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[Lummox JR]

I spent more seasons than I care to admit getting a minecart elevator and trough set up for minecarts to deliver magma to an upper-level chamber in my fortress. The trough was filled with impulse ramps, up to the escape ramp which was a normal ramp. This fed into a minecart elevator system (4x4, except where it had to be rerouted due to caverns). This is what I learned:

• Urist's Cradle is crap. It doesn't work, and should be taken off the wiki. It may have worked at one time, but new minecarts arriving do NOT push out the old ones in newer versions.
• Minecarts need to pass through 7/7 magma to fill up with 2 units, not 6/7 as reported. Passing through a trough full of 6/7 will do jack nothing.
• Minecarts need 6/7 or lower to get off the escape ramp.
• Magma depth in the trough has to be carefully managed. 6/7 or below and the carts will not fill; too much 7/7 means they can't escape the trough. Floodgates with pressure plates work somewhat for this, but they suck for reliability. The best setup was a floodgate with a pressure plate set to 0-6 magma, and controlled with a lever for backup which was then opened. However, eventually signals get lost and the floodgate will stick closed, requiring a double lever pull to reset.
• You cannot keep pets off of the track--not without a completely closed system. Vermin will spawn, and pets will go ever them.
• It's possible to setup a system where a hatch is at the bottom of the return track, just before the trough, and that hatch is controlled by a pressure plate just before the dump point, allowing for two minecarts to operate without collision, doubling the rate of output. However if a cart hits a pet on the way back down, both can get stuck together.
• Even with two minecarts running, it isn't enough to fill a pool of decent size fast enough to fight evaporation.
• If you have floor space on the "side" the last impulse ramp (e.g., if the ramp is NW in a westward trough, this would be north on the level above the trough), the cart may be ejected there if it can't escape the normal ramp. Carving a corner track and connecting it up with the regular output route can be done. The minecart may bounce back into the trough, or it may take the corner and continue along the track.
• You need some impulse ramps before the elevator. The cart can get stuck early on otherwise.
• Minecarts have a tendency to spill just before the elevator, probably depending a lot on how your track is setup. Spillage is uncommon but it does happen.

In the end, I had to abandon my trough system after two different trough attempts, because nothing ever worked right and my magma chamber wasn't filling. Instead, I used what I'd learned from mining out the elevator to determine where I could run a vertical staircase, and near it a pump stack. My pump stack goes up about 40 levels and was dug out something like this:

Code: [Select]

z       z-1
######  ######
#X.###  #X..##
##.###  ###.##
#_.#R#  #R#._#
#_z_R#  #R_z_#
#_##R#  #R##_#
######  ######

. space
_ channel
X up/down stairs
z remove ramp (after channeling above)
R ramp up (after channeling above)

Of course naturally the pump stack had to be built bottom-up, which I found out the hard way after some of the pumps collapsed, but eventually I got it all hooked up and powered it with three dwarven water reactors (600 power). It took roughly a season or more to get it all done, but once it was finished and I started the reactors (requiring 3 dwarves pumping at once) the magma chamber filled up right away. Of course, the operation killed my framerate in the process, so once I got all the magma up and filled all the 1x3 channels in the stack, I turned the reactors off.

At least I finally have magma available on the upper floors.

[PatrikLundell]

- You can keep pets (and diplomats) off the tracks by using doors controlled by mine cart triggered pressure plates. Pasturing pets helps as well.
- I fill mine carts with magma using a dorf powered screw pump that drains through a grate, a door beside the grate, and a mine cart placed inside. The cart is then carried to the various destinations.
- Filling any area of a decent size with an evaporation prone fluid (i.e. water or magma) requires staging of the filling. The faster the fill rate, the larger the stages can be. If you use hand carried mine carts, dump into a single tile hole. When up to 6/7 you can channel out two tiles to enlarge the hole area to 3 tiles. Again fill up and expand such that the level doesn't go below 2/7 anywhere at any time. If you want to play it safe, don't enlarge to the limit to avoid evaporation issues when the fluid flows.
- If you just want to power some work shops, you just need a single tile hole with 4/7 magma for each, i.e. two mine carts.
- Pump stacks can actually be built from the top as well as from the bottom, meeting in the middle. It's also possible to "hang" intermediate pumps from a supporting gear or axle at suitable intervals, allowing you to build up and down from these. Those supports need to be removed and replaced with walls afterwards, or you'll get leaks (if using nether-cap axles, it's said you can also obsidianize them and they'd still work to carry power).
- I usually build my mine cart tracks in a 3*3 footprint with a drop chute in the middle for the downwards path.

[milo christiansen]

I hate to contradict you, but minecart magma hauling works just fine.

The trick to filling is to place a powered roller down the entire length of the fill trench, and drop carts in vertically. For some reason carts don't like to fill unless they have 0 horizontal speed.

Code: [Select]

_ ||| _
|____/

Minecarts come in from the left, hit the wall, and fall into the trench. A powered roller (set to any speed you like) should cover the entire trench bottom, including the ramp out.

A tiny single wheel reactor is more than enough to power the cart filler, you can even start the reactor with buckets hauled from the surface as long as you use more than one.

The problem with magma dumping at the bottom of the impulse elevator sounds like it is caused by erant sideways velocity making the cart bump the wall.

[gchristopher]

[good information]

+1 to everything mentioned there. You can build a very high rate-of-delivery system that way, enough to fill obsidian casting areas or flood moderate areas of the surface. Someone out there Larix, I think, explored the maximum rate for a single cart path and it was something like one cart per 7 ticks was possible. (The fastest I ever ran was one cart per 11 ticks.)

The one thing I'd add is to make sure the magma in the filling channel is refilled by pressure from a screw pump on that level. That way you don't have liquid flow pushing carts around. If built in the right order, the screw pump can serve to transmit power to the rollers.

0 power methods might still be made to work? I've never tried them.

[Lummox JR]

My goal was a zero-power system, because of the dangers of framerate drops. In the end none of that worked out, so I went with a pump stack. If I'm gonna have a reactor running anyway, may as well fill up fast with pumps and be done with it, then turn off the reactor when I'm done.

[Niddhoger]

If you really want zero-power, you could have used a magma piston.  I would say its less tedious work than a pump stack- it just needs more grunt work in the vein of massive channeling.  The bottom pump can easily be dorf-powered.  It all comes down to exactly how much magma you want.  You can get elaborate, automated magma-minecart delivery without power if you heavily exploit impulse ramps.  However, this is very tedious to set up properly.  It'll get you a steady stream of magma for whatever you are planning, though.  If you just want a few tiles, you can easily use a couple wheelbarrows and have a few magma-powered workshops up and running before the first dwarven caravan.  If you want massive tons of magma, a pump stack is typically your answer.  A magma piston can bring up moderate amounts with no power, but again, its very much a mega project when digging a 10x10 channel down ~100 or more floors without losing anyone. 

[Lummox JR]

For zero-power, impulse ramps alone can't get it done. I tried, and the inescapable conclusion was that they get stuck on the exit ramp when the magma level is too high. I had a minecart bouncing back and forth, and once a second cart entered the channel they both sat there.

[Larix]

If you only want a little magma, impulse ramps work fine. They have the reliability issues you observed - practically impossible to get a moving cart to pick up fluid in 6/7 magma, no escape if all tiles are 7/7. When all you want is enough magma for some workshops, it's still an adequate method, the dodgy reliability starts to hurt when you want a steadier supply.

For long-term sustained reloading with magma at zero power, you need the single-tile trench: a ramp in a one-wide pit, with track connection only to walls. The cart will treat the tile as flat floor and thus doesn't need to "climb" outside. Magma friction is still so high that ordinary cart movement through the tile is not feasible. It works best with a collision system - impulse ramp on the (non-magma) tile before/above the magma trench, pointing into the magma.

You have to start with a cart sitting in the magma already. An arriving cart will push the cart in the magma out of the trench (must be at moderate speed, if the trenched cart gets accelerated too much it'll drop its load). Then the cart on the ramp will roll off, but gains only a single step worth of ramp acceleration and gets stopped inside the trench by the checkpoint effect. Since it stands still, it will take on magma when the tile is filled to 7/7 or 6/7.
This system is very reliable and can be automated: http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2733-multi-cartmagmadelivery

BTWPS: You can keep pets and guests off minecart tracks by blocking them off with statues. Carts travel through statues just fine, creatures don't (apart from creatures in minecarts, of course). Unwalkable workshop tiles fulfill the same purpose, but i find statues more economical - i have more than enough crummy statues in every fort.

[hanni79]

Regarding the reactor :

try to build one with one waterwheel, add a gear assembly at it's side and a linked up hatch cover on the intake. Then carve out a double reactor next to the gear. Put a hatch cover on the input, link the cover to a lever and pull it (this is important, hatch is now open).
Afterwards, you link the lever to the gear. Then finish the double reactor and pull the lever again. Now the second reactor is switched off ( hatch is down and Gear is unlinked), with the first Lever you can switch off the first reactor. This is infinitely chain-able, but a bit bitchy to build.
But it allows you to only use one dwarf to start the first one-wheel-reactor, which is enough to kickstart two doubles. It allows you perfect power (and fps) control.
I built three times 2500+ Power reactors this way, needs a crapton of mechanisms but is really cool. My newest one doesn't have Levers for each reactor though, I linked it so I can kickstart the first two doubles, the the next four and then eight, less Levers to pull this way ^^

[Bumber]

Regarding the reactor ...

If you have access to a map edge, you can make a zero-movement reactor. Water flowing off the map (e.g., through a carved fortification) is set to a flow state. Sealing the water at both ends doesn't break the flow state.

I have a large 2000 power reactor with water just sitting in a trough. If I need to cut power, I just disable an exterior gear assembly and leave the wheels turning. If I needed to clean the trough, I'd just open the map-edge gate and drain the water.

[taptap]

I spent more seasons than I care to admit getting a minecart elevator and trough set up for minecarts to deliver magma to an upper-level chamber in my fortress. The trough was filled with impulse ramps, up to the escape ramp which was a normal ramp. This fed into a minecart elevator system (4x4, except where it had to be rerouted due to caverns). This is what I learned:

Even with two minecarts running, it isn't enough to fill a pool of decent size fast enough to fight evaporation.

Not sure what is decent size for you (and I believe your system is slower than it needs to be because using a slow elavating system), but you can build tanks for reduced evaporation (I have a somewhat outdated system that fills just fine even with as slow a delivery rate as 1 cart / day). Either simply more height than width, maybe slowly widening on upper levels or even a small intermediary tank that once filled is emptied in the larger tank and covers the floor there with sufficient height to avoid evaporation. With intermediate tank it is possible to fill at an arbitrarily slow speed without any evaporation loss at all.

[Fleeting Frames]

If you only want a little magma, impulse ramps work fine. They have the reliability issues you observed - practically impossible to get a moving cart to pick up fluid in 6/7 magma, no escape if all tiles are 7/7.

....I think at the very least, a clarification would be needed ^^;;

Certainly, it is not impossible to pick up magma from a trench without power.

Pre-load, empty steel minecart to be pushed into trench over an impulse ramp.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bottom has legal (NW) ramp into fake ramp, filled with 7/7 magma on both.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The minecart goes through the trench fast enough (might have a single checkpoint there) that magma will not equalize before it has already left with 2/7 of it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Though really, the speed is pretty slow on flat track making it stop on first floor tile.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(It's just that, I see quite a few cases of "lets pump magma directly onto the minecarts and then have the remaining pumped/flowed/dropped away", when it is quite slower to get access to full carts like that. )