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[Cobbler89]

Has anyone ever built a fort that relies on minecarts to send goods to and from every workshop and dining area? Maybe a restriction like every dwarf is burrowed in to live in his workshop room and depends on the other dwarves sending the things he needs via one long two-directional minecart system? (I guess the miners who carve this stuff out could be an exception -- draft them into a militia when they're done with the carving?) In short, some way to prevent there from being hauling outside of the minecart system, for everything. I'm curious as to how this sort of thing could be done, how well it would work and what it would end up looking like... and whether it would actually have better efficiency (no haulers? or in a sense everyone's a hauler?) or not. I'd write up a challenge with detailed rules, but I don't have time to play it myself and it seems rude to post a challenge and not try it myself... So I guess for now I'll settle for asking if anyone does it already.

[Linkxsc]

Well a good efficient minecart system is certainly possible. Youd need a HELL of a lot of parallel tracks though to avoid crashes.

Assuming everyone was trapped in a little cell with their workshop, and the only ways in and out were minecarts... well that would be very inefficient. Youd end up having to spend a vast amount of time resetting minecart paths to ship food around and such.

[acetech09]

My forts are gravitating that direction. My latest one particularly has raw materials dropped on a workshop from above, and everything's carted, sorted, and re-distributed (to top layer) from below. I guess next step is to make everyone live where they work.

[Mimodo]

In the sense you're talking about, it's not worth the effort, but it IS possible to greatly reduce hauling labours require, and even provide minecarts for movement of dwarves. Of course, this gets harder and harder the more dwarves you have, and would eventually become too complex

[Cobbler89]

It seems to me that the tough part would be dealing with what happens if a second minecart comes when one is still waiting at a given room. (Doubly so if the dwarf in the room happens to be doing something with the first minecart and is hit by the second, I suppose.) Solve that problem and then you just have to schedule food to be shipped via this system to every dwarf at regular but automatic intervals, right? Tough to set up but zero micromanagement afterwards? (acetech09, I'd love to see the system you've described in action; I'm curious as to whether it addresses this issue.)

Alternatively, minecarts could be used for (at least major) hauling without necessarily restricting every dwarf to live practically within his workshop. Organize the workshops into related groups and put a communal bedroom and dining hall next to each group. Then, use minecarts to transfer both workshop resources and food supplies between groups. Something like that anyway?

[Max™]

I would do it by having carts distribute stuff and drop it onto the workshops as mentioned above, but I'd make sure the carts couldn't actually reach the workshop unless the dwarf was in his room, then when he leaves to go to the workshop it releases the cart to go back to get reloaded.

After you get up to like 10 dwarves per workshop path the tracks needed seem pretty much impossible just from trying to lay it out in my head.

[fourpotatoes]

There's Martin's project to isolate each class of workers into its own burrow.

My inclination would be to have each burrow use a separate route for each material (possibly multiplexed onto trunk lines using automatic routing systems). Routes would go directly to another burrow or to a central supply depot, as appropriate for the materials being produced or consumed. Food's pretty easy to control: put the main stockpiles in the supply depot and have a route out to each workshop burrow. At each burrow, have small stockpile that takes food from the cart and set the cart to be pushed back when empty. The burrow's occupants will unload the cart as space opens up in their food stockpile. When they've finished, they'll send the cart back for another load. This system allows demand to regulate shipping, preventing one burrow from accumulating all the food.

In my thought experiments, the hardest thing to manage is clothing supply. Several routes or careful micromanagement might be needed to avoid one burrow with all the socks and another with all the shirts.

[Linkxsc]

I thought you couldnt move booze in minecarts though cause they glitched out with the barrels?
although this could be gotten around with wells and water... though with slower working dwarves.

[Uronym]

So you basically want an OpenTTD fortress?

Here is my idea ("island" refers to the pockets of isolation):

• Isolate dwarves into "islands" that have particular inputs and outputs; every island would require food and clothing, but different islands might require additional things; for instance, carpenters, wood; masons, stone; smelters, ore.
• Have a single large "loop" of a track. All carts go the same direction, on the same track. The tracks should be powered so that the minecarts can travel between the "daisy-chained" islands without being pushed.
• Each island has a minecart track going through it, and a station for loading and unloading. Every cart goes through every "island" and stops. The dwarves living on each island will keep the minecart in their "station" for a short period of time, during which they will unload their necessities and load their outputs.

The key feature is that it would not require more than one track; everything travels on a single one. If the dwarves of one island needed different supplies suddenly (perhaps a strange mood?), you could simply change what is unloaded at their stop; likewise, if they begin to produce something new, you could simply change what is loaded at their stop.

You would almost certainly need more than one cart. I have no idea what happens if one cart, say, crashed into another that is stopped in the "station". Either way, every cart would be filled with a mix of goods from a variety of islands, so any one cart being missed shouldn't matter.

[omega_dwarf]

You would have an interesting problem then: if you have auto-unloading, you'd have to have some way to very quickly load the carts with the correct materials. That either means a lot of idle dwarfpower and micro (on a single rail), or a potentially very complicated sorting, holding, and logic system and still lots of dwarfpower (many branches off of the main rail).

Is there any way to auto-load carts? Dropping items on them from above, maybe?

You might also want to create at least three tracks: food/booze (if not glitched), stone/wood, and all other goods. Each would run with different frequency, as necessitated by resource use and production. The system would also have to be able to accommodate varying resource creation rates. I guess the alternative would be varying cart allocation, but that involves multiple holding pens, and maybe even sorting the empty carts by weight to see which priority they belong to.

[Max™]

Assign a civilian uniform:
leather armor
leather leggings
leather high boot
leather high boot

Get each dwarf equipped with "replace clothing" to make sure they put it on right, then set it to over clothing and just toss them clothes as you see fit. I didn't even consider shipping clothes, just food/booze and materials.

[Uronym]

You would have an interesting problem then: if you have auto-unloading, you'd have to have some way to very quickly load the carts with the correct materials. That either means a lot of idle dwarfpower and micro (on a single rail), or a potentially very complicated sorting, holding, and logic system and still lots of dwarfpower (many branches off of the main rail).

Is there any way to auto-load carts? Dropping items on them from above, maybe?

You might also want to create at least three tracks: food/booze (if not glitched), stone/wood, and all other goods. Each would run with different frequency, as necessitated by resource use and production. The system would also have to be able to accommodate varying resource creation rates. I guess the alternative would be varying cart allocation, but that involves multiple holding pens, and maybe even sorting the empty carts by weight to see which priority they belong to.

Don't the dwarves just take whatever they can fill a nearby stockpile with out of the minecart? My plan would call for manual unloading, so they only take what they need, allowing the next island to receive the cart.

[omega_dwarf]

I don't know what the depart conditions would be for "take until local stockpiles are full." If you used, say, a five-day timer, that would make for a very slow minecart system, when you only need very specific materials for each block (and would have to wait for them to show up.) The only solutions I can think of that are actually efficient are multi-rail, not single rail - or involve holding pens for received (earlier post was discussing waiting-to-be-sent) minecarts - or involve auto-dumping and sending the correct ratio of carts.

Edit: A single-rail system could work, and I like the idea since it saves space, but it would have to incorporate "stations" at each block where minecarts drop things off and are loaded up. You would have a very hard time using a single cart to supply an entire block with all its needs, especially if you couldn't send the "useless" carts (for that block) onwards so they don't clog up the system.

I'm really thinking that a normal, well-designed fort, in which all outputs and inputs are analyzed and positioned in the closest proximity to each other, is the most efficient. But I guess that's not really what this thread is about

[Linkxsc]

Just a thought... so after the initial carving out of the rooms and installation of their "operators" how would you deal with dwarves dieing of old age, migrants, babies and such?

[Cobbler89]

I figure I wouldn't block dwarves from being able to get in/out, just make it so they don't need to be.

Really, what I want is simply for jobs not to be taken by dwarves who are, for one reason or another, on the opposite end of the fortress, which plagues my dwarven settlements no matter how efficient the layout seems in theory. I thought maybe if I could both supply dwarves in any given section with whatever they need, and transfer stuff between sections, all without significant walking around, then dwarves wouldn't have any reason to be on the opposite side of the fort in the first place. Maybe it's not minecarts that are the key, but rather burrows?

In any case, there are some very helpful ideas being kicked around here. 8^) I'll definitely have to check out that link to Martin's project.