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[Kogut]

Please, RAWify stockpiles (p menu and settings of stockpiles), I hate disabling seeds, fat and extracts on every single food stockpile in every single game.

Reposted from http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104479.0 (as this thread is linked to ESV)

[NW_Kohaku]

Please, RAWify stockpiles (p menu and settings of stockpiles), I hate disabling seeds, fat and extracts on every single food stockpile in every single game.

Reposted from http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104479.0 (as this thread is linked to ESV)

It is?  It is!  Wait, when did my thread get linked to the ESV?

Anyway, what I've always held is that we need not so much a "raw" as we need an "inport/export" function, similar to embark profiles or macros have now.  Functionally, these are somewhat similar in that they are basically just .txt scripts, but RAWs require actually leaving the game to modify, and I'd rather just have the ability to modify stockpiles in-game and then hit "save" and "load" as need be.

Of course, I should also point out that this isn't exactly what this thread is explicitly meant for...

[King Mir]

There is but it's hard to think of an efficient algorithm to solve a problem we don't understand.  If we accept that the only use of minecarts (And related lifts, etc.) is to move things from one or two specific locations or stockpiles, to a few other specific locations, and we think manual control is tolerable, then that sets some fairly easy limits on what the algorithm is actually expected to cope with.  In this case we don't really have to change the algorithm at all, we just have a minecart that create store jobs like a stockpile.

Well, if we don't understand it, it's time to think about it more until we do.   

... OK, that's all that a first-blush look at how to make a minecart path will tell me... so could someone blow this idea up for me so I can try to think of a better way to rebuild it?

If a minecart is an option, a dwarf should probably always choose the minecart. The trickier thing is keeping track of which goods can and cannot go on the cart. If a minecart acts like a stockpile, it needs to be connected to a stockpile to dump things in, and it needs to keep track of wich stockpiles the track is connected to.

I don't think you would necessarily have a single track that winds the full hight of the fortress. You might for mining purposes, but I imagine having issolated tracks carts for different industries, running side by side.

Gah.. so many people posting in this thread...  7 replies... I need to stop reading books in the middle of posts.

And writing them. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Gah.. so many people posting in this thread...  7 replies... I need to stop reading books in the middle of posts.

And writing them. 

Are you kidding, I barely filled a page with that.  I obviously should have written something more comprehensive.

If a minecart is an option, a dwarf should probably always choose the minecart. The trickier thing is keeping track of which goods can and cannot go on the cart. If a minecart acts like a stockpile, it needs to be connected to a stockpile to dump things in, and it needs to keep track of wich stockpiles the track is connected to.

I don't think you would necessarily have a single track that winds the full hight of the fortress. You might for mining purposes, but I imagine having issolated tracks carts for different industries, running side by side.

Well, no, minecarts can't always be the option, because what if you are, say, looking to bring some food from a farm to a food stockpile, and the food stockpile is 5 tiles away, wheras the nearest mine cart is 100 tiles away, and the tracks don't even lead to anywhere within 60 tiles of the food stockpile, because you've only laid down tracks in the heavy mining segments.  You have to check to see if that's the case before making your decision, of course, but there are reasons not to go there.

As for the tracks and carts for different industries, I was thinking about this when I was talking about the "rollercoaster" aspects of the minecarts in some of the other threads, and an old idea I had about conveyor belts-

Spoiler: quoting myself (click to show/hide)

I remember in the old improved mechanics thread, one of the things I thought of for trying to make more fortress equipment that actually used power was to use a conveyor belt that could be set up directly from a workshop, so that its outputs would automatically be carried away from the workshop - potentially directly into the next workshop, if it was like a clothing industry, so that cloth could be automatically moved from the farmer's workshop to the dyer's workshop to the loom to a dumping point at/near the stockpile.  It would automate some of the hauling that takes up so much dwarven time, and would be a neat way to make use of waterwheels to make a more "industrial" type of dwarf without actual steampunk.

Well, for one thing, you have to do that "one-time" setup for every workshop, which you have to do for every fort you build.

But anyway, one of the things I rather liked the concept of, especially when I was talking about the "conveyor belt" idea was that you could somehow designate a literal supply line. 

If you had, say, a farm which you set to grow pig tails, you could designate that to be fed to the farmer's workshop, which would probably have to be hauled.  From there, however, a conveyor belt could be built that automatically sends the output of the farmer's workshop to the dyer, whose output goes to the loom, whose output is simply dumped into an clothing stockpile area.  Rather than having to micromanage jobs that keep getting canceled, you could simply set them to "work as supplies come in".

Basically, if you can create a way to "mechanize" minecart motion by throwing mechanisms under the tracks, and setting up roller-coaster style "acceleration wheels" that are simply wheels that turn due to the torque applied through mechanisms in order to push along a cart that is moving slowly enough through one of the tiles that is mechanized, it will be able to push those carts along a path, or push it up hills so that when it goes down the hills, it can just carry on its own momentum forward. 

If you build a full circuit of mechanized carts, however, you could recreate that conveyor belt approach. 

That is, if a workshop is attended, all "finished products" from a workshop could be offloaded from a workshop into a cart as it passes by, and all "raw materials" that it will need for the queued jobs can be input into the workshop without needing to have a hauling job performed - workers just automatically offload or take in whatever they need as long as they are at the workshop as the cart goes by.

Then, you can have supply chains like sending a cart track on a loop between a farm, the farmer's workshop, the dyer, the loom, the stockpile, and maybe the trade depot.  Minimize your need to actually haul things through automated movement of goods.

[Mike Mayday]

It is?  It is!  Wait, when did my thread get linked to the ESV?

I asked Draco to link the ESV item to this discussion

[King Mir]

If a minecart is an option, a dwarf should probably always choose the minecart. The trickier thing is keeping track of which goods can and cannot go on the cart. If a minecart acts like a stockpile, it needs to be connected to a stockpile to dump things in, and it needs to keep track of wich stockpiles the track is connected to.

I don't think you would necessarily have a single track that winds the full hight of the fortress. You might for mining purposes, but I imagine having issolated tracks carts for different industries, running side by side.

Well, no, minecarts can't always be the option, because what if you are, say, looking to bring some food from a farm to a food stockpile, and the food stockpile is 5 tiles away, wheras the nearest mine cart is 100 tiles away, and the tracks don't even lead to anywhere within 60 tiles of the food stockpile, because you've only laid down tracks in the heavy mining segments.  You have to check to see if that's the case before making your decision, of course, but there are reasons not to go there.

Yeah, you still need the mine cart zones of influence. That can be a breadth first search for tiles within a certain walking distance. It could be displayed in a mannor simmilar to the depot wagon access.

As for the tracks and carts for different industries, I was thinking about this when I was talking about the "rollercoaster" aspects of the minecarts in some of the other threads, and an old idea I had about conveyor belts-

Spoiler: quoting myself (click to show/hide)

I remember in the old improved mechanics thread, one of the things I thought of for trying to make more fortress equipment that actually used power was to use a conveyor belt that could be set up directly from a workshop, so that its outputs would automatically be carried away from the workshop - potentially directly into the next workshop, if it was like a clothing industry, so that cloth could be automatically moved from the farmer's workshop to the dyer's workshop to the loom to a dumping point at/near the stockpile.  It would automate some of the hauling that takes up so much dwarven time, and would be a neat way to make use of waterwheels to make a more "industrial" type of dwarf without actual steampunk.

Well, for one thing, you have to do that "one-time" setup for every workshop, which you have to do for every fort you build.

But anyway, one of the things I rather liked the concept of, especially when I was talking about the "conveyor belt" idea was that you could somehow designate a literal supply line. 

If you had, say, a farm which you set to grow pig tails, you could designate that to be fed to the farmer's workshop, which would probably have to be hauled.  From there, however, a conveyor belt could be built that automatically sends the output of the farmer's workshop to the dyer, whose output goes to the loom, whose output is simply dumped into an clothing stockpile area.  Rather than having to micromanage jobs that keep getting canceled, you could simply set them to "work as supplies come in".

Basically, if you can create a way to "mechanize" minecart motion by throwing mechanisms under the tracks, and setting up roller-coaster style "acceleration wheels" that are simply wheels that turn due to the torque applied through mechanisms in order to push along a cart that is moving slowly enough through one of the tiles that is mechanized, it will be able to push those carts along a path, or push it up hills so that when it goes down the hills, it can just carry on its own momentum forward. 

If you build a full circuit of mechanized carts, however, you could recreate that conveyor belt approach. 

That is, if a workshop is attended, all "finished products" from a workshop could be offloaded from a workshop into a cart as it passes by, and all "raw materials" that it will need for the queued jobs can be input into the workshop without needing to have a hauling job performed - workers just automatically offload or take in whatever they need as long as they are at the workshop as the cart goes by.

Then, you can have supply chains like sending a cart track on a loop between a farm, the farmer's workshop, the dyer, the loom, the stockpile, and maybe the trade depot.  Minimize your need to actually haul things through automated movement of goods.

I'm a little weary of full on converyers in a pre-industrial setting. At some point one starts to ask "If dwarves know this much mechanics, why can't they harness steam already?". I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line, but conveyers are near it.

I'd rather have supplies moved to a nearby stockpile than dirrectly into a workshop. This avoids clutter. In addition it's more realistic and detailed. A workshop is not a building; it is perhalps a table and a few other machines that may eventually be split into individually placeable objects. The pile of raw materials doesn't need to be part of that; it can already be split off in a natual way. The ability to customize the size and raw contents of a stockpile realistically model how materials are stored near a workshop. This is not to say that job orders should not also specify material or that the take-from system does not need improvement. 

I'm not sure that I agree that hauling should be minimised as a rule. Hauling should be realistic, nothing more.

[NW_Kohaku]

Waterwheels turning belts that ran powered looms existed before steam did.  They were basically big wheels that had a long leather loop that ran between them, and that's basically all you need to make a conveyor belt. 

If you have all this mechanical power and drawbridges that raise up from water hitting a pressure plate, and mine carts that can be sent along, then just putting something on top of the leather belts running the power down the line in order to send it down the line for you is a simple task that takes no more technological progress than what we already are working with.

As for workshops, I'm simply picturing them as having some sort of bin or something next to the counter, where they store all the junk they've finished making but haven't sent off to the stockpile yet.  Workshops we have now get cluttered with all the stone doors and stuff we've built and are waiting for hauling.  This just lets the craftsdwarf toss that bin's contents into the minecart when it trundles by.

The important part is the bit about being able to set up a fortress that runs more-or-less on its own, with the ability to just tell the clothier at the loom to just keep weaving socks as long as dyed cloth keeps coming down the line.

It's also a thing about "look how cool my fortress is that it has this automated delivery system".  Sort of like the people who want to make minecart rides for "dwarven rollercoasters".

[Tierre]

Just wanted to reviwe a thread as it is in ESV. So it is here we need to discuss implemented carts and wheelbarrows and speak of what is left to do.

For hauling improvements - i think bin and barrel jobs have a lot of work in polishing to do. Like stuck dwarfes and taking barrel to get 1 plump helmet.

Wheelbarrows and minecarts are prety good (i don't have enough time to see if they have any major problems in them).

Also stacking is what everybody still wants (in my opinion at least).

[therealmarauder]

I've been using minecarts as actual minecarts, moving heavy ores to my dump chute. I do that by making a stockpile over the ores and taking from that stockpile, so the dwarves don't do something dumb like walking to my ore dump location and taking the ores from there, hauling them up 60 flights of stairs and 200 tiles to my cart, then putting them in the cart that'll dump them down the shaft.

The problem I see is that it acts exactly like dumping. Instead of the sane thing to do, which is having one dwarf and ONLY one dwarf doing hauling tasks to or from a mine cart, five dwarves come down from the fortress into the mines and each hauls a single ore into the stockpile. This is horrible for me! It ties up six dwarves and they spend maybe 5% of time actually working.

Therefore, I'd like to see minecarts act more like workshops in this regard. I think it's reasonable for one dwarf to operate a minecart at a time. Dwarves do that with wheelbarrows, but not the carts. If only one dwarf were allowed to work on the cart at a time, then ores would be moved one at a time, slowly, from a distance of at most 20 steps, and this would happen five times, with all of that time spent working and none of it walking to and from the fortress. Then the single dwarf would be able to push the cart to the chute and back, which would be much faster.

Can we put a cap on the number of haulers? Maybe wheelbarrows can be added to cart stops. The sanest thing for dwarves to do would be to leave one wheelbarrow at the loading point, and have one dwarf move ores to the cart with the wheelbarrow, which would improve ore hauling efficiency at least 20x over the current method, but would not alter the power of minecarts.

[therealmarauder]

I'm surprised this thread's buried.

It seems like mine carts could be integrated into pathing more strongly. This might belong to another post altogether, but pathing should allow for automation which is specified to dwarves. A dwarven highway could easily exist using rollers to quickly zip dwarves around the fortress, but those dwarves can't path using the highway. If dwarves can be allowed to path through mine cart systems, pathing to a mine cart then placing it on any route and using the route to move, dwarves could automatically use the mine cart system, especially if pathing with a rock cost more than pathing with a mine cart on a track. Using tools to reduce pathing costs would give an alternative to tying them to buildings or stockpiles, since dwarves could automatically use tools when they're beneficial.

Then again, simply modifying the mine carts to be used by one user at a time would make quite a difference in how effective they are. Many of the issues in hauling behavior lie in lack of job clustering, which is accomplished by workshops in other systems. No one washes one dish and then drives to work to reply to one email and then drives to the store five times to get five different things. Dwarves should grab tasks near where they are and they should grab small clusters of jobs when they grab a job. This applies generally to hauling, but also to lever-pulling and other jobs, like mining, where huge jumps are common when digging in multiple locations.

[Sowelu]

The highway idea might have issues if more than one dwarf wants to use the same highway.  Boom.

[Andeerz]

In response to NW_Kohaku and anyone else that might be interested, things akin to conveyor belts certainly existed way before 1400... chain pumps come to mind!

[Silverionmox]

In response to NW_Kohaku and anyone else that might be interested, things akin to conveyor belts certainly existed way before 1400... chain pumps come to mind!

Well, something like a steam engine existed too, but it's mostly a matter of atmosphere. In addition, mass production would upset the economics of the world, and consequently everything else.

[Andeerz]

But keep in mind... mass production isn't as much about technology available as availability of labor, raw materials, and need for products (though, arguably, the "need" for products could be "invented" too!).

I say, go ahead with whatever tech before 1400 or whatever, even if it is something that would allow for mass production kind of stuff.  I think so long as time, labor, and raw material  requirements and the like are well modeled for whatever economic activity, the economics and medieval-esque fantasy setting will not be disturbed...

EDIT: Maybe steam engines should be out... unless something like a system of knowledge spread and technological development were implemented in a realistic way, though how that would be possible might require stuff way beyond what this game is intending to do or what computers are able to handle (though I just found a pretty neat branch of mathematical sciences dealing with technological progression and its modeling!!!  Perhaps more will come later...) 

Anyway, the reason I say this is that, yeah, the aelopile or whatever existed and all that, and it probably wouldn't have been beyond the comprehension of those ancient inventors to see the possibilities of steam power, but I believe that what probably kept people from developing effective steam engines before the 1700's or whatever was a slow rate of communication, sharing of ideas and designs, exacerbated by lack of literacy, social mobility, and a whole host of other factors... including availability of raw materials, sophistication of metalworking techniques, yadda yadda yadda... and they are all interconnected.  I really want to develop an idea for technological progression and/or knowledge spread and/or designs and stuff that would incorporate stuff like NW_Kohaku's Class Warfare ideas that I think would be absolutely key... and such a model would be necessary to have steam power have the possibility of making it into the game without it upsetting the economics of the world, the medieval fell, and whatever.

[kaenneth]

Do you think it would be difficult to add a "Profile" setting to Stockpiles/Cart Stops like for Workshops, to be able to restrict who/how many haulers work of bringing items to it?