.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

Don't worry, I have one project in mind which will very slowly kill off the computer of anyone who tries to use it, anyway. Lots and lots of fluid mechanics.