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[tntey]

I would like to make a minecart shotgun that would shoot minecarts when a pressure plate is pressed. How would I go about doing this?

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

How timely. I'm about to start experimenting with shotguns myself.

I would guess either put the minecart on a hatch wired to the plate or hook the plate up to a gear powering the roller.

[Space Wizard]

I'm one of the typical intermediate dwarf fortress players that can split seas, raise magma, weaponize NPCs and has no idea how minecarts work or even really their purpose past weaponization, dwarfputing and various exploits, as in the time it takes to set up a track you could have hauled everything from the area with the same dwarves and wheelbarrels.

My question is this: launching live animals?

Another question I have for people who bring up magma, after learning how to raise magma using minecarts, is it superior in any way to pump stacks?

[milo christiansen]

Another question I have for people who bring up magma, after learning how to raise magma using minecarts, is it superior in any way to pump stacks?

Depends on how much magma you need and how many materials you want to spend. An impulse elevator + drop shaft requires only digging and engraving, but a pump stack requires huge amounts of pump components and power. That said the minecarts are far slower than the pump stack. If you only need occasional bursts of magma a big cistern filled by minecart is probably the way to go, but for major world flooding you need a pump stack.

[Ravendarksky]

you can setup a relatively simple building destroyer proof minecart blender trap by having two sets of underground impulse ramps on either side of a passageway (or road)

The setup looks like this:
Z-1: impulse Ramp-impulse Ramp-Rock-Rock-Rock-Rock-impulse Ramp-impulse Ramp
Z: Wall-Hole covered with bridge-road-road-road-road-down ramp- wall

When the trap is activated the bridges retract freeing the minecart from it's prison and allowing it to rapidly speed between the sets of impulse ramps.
When the trap is deactivated the bridges extend and either trap the minecarts speeding back and fourth underground or they stop ontop of the bridge tile.

Creatres over a certain size will stop this trap working though. The minecarts crash into them and stop (usually still causing significant damage). It isn't too difficult to reset the trap when this happens but it can get annoying if you have lots of other hauling routes and forbidding/unforbidding the minecarts can be annoying. This will DESTROY goblins though.

I suggest making a row of about 10 of them on the main road to your base... Delicious blended goodness.

For more speed/damage you can add tracks, but I like to have a paved road in the middle to give it more of a trap feel and make it look less incongruous.

If anyone ever finds a way of having the same trap with powered ramps but also being building destroyer proof then PLEASE let me know!

Final thought: You can add cage traps and things to this setup to capture creatures which are thrown sideways by the impacts of the minecarts. This should in theory work on trap avoid creatures if they are stunned by the minecart hits.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Could you give a diagram of the blender please, I'm having trouble visualising it. Nevertheless, I expect you could make some headway against building destroyers using a gap over which the minecarts fly.

[Psieye]

I would like to make a minecart shotgun that would shoot minecarts when a pressure plate is pressed. How would I go about doing this?

I am reminded of the minecart machinegun design that came up when minecarts first showed up. In essence, there'd be a roller that's always on. The pressure plate would open a hatch that would drop a minecart onto said roller. I can't quite remember the exact requirements to make the contents shotgun out beyond "must crash into a 1-z high wall with space above that wall" or some such. Loading your 'magazine' of minecarts should be relatively simple - make a route where a minecart is pushed into a drop chute (with the trigger hatch at its bottom) after loading it with your 'ball bearings' of choice.

[nanomage]

shooting minecarts themselves is not really destructive though. You'll want to load them with stuff (blocks, most easily) to do some real damage.

Anyway, to shoot 1 minecart all you need is put it on a powered track behind a mechanism-operated door and a set of impulse ramps. If you want a magazine, door is usually replaced with a hatch cover (with the carts beneath) because hatches don't get jammed.

[Ravendarksky]

Could you give a diagram of the blender please, I'm having trouble visualising it. Nevertheless, I expect you could make some headway against building destroyers using a gap over which the minecarts fly.

[gchristopher]

I'm one of the typical intermediate dwarf fortress players that can split seas, raise magma, weaponize NPCs and has no idea how minecarts work or even really their purpose past weaponization, dwarfputing and various exploits, as in the time it takes to set up a track you could have hauled everything from the area with the same dwarves and wheelbarrels.

Check out the wealth of information in Larix's Minecart Education Thread.

As for, purposes, your mileage may vary, but I frequently use minecarts for:
- Quantum stockpiles (DF would be a near-unplayable mess without these) and item sorting.
- Defense mechanisms of varying degrees of silliness.
- Speeding up hauling from the inevitable mess in the trap area to sorting and storage areas.
- Magma transport, manual and automated
- Swimming training. (A dwarf riding a minecart in 6/7 water trains swimming, and is hilarious!)
- Timers for bridges/doors/traps for silk farms, danger rooms, etc...

I would like to make a minecart shotgun that would shoot minecarts when a pressure plate is pressed. How would I go about doing this?

Load a minecart up with minecarts, get it going fast. (See Larix's thread or use any of the several minecart shotgun designs on this forum.)

A minecart ejects its contents when it comes to a halt after moving fast enough. There are two common ways to achieve this:

1. Hitting a wall:

[track][hole in the floor][wall]

Travelling left-to-right, a cart flies into the wall, ejects its contents, which teleport one level up, then fly forward at the speed with which the minecart was previously traveling. The minecart falls down into the hole (in 11 ticks? 8?), clearing the path for the next shot.

2. Hitting a stationary minecart.

[track][hole in the floor][stationary minecart][fortification]

This version compacts things down to one z-level. The moving minecart hits the stationary one, stops, ejects contents, and falls as above, but the contents don't get teleported up. Instead, they fly forward past the stationary minecart, through the fortifications, and toward the target. This is preferred by most designers.

My question is this: launching live animals?

Put a cage full of animals in a minecart, and launch the cage, which should be destroyed on impact. There are examples of crocodile-bombs somewhere on the forums. I haven't tried it, though.

Another question I have for people who bring up magma, after learning how to raise magma using minecarts, is it superior in any way to pump stacks?

In general, it doesn't require you to build the pump stack, just to carve ramps, so you don't need the materials, time and power source of a pump stack. Once you can actually build a pump stack, that's better. But minecarts raise enough magma quickly that I frequently don't bother going back to adding the pump stack and move on to other projects.

One special case that 2/7 magma in a minecart inside a second minecart can be carried safely by a dwarf without burning their hands. Hauled to the surface and dumped using track stops, this is a super-easy method of getting magma workshops built anywhere on the map in the first season. All you need is magma-safe minecarts.