Bay 12 Games Forum

Digging out a massive underground cavern (like 30 z-levels tall, encompassing most of the embark), and building a fortress in it. Think Undergrotto. Problem is, my forts keep dieing to miscellaneous bits of !!FUN!!, or my sudden discovery that the world has no goblins to siege me.

Ahh, silly me for using ramps instead of rollers. If DF uses real-world physics, I think using ramps would mean all the carts end up in the same place... yes, assuming rollers impart a force, not a velocity, then they should be used.

And yes, I know the idea of a weight-separator was brought up earlier, but I don't think anyone mentioned the levels-with-different heights as being where you the pointed the thing. Not that I saw, anyway. Apologies if you did.

From previous page: I like the sound of a mechanical laser! Fear me goblins!
*ahem*
The loaded/unloaded cart is a good way to do a memory cell, though it might be fiddly making sure the weight is set up correctly. 'Tapes' could probably work on the same principle of loaded/unloaded carts... although Idk how useful they'd be compared to just sending one cart down a track with a bunch of pressure plates linked as necessary.

...hey, we could create dwarven movies! Send a cart down a track with a bunch of pressure plates on it, with each new pressure plate updating the status of a set of 10x10 doors appropriately. Would require careful timing/latches so the deactivating of the previous pressure plate doesn't get in the way of the activating of the next. Hmm... I can think of a way of doing 3-colour displays:


As for sorting carts by weight:

Except that's a lot more complicated.

I've had a thought for a new minecart-launcher design. Basically a circuit, with a little extra added:


Basically, it relies on the fact that sufficiently speedy minecarts will come off corners - and in this case, straight onto rollers and launcher. Meaning it acts as a high-speed-cart detector - as soon as a cart is sufficiently speedy, it will zoom off and hopefully splatter some goblins. Work would need to be done to see which corner it always comes off, so the rollers + launcher can be in the right place.

Also, one thing I'm not sure on with regards to Itnetlolor's design: The first cart would keep speeding up and permanently be quicker than the carts behind it, meaning eventually it'll catch up with the ones behind it. So I don't think you can have multiple carts, as terminal velocity (which all the carts in the system would need to hit before the first cart hits the last) is greater than cart-derailing velocity, meaning they'll never hit it, as they'll derail first.

Quote from: Kel on April 22, 2012, 01:59:16 pm

Heh. My semi-serious post about launching minecarts at eagles developed into the dwarven shotgun, and then the dwarven wall, and then FTL travel.
Oh what hath I started...

I don't imagine it would work though. They'd probably just dodge into the path of the other cart and get promptly squished. Or your legendary dodger rolls a 1 and gets squished by failing to dodge.

Hm... I wonder if we can put non-dwarves into carts somehow... catch a few fire imps, put them in carts and send the squadron barrelling towards your enemy whilst launching fireballs left, right and centre. Or this might make a good bronze colossus delivery system.

"But how do we get this dragon to fly? It's too fat to take off."
"Throw it in a minecart and kick it down the mountain. If it flies, we have anti-air defence, if it doesn't, the minecart will squash a few goblins."

Most importantly, it looks damn cool whilst doing so. 

Do you mean you're asking how to build a staircase in an already-dug-out space?
If so, you need to construct it with b -> C -> x. Note the 'C' is upper-case.