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[rmblr]

I want to learn how to use minecarts to bring magma to the upper levels.

There are several topics on this already, but none are noob friendly. By 'noob friendly' I mean consisting of clear and precise instructions with clear and precise screenshots/ascii examples. No assumptions that the reader knows anything about minecarts or can decipher your graphics/tileset.

Several such topics are:

• How to build a Multi-cart Ore to Magma Minecart Project without needing power - this one is great, but is for transporting ore to the magma sea. I want the opposite to save the hauling time of finished goods
• Automated Minecart Magma-Pump - incomplete, poorly explained - just the filling stage
• Modern alternative to Magma Pump Stack: The Magma Impulse Minecart Elevator  - incomplete - just the impulse elevator, missing text description
• Minecart Magma delivery system - very poorly explained, uses power

Some questions for the more knowledgeable:

Impulse Ramps

The wiki gives this diagram for impulse ramps:

Code: [Select]

z +0    z +1    z +2    z +3
 ░░░░░   ░░░░░   ░░░░░   ░░░░░
 ░╔░░░   ░▼╚╗░   ░░▼▼░   ░░░░░
 ░╝░░░   ░▼░░░   ░░░╔░   ░░░▼░
 ░▼▼░░   ░░░░░   ░░░╝░   ░╚╗▼░
 ░░░░░   ░░░░░   ░░░░░   ░░░░░

░       : Wall
╔,╚,╗,╝ : Track/Ramp
▼       : Down Ramp (empty space)


• Which way is the direction of travel?
• Could someone add a top/bottom layer that show the entrance and exit tracks?
• Would you use this for going down, or just up?

Other Systems

As far as I can tell, the simplest magma delivery system would be composed of four parts: drop chute, fill station, impulse elevator, dump station.

I think i can reason out how to build the impulse elevator from the wiki's diagram (assuming the aforementioned questions are answered). Would anyone care to diagram the Automated Minecart Magma-Pump system? I don't quite understand.

[Max™]

The impulse elevator is going clockwise, you could send carts down but I think they'd hop around and get hung since going the wrong way drains speed off of them, I just use a drop shaft for that part, and you can link tracks into any level of the elevator by having it come in clockwise as well.

So in the z+0 image you'd have it enter from the z+0 level at the bottom left going up instead of having a ramp on that square, in the z+1 image it would enter from the top left going right, etc. You could probably put a bridge in and just have it raised to be a wall, then lower it to inject a cart.

Code: [Select]


 ░░░░░ 
 ░╔░░░   
 ░╝░░░   
 ░▼▼░░
 ░B░░░   

 ░░░░░ 
 ░╔░░░   
 ░╝░░░   
 ░B▼░░
 ░B░░░   

With the B as a raised and lowered bridge, respectively, don't see why it wouldn't work fine.

[Meneth]

If you don't need an automated system or lots of magma, you might try Minimalist magma moving. Works great for powering smelters and forges.

I like to extend the wiki's design with a tunnel between the sea/volcano and the first pump, containing a Fortification and a magma-safe Wall Grate, just in case any building-destroying magma creatures show up.

[Psieye]

By 'noob friendly' I mean consisting of clear and precise instructions with clear and precise screenshots/ascii examples. No assumptions that the reader knows anything about minecarts or can decipher your graphics/tileset.

I'm not sure rescinding those assumptions is particular productive. The wiki is there to teach the basics of how minecarts (and pumps) work.

If you don't want to mess with power and you have time and dwarves at hand, try this design (note: I've just thought it up, haven't tested it):

• Use some pumps to get magma from the magma sea and make it fall from a short height.
• Build a minecart track which passes through that magmafall.
• Ensure you have enough drainage (holes leading back to the magma sea) so your magmafall doesn't spill into undesired areas.
• Designate stops so a dwarf will push a minecart through the magmafall. Ensure the cart will stop without spilling (by applying friction stops gradually if need be).
• From that end stop, extend the track to go all the way up to your workshop area (or wherever you need the magma).
• At the end of that track, put a dumping stop to make the magma fall out into a hole you've prepared beforehand.
• Designate a 3rd stop so a dwarf will guide the (now magma-filled) cart from the 2nd stop (as soon as it reaches that stop).
• Optionally have a dwarf guide that cart back to the 1st stop.

The key here is that a guided minecart will go down/uphill with no need for power and with no chance for accidents.

[Larix]

Some people have tried magmafalls, and they don't work for getting magma into a cart. A cart must be submerged in deep fluid to fill, and must stand still or move _very_ slowly.

The easiest way probably really is just dumping a bunch of carts into a room, pumping magma into the room, draining the room and moving the filled carts to their destination by dwarfpower. You don't need anything more elaborate if all you want is enough magma to power your metal industry. Automated systems are great fun, but also pretty complicated and hard to explain.

[Ravendarksky]

Did you watch the video for my one?

It only requires power for the three rollers in the magma. (and the one above if you want to turn it on/off.

Here is a guide:

1. Dig a 3x1 trench in the magma level (ramp, flat, ramp) and build a 1x2 fast speed roller and a 1x1 slowest speed roller using magma safe materials. Make sure they are all pointing in the same direction and that the slow one is at the START.
2. At the end of the 2x1 roller have a ramp out of the magma going into a standard impulse ramp design which goes to your destination: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Minecart#Impulse_ramps
3. At the end of the 1x1 roller (on the z level above) build a short section of track with another 1x1 slow speed roller which pushes in the direction of the magma. The purpose of this is to turn the machine on/off later. Connect the gear powering this roller to a leaver. This is your on/off switch.
4. Directly above the newly build roller dig a vertical 1x1 tunnel all the way to the surface/floor you are dumping magma from. This will be our return chute.
5. On the top level (the top of your impulse ramp) build a short track to where you want to dump the magma. Dumping is best done by building a track stop which dumps the magma out before the minecart falls into the vertical tunnel dug in step 4.
6. Build a dump over the top of your tunnel and dump some minecarts down it, as many as you like but 4 should be plenty.
7. Turn the rollers on and watch as your magma fills up. Turn them off again and the minecarts will stack neatly in the 1x1 vertical tunnel.

I made you a crappy paint picture to illustrate this:


Reply back if you are having trouble figuring out how to power it, but it should be fairly trivial. (I just trap some water under some wheels and it sloshes back and forth giving a constant power supply).

Make sure to use magma safe materials for the rollers and gears!

[Ravendarksky]

Automated systems are pretty complicated and hard to explain.

I disagree... It's three rollers, one leaver and an impulse ramp. Really isn't hard to do except to make an underground power supply and connect it to the rollers. I guess the physical time it takes to build the impulse ramps is a factor too.

[rmblr]

Working through some of these suggestions, thanks for the contribution everyone.

Here's a quick question I can't find answered anywhere.. how do you designate a series of adjacent ramps?

For example I want to create a simple line of impulse ramps like the following, where each ramp is a SW Track ramp:

Code: [Select]

═▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲═
I can't figure out how to designate this. Whatever I do I end up with the middle ramps all being SEW ramps.

[Ravendarksky]

Working through some of these suggestions, thanks for the contribution everyone.

Here's a quick question I can't find answered anywhere.. how do you designate a series of adjacent ramps?

For example I want to create a simple line of impulse ramps like the following, where each ramp is a SW Track ramp:

Code: [Select]

═▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲═
I can't figure out how to designate this. Whatever I do I end up with the middle ramps all being SEW ramps.

This is what makes building impulse ramps annoying. You need to manually build the middle squares. For an impulse loop I'd do it like this:
Start at the surface and channel all the squares. You should be channelling two squares on each z level.
Manually build ALL the track ramps. I found it easiest to pick one piece at a time and build it on each Z level + 4 before picking the next piece. This lends itself well with the Dfhack tool "autoselect" which auto build selects the same thing over and over for you.

You need to manually do this twice for each z level so if you do it the vertical way I suggest then you will need to do it a total of 8 times (2 different track pieces for each of the four parts of the impulse loop spiral).

Hope this helps

You can view the impulse loop on the save I sent you if you want to check the start/end of the loop or the precise configuration of the actual ramps.

[Larix]

You have to remove designations between steps. For SW ramps, you start at the eastmost ramp, designate track to the south and to the west. This automatically designates an "east" track branch on the next ramp to the west. You don't want that, so you remove designation (d-x) on the next ramp tile to get rid of the branch, then designate south- and west- track on that tile, remove the resultant branch on the third ramp etc.
If some track ends up wrong, you can simply erase it via "s"moothing and try again.

If you find all this detailed designating too tedious, you can also just build the ramps from stone or blocks - "b"uild "C"onstruction "T"rack, choose the correct type (ramp SW) expand the length as much as you want and choose material. Such track is built by masons (or other builders if you use metal or wood).

Every kind of track that can be built can also be made by engraving, it just takes more keystrokes, removed designations etc. It took quite a while to e.g. designate this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

but it was all done by engraving, no track was built, except for the two upward/impulse ramps (had mined out the area so there was no natural ramp to use).

[Ravendarksky]

Every kind of track that can be built can also be made by engraving, it just takes more keystrokes, removed designations etc.

Thanks for the tip! It took me a moment to figure out exactly what you meant but this works fine for the wiki design... It is very fiddly though and you have to let one of the carved pieces on each Z level finish building before you do the other one... and you have to remember to un-designate the changes to the one you've already carved when doing the second one.

[rmblr]

Every kind of track that can be built can also be made by engraving, it just takes more keystrokes, removed designations etc.

Thanks for the tip! It took me a moment to figure out exactly what you meant but this works fine for the wiki design... It is very fiddly though and you have to let one of the carved pieces on each Z level finish building before you do the other one... and you have to remember to un-designate the changes to the one you've already carved when doing the second one.

I just tested it and i was able to designate it all in one go without having to wait for it to finish. I'm on 40.19 though. Also I was designating just one z-level (as shown in the diagam), not sure what you mean by multiple z-levels.

Now my current issue is trying to build this bounce-back system in the second screenshot of this post. He gives this diagram:

Code: [Select]

WWWWWW
W═╝╝═W
WWWWfW

The furthest right ╝ is an impulse ramp.  The furthest left ╝, also an impulse ramp, is what the minecart will be returning on.

Yet in my testing the minecart enters from the right (falling) then just goes to the west-most edge and gets stuck. Of course I'm testing without magma, maybe the bounceback only happens in magma?

More likely I just didn't designate it properly. What are those track pieces from left to right? My broken version is:

Code: [Select]

Ramp E, Ramp NW, Ramp NW, Ramp W
BTW, Raven I got your save and opened it up and took a peek around... good stuff! I'm just trying to do this without power for the moment as I'm trying to learn minecarts not water reactors yet. Unless you can convince me I can power it easily!

[Larix]

The westmost must be a proper ramp to return the cart, i.e. it must have EW track. Preferably the entry ramp (to the east) as well. A ramp must have track touching wall and track touching floor, or the game treats it as a flat tile.

[Ravendarksky]

Screw the wiki for water reactors. It's very simple to do it my way.

I find minecart moving without power to be very annoying... the tracks behave differently in and out of water/magma and it can be very tricky to ensure your minecarts always leave the magma AND go slow enough at some point to actually fill up. Having a min speed roller on the entrance square (MUST NOT HAVE A RAMP ON IT, i missed this from my earlier post) and then a max speed roller on the following two gives you nice speedy minecarts which always reliably fill with magma.

Very interested to know how you managed to designate a SW SE track ramp without having one of the squares engraved first OR ending up with a SWN SE track

Here is my design of water power:

1. Dig the water area
2. Channel the spaces for the wheels
3. Build horizontal axles to support wheels and transfer power. Build the gears and connect to leaver to turn off/on power, build floodgates at either end to trap water when ready to seal
4. Build water wheels
5. Flood with water to a depth of 7/7 throughout WITH the floodgate open (flood from north to south in this diagram)
6. Once water starts leaking out end close floodgates. THIS is the trick... as long as where the water was leaking out can reach the map edge then the water trapped inside will count as constantly flowing even after the floodgate is shut.
7. You can now build walls/floors over each end to stop any creatures going in or out (building destroyers will eat the floodgates)

[rmblr]

The westmost must be a proper ramp to return the cart, i.e. it must have EW track. Preferably the entry ramp (to the east) as well. A ramp must have track touching wall and track touching floor, or the game treats it as a flat tile.

Gah, I'm sorry I feel like an imbecile. I guess part of the problem is I don't fully grok normal DF ramps in the first place.

You say it must have an EW track, this means it must be a NEW ramp track? So the eastern ramp needs to be NEW too?

edit: Ok I got it working with like this:

Code: [Select]

Ramp EW, Ramp NW, Ramp NEW, Ramp W
The NEW Ramp is marked as unusable, because the z-level above has a wall in that space (see 1st screenshot. I just got my impulse elevator working, so now I just have to work out the drop chute catching mechanism!