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[BastiBasti]

This means that outdoors "shotgun" artillery with closed-loop reusable minecarts is possible. The projectiles diverge at the moment of launch, giving a wide possible spread, and the parabolic flight allows shooting over obstacles. You could shoot AA clouds of items at birds. Combine this the automatic watergun design, and you could drop a "rainstorm" on a siege across the map.

So to summarize the dwarven artillery cannon, the idea would be to fill a mine cart with some ammunition, preferably heavy since mine-cart physics negate weight of contents so we should really abuse this to provide high velocity falling objects. Then said mine-cart would go onto a stack on a roller, fly up into the air and hit a wall, flying out an arch of around 1000, preferable heavy, spears onto the battlefield. Then the mine-cart would drop down a chute, onto a ramp to go back to the start and be re-filled.

I see only 3 more questions in relation to this, best ammunition for the "shell", predicting the path of a mine-cart for making cannons that can fire upon several locations and finally the most efficient way to load a large amounts of carts, because it sounds like with the stack on the roller carts will be fired in extremely rapid succession, so it would be a shame not to find a way to optimize this system.

Personally I think that a quantum stockpile, or simply small stock taking from larger stockpile, would be needed in conjunction to multiple reloading stations to achieve fastest reload possible, possible burrows with dwarfs totally dedicated to the task of reloading this monstrous chain-gun artillery cannon at maximum speeds. Thoughts on this?

[blue emu]

Personally I think that a quantum stockpile, or simply small stock taking from larger stockpile, would be needed in conjunction to multiple reloading stations to achieve fastest reload possible, possible burrows with dwarfs totally dedicated to the task of reloading this monstrous chain-gun artillery cannon at maximum speeds. Thoughts on this?

The only ammunition that can be auto-loaded (ie: without the intervention of a team of Dwarves) are Water and Magma. They can be loaded instantly, rather than waiting minutes for a team of Dwarves to do the job.

[BastiBasti]

True but magma may have the side-effect of burning, lag and then there's the problem that fire immune creatures won't be harmed by magma falling and to tougher creature falling water won't be a problem. Unless we have this system underground and have the water fire up from the mine-cart through a grate it won't have much velocity (in theory). True to what you're saying there should be a water and magma alternate firing modes for sieges, ‼elves‼, AA flak artillery and eventually dousing the burning magma-ridden land but in the situation of, let's say, a necromancer siege magma won't be as effective as it should be whilst spears should weigh down the dead making them slow, make a nice mince out of them and will have a good chance of hitting the necromancer under a stream of thousands of spears. And then there's the possibilities of rapid-fire mine-carts for other purposes and even really efficient hauling in larger forts. Even then if it's still considered impractical it would be an awesome device, if you could get it firing at maximum capacity for more than a few hundred ticks.

[blue emu]

I don't think Spears will hurt undead much... don't you have to behead or bisect them in order to kill them?

As for fire immune enemies... are they also immune to half a ton of Magma landing on them at terminal velocity?

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
I see only 3 more questions in relation to this, best ammunition for the "shell",
...
and finally the most efficient way to load a large amounts of carts, because it sounds like with the stack on the roller carts will be fired in extremely rapid succession, so it would be a shame not to find a way to optimize this system.
...

Read this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126321.0
The weapon described there machine-guns out superheavy projectiles. All I am suggesting is that we put that on the surface and shoot projectiles at 45° to carpet-bomb the other side of the map.

[blue emu]

Read this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126321.0
The weapon described there machine-guns out superheavy projectiles. All I am suggesting is that we put that on the surface and shoot projectiles at 45° to carpet-bomb the other side of the map.

In fact, we wouldn't need anywhere near that much velocity... we don't WANT the projectiles to exit the map.

We could adjust the range by "masking" some of the impulse ramps with retractable drawbridges, yes?... thus giving ourselves a variable-muzzle-velocity weapon which in turn should allow us to draw in the minimum range of the artillery barrage.

One question that I've been considering... is it possible to design this weapon system so that it draws NO POWER AT ALL? That would be really cool, since a Hydrodynamic Power Station always impacts FPS.

[blue emu]

(double post)

[BastiBasti]

No power may be a bit far for now, even a tiny bit just for the roller just to push the carts forward will be enough for the system anyway, so I don't think FPS will be too big a problem, but it's something to work on.
As for the different mussel velocities idea it will have the disadvantage of being effectively weaker at shorter ranges and we will need all the more sky platforms but bridges should eliminate this problem. I was thinking of having several ramps set at different angles and ranges, nevertheless having a system to change the power of the mine-cart will be optimal for some set-ups. Also what you said about minimum range, shouldn't the area where the mine-cart lands/hits be predictable? Surely it should only hit one place every time?

[blue emu]

No power may be a bit far for now, even a tiny bit just for the roller just to push the carts forward will be enough for the system anyway, so I don't think FPS will be too big a problem, but it's something to work on.
As for the different mussel velocities idea it will have the disadvantage of being effectively weaker at shorter ranges and we will need all the more sky platforms but bridges should eliminate this problem. I was thinking of having several ramps set at different angles and ranges, nevertheless having a system to change the power of the mine-cart will be optimal for some set-ups. Also what you said about minimum range, shouldn't the area where the mine-cart lands/hits be predictable? Surely it should only hit one place every time?

The FPS hit isn't proportional to the amount of power used... it's proportional to the number of tiles of flowing water.

There's no such thing as "different angles", AFAIK... the only choices are straight sideways and 45 degrees.

The mine-cart won't leave the gun. Only the water/magma projectile will. A fortification atop a wall positioned right at the muzzle should introduce some scatter in the impact area, if I understand the physics correctly.

Have you run any experiments along these lines?

[BastiBasti]

No power may be a bit far for now, even a tiny bit just for the roller just to push the carts forward will be enough for the system anyway, so I don't think FPS will be too big a problem, but it's something to work on.
As for the different mussel velocities idea it will have the disadvantage of being effectively weaker at shorter ranges and we will need all the more sky platforms but bridges should eliminate this problem. I was thinking of having several ramps set at different angles and ranges, nevertheless having a system to change the power of the mine-cart will be optimal for some set-ups. Also what you said about minimum range, shouldn't the area where the mine-cart lands/hits be predictable? Surely it should only hit one place every time?

The FPS hit isn't proportional to the amount of power used... it's proportional to the number of tiles of flowing water.

There's no such thing as "different angles", AFAIK... the only choices are straight sideways and 45 degrees.

The mine-cart won't leave the gun. Only the water/magma projectile will. A fortification atop a wall positioned right at the muzzle should introduce some scatter in the impact area, if I understand the physics correctly.

Have you run any experiments along these lines?

Sorry, I had a different idea of how it was going to work, I was expecting a suspended mid-air target to be hit but as far as I know yes, the magma will scatter randomly so you're right in that respect. And by different angles I did mean just the 4, to hit different areas of the map. Also in retrospect to FPS, less power requires less running water so less lag. Finally unfortunately I haven't been able to run any experiments in this field, so my knowledge will be far less than other peoples. Hopefully that answered all your question.

[Girlinhat]

One question that I've been considering... is it possible to design this weapon system so that it draws NO POWER AT ALL? That would be really cool, since a Hydrodynamic Power Station always impacts FPS.

Well, depending how it's set up...  You can keep carts in motion, as long as they're moving they're able to pass more impulse ramps and keep moving.  If you want to stop them though, I suppose you could try closing a door/hatch on a ramp.

Alternatively, with 1 tile of Outdoor, you can put a windmill and 1 tile of Rollers, which has no fluid-related FPS loss, and allows you to stack carts with a gear assembly toggle switch.

[blue emu]

If you want to stop them though, I suppose you could try closing a door/hatch on a ramp.

Not quite what I had in mind.

I pictured a vertical shaft, filled with mine-carts (they will stack vertically instead of all occupying the same tile, yes?) with a retracting drawbridge at the bottom of the shaft which prevents them from dropping onto the impulse ramp just below.

Pull the lever to retract the drawbridge, and the whole stack starts sliding down... but when the bottom cart in the stack drops onto the impulse ramp, the stack will stop until it moves off the tile, allowing the next cart to drop.

In effect... the carts are being "clip-fed" into a "machine gun".

They then continue to cycle through the gun, being auto-loaded with magma by passing through a short magma-filled corridor, then into the gun barrel, firing, then dropping back into the shaft again after firing their load.

Extending the drawbridge again will cease-fire and re-stack the carts, all automatically and all (as far as I can see) WITHOUT using any power at all.

Am I missing something?

[Girlinhat]

Assuming that when a cart falls onto an impulse ramp it begins moving.  I'm not entirely sure they do.

[blue emu]

Assuming that when a cart falls onto an impulse ramp it begins moving.  I'm not entirely sure they do.

Since it's a ramp, the cart should (should!) roll downhill... and on an impulse ramp, there's only one downhill direction that has tracks leading out.

[BastiBasti]

Assuming that when a cart falls onto an impulse ramp it begins moving.  I'm not entirely sure they do.

Since it's a ramp, the cart should (should!) roll downhill... and on an impulse ramp, there's only one downhill direction that has tracks leading out.

Sounds like it should work There's still a small problem of how to stop the magma artillery cannon firing to let civilians collect the goods though, I take it mine-carts falling onto a hatch above the impulse ramp would work though?