Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nil Eyeglazed]

My initial dwarves were speed 100.  It didn't work perfectly then, although it did seem to work slightly more effectively than with speed 900.  As I said in my investigation, I found about 1 in 10 objects dropped on the pressure plate with speed 900.

[Urist Da Vinci]

If the unreachable stockpile only draws one hauler at a time, do they still have the 1 in 10 chance of dropping an item on the pressure plate, or do they always drop on the stockpile?

You know how haulers drop things that they are hauling when they see an enemy and get scared? If you put a goblin behind a window, and there is a lever-linked door in front of the window acting as a shutter, then with the right hallway layout they will only see the goblin when they are standing on the quantum stockpile. Make the hallway so that they flee away from the device rather than running deeper into it and being unable to escape. They won't return to move the object, because it is sitting on a stockpile. The stockpile is effectively unusable until you shutter the goblin from sight, which may be a problem. You could call it the ScareDump, which sounds wrong and funny at the same time.

[Reelyanoob]

I've got an undump for dolomite (flux). That get's the most left on the pressure plate. Probably due to weight slowing them down. I only use the single target square design.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

If the unreachable stockpile only draws one hauler at a time, do they still have the 1 in 10 chance of dropping an item on the pressure plate, or do they always drop on the stockpile?

The 1/10 (actually, like 12% or something, it's earlier in the thread) is with a single tile unreachable stockpile, drawing only a single hauler at a time.  I would stay away from >1 tile unreachable stockpiles, although it's interesting to read people's experiences.

It does seem to depend on the dwarf in question.  When testing with a single dwarf instead of a fortress, I achieved 100% (in 15-20 tries, admittedly not a large sample) perfect hauls.

You know how haulers drop things that they are hauling when they see an enemy and get scared? If you put a goblin behind a window, and there is a lever-linked door in front of the window acting as a shutter, then with the right hallway layout they will only see the goblin when they are standing on the quantum stockpile. Make the hallway so that they flee away from the device rather than running deeper into it and being unable to escape. They won't return to move the object, because it is sitting on a stockpile. The stockpile is effectively unusable until you shutter the goblin from sight, which may be a problem. You could call it the ScareDump, which sounds wrong and funny at the same time.

That is a really interesting idea.  It sounds hard to automate-- you don't want to scare people retrieving from the stockpiles, just people hauling to the stockpile.

[Lamiales]

It does seem to depend on the dwarf in question.  When testing with a single dwarf instead of a fortress, I achieved 100% (in 15-20 tries, admittedly not a large sample) perfect hauls.

Did you actually watch the dwarf dropping no items on the pressure plate or did just everything end up in the stockpile? I could imagine a single dwarf with only this task will stay there and try until the item is in the stockpile as opposed to a regular McHauler who has breaks to take, sleep and haul other things, until he is closer to a feeder stockpile and takes the next item from there.

If that is not it, maybe it has to do with the framerate of the game? Unlikely, but if it checks at constant time intervals, a faster fort would lead to more frames between checks.

[Girlinhat]

All game functions happen on a per-tick basis, not a per-time basis.  This does a fantastic job of normalizing game experience.  The same dwarf performing the same action will perform identically at 10 FPS as at 100 FPS, only slow -by the player's viewpoint-.  The speed of your computer should never change the results of an experiment, only the amount of time you have to wait for results.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

It does seem to depend on the dwarf in question.  When testing with a single dwarf instead of a fortress, I achieved 100% (in 15-20 tries, admittedly not a large sample) perfect hauls.

Did you actually watch the dwarf dropping no items on the pressure plate or did just everything end up in the stockpile? I could imagine a single dwarf with only this task will stay there and try until the item is in the stockpile as opposed to a regular McHauler who has breaks to take, sleep and haul other things, until he is closer to a feeder stockpile and takes the next item from there.

I watched.  He did 100%.  Like I said, 15-20 hauls isn't enough to say that it's not just an artifact anyways.  I had to dump items onto the pressure plate to examine his behavior with plated objects (which he likewise did 100%: bring to feeder, bring to undump).  Objects were fairly close to the undump (20-30 tiles away, prob) but with only a single inaccessible tile, I don't see why this would affect hauling effectiveness.

[MarcAFK]

I don't understand how this works, but it is amazing, i have to try it.

[Reelyanoob]

The concept is pretty straight-forward.

The end of the little bit of corridor is an empty stockpile. 1 dwarf will try to bring an item to that stockpile (it's important to keep that square empty otherwise they stop trying to fill it).

Before they get to the target square, they hit a pressure plate which opens a hatch in front of them, they are able to take 1 step past the pressure plate, before they hit the open hatch.

At this point the dwarf goes "Whah? I was supposed to take this to the empty stockpile, but now there's a HOLE in the road! Dammit, I'll just drop the item RIGHT HERE and go do summthing else"

Conveniently, "RIGHT HERE" has another stockpile on it which is set to take the same type of item as the empty one they were pathing to, so the item is now considered to be correctly stockpiled, and won't be moved again until needed, even though that stockpile square is woefully overloaded.

...

The only thing I'd like to see is a way to automatically dump the un-dump contents down a number of levels. Unfortunately that's something normal dumping can do (a dump zone can be on a hatch, bridge etc) that it seems an undump stockpile won't be able to do.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I just realized something else you could do with an item-dropper version of this (see Sphalerite's post earlier in the thread, or my reply to Sphalerite):

Inventory management.

With guaranteed separate paths to place an item or to retrieve an item, you can keep track of your inventory and use it to drive certain operations (say, opening up an entrance to a brewer's shop with 300 manager-created brew jobs queued every time booze barrel stocks run low-- barrels are fine for z-separated undumps-- and then closing it when nobody's in there and liquor stocks are high again).

[Urist Da Vinci]

What else causes haulers to drop their loads? Could we set up the device to always dump haulers (like the goblin speed sorter clock thing) onto a stockpile (using a bridge or delayed hatches)? A 1z fall wouldn't hurt the haulers.

[Girlinhat]

Lost path, lost item, interruption by enemy (or wild animal), seeking infant, insanity, path displacement (like being dropped 1Z)...

I'm debating a construction, it's a bit tall but it may work, somewhat.  Someone will need to science it.  The idea is, on Z+2 you have a 1x1 pit, with a grate for a floor, and you place any wild animal on it (we'll say it's a goblin).  On Z+1 you place a hatch directly under this grate, or float a floodgate, either works.  On Z=0, you place a stockpile directly under the hatch, and a pressure plate next to it in regular undump format.

Purpose: When the dwarf gets the haul job, he will pick up a stone, move over the plate, causing the hatch to open.  They take another step (or two) forwards, and suddenly look up to see a goblin 2 levels higher standing on a grate (they can indeed see that far).  They drop their hauling task, depositing it on the undump stockpile, and run around crazy-style until the hatch closes.  A change in height may allow for a narrower "cone of sight" so that only a dwarf directly under the goblin will be scared.  Can also be done horizontally using windows and doors (doors are instant-open).  This is slightly more sprawling than a regular undump, and causes issues when someone is trying to retrieve from the pile, but I think a few more tweaks could perfect it for somewhat slower hauling speeds.

If there was a plate-floodgate-stockpile+scare, then the dwarf should reach the scare zone and find the back path blocked, causing them to run deeper into the undump.  When the scare closes itself, then the dwarf will resume his task, grabbing a stone and wandering back to the mason shop.  Without this floodgate to block the exit, the dwarf would probably run out of the undump, so when they attempted to resume the job, they would trigger the scare again and get stuck in a loop.

When a workshop job is canceled by creature interruption, does it remove the job or just wait for another dwarf to try it again?

[Vodrilus]

@Urist da Vinci

How about dropping a 7/7 of water on top of the hauler through a hatch from the z above? Does the water drop too slowly? Push the hauler down to a lower z with a stockpile (and drainage)?

[Urist Da Vinci]

Thought about using water, but it pushes items off the stockpile.

Floor grates block sight and arrows. Tested by creating a small test fort, built grates, installed them on the sides of a pillar staircase above ground, and went there with a bow-wielding adventurer. You can't see or shoot through them.

[Girlinhat]

Then resort to the horizontal window and door setup, I'm certain that will work.