Print

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

[zuglar]

Hi all,

Simple !!SCIENCE!! question my fort is too young to explore: what determines how many objects fit in a minecart? Is it volume? Weight? Hard-coded per item type? It's not volume, at least not an intuitive kind, because minecarts can hold other minecarts, and I don't mean by stacking (tho I've only tried empty wooden ones so far). I would have said it's by weight, except my experiments suggest they always carry 10 wood (whether cedar or oak), and I'm pretty sure carts can always carry five stones, whether they be lignite or pitchblende.

Ideas?

[Triaxx2]

It's an interesting question. Weight suggests, that it's around 50,000 units, but then it would take roughly 50-60 thousand crafts to fill it.

I suspect it might be an unrelated hard number, determined within the code itself.

[Di]

It's something like hardcoded volume. See devblog from 05/02/2012 and older

[Urist Da Vinci]

[ITEM_TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_MINECART]
[NAME:minecart:minecarts]
[VALUE:50]
[METAL_MAT]
[WOOD_MAT]
[TOOL_USE:TRACK_CART]
[FURNITURE]
[TILE:254]
[INVERTED_TILE]
[SIZE:40000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:6]
[CONTAINER_CAPACITY:500000]

Minecarts hold a volume defined by their raw file. See http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Weight for item volumes. Note that the CONTAINER_CAPACITY is 10x higher than the actual volume held, as a minecart only holds (5) volume 10000 mined stones, meaning that its actual volume held is 50000.

[zuglar]

[ITEM_TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_MINECART]
[NAME:minecart:minecarts]
[VALUE:50]
[METAL_MAT]
[WOOD_MAT]
[TOOL_USE:TRACK_CART]
[FURNITURE]
[TILE:254]
[INVERTED_TILE]
[SIZE:40000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:6]
[CONTAINER_CAPACITY:500000]

Minecarts hold a volume defined by their raw file. See http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Weight for item volumes. Note that the CONTAINER_CAPACITY is 10x higher than the actual volume held, as a minecart only holds (5) volume 10000 mined stones, meaning that its actual volume held is 50000.

So, based on that, a minecart can hold one other minecart, with 10000 to spare, regardless of the held minecart's material or contents? Too bad there's not space for two... could make certain hauling jobs easier, but then my brain would hurt trying to figure out how it's possible.

[Triaxx2]

Quantum dwarfmatics. Like Dwarf String theory, but does not involve caravans or hospitals.

[Quietust]

[ITEM_TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_MINECART]
[NAME:minecart:minecarts]
[VALUE:50]
[METAL_MAT]
[WOOD_MAT]
[TOOL_USE:TRACK_CART]
[FURNITURE]
[TILE:254]
[INVERTED_TILE]
[SIZE:40000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:6]
[CONTAINER_CAPACITY:500000]

Minecarts hold a volume defined by their raw file. See http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Weight for item volumes. Note that the CONTAINER_CAPACITY is 10x higher than the actual volume held, as a minecart only holds (5) volume 10000 mined stones, meaning that its actual volume held is 50000.

So, based on that, a minecart can hold one other minecart, with 10000 to spare, regardless of the held minecart's material or contents? Too bad there's not space for two... could make certain hauling jobs easier, but then my brain would hurt trying to figure out how it's possible.

No - one minecart can hold twelve other minecarts, since SIZE values are also divided by 10.

[Sabreur]

No - one minecart can hold twelve other minecarts, since SIZE values are also divided by 10.

To bad we can't put fully-loaded minecarts inside other minecarts.

1.  Make 144 lead minecarts and fill them with lead bars.
2.  Make 12 lead minecarts and fill each of them with 12 of the lead-bar filled minecarts.
3.  Make a single lead minecart and fill it with 12 minecart-filled minecarts.
4.  Fire it at a single kobold to see what happens when a humanoid is struck by the dwarven equivalent of pure neutronium.

I guess we could get the same effect by calculating the mass of all that and modding in a special 'neutronium minecart', but it just doesn't feel the same...

[zuglar]

No - one minecart can hold twelve other minecarts, since SIZE values are also divided by 10.

To bad we can't put fully-loaded minecarts inside other minecarts.

You can't? Somebody forgot to tell the dwarves:
████████FPS: 100 (48)███████████████████████  -oaken minecart-  ███████████████████████████
█                                                                                         █
█ Weight: 11866Γ                                                                          █
█                                                                                         █
█ Contents:                                                                               █
█                                                                                         █
█ -enormous oaken corkscrew-                                                              █
█ gneiss blocks                                                                           █
█ gneiss blocks                                                                           █
█ gneiss blocks                                                                           █
█ gneiss blocks                                                                           █
█ orthoclase                                                                              █
█ ashen minecart                                                                          █
█  gneiss                                                                                 █
█  gneiss                                                                                 █
█  orthoclase                                                                             █
█  orthoclase                                                                             █
█  orthoclase                                                                             █
█ +willow minecart+                                    f: Forbid                          █
█  orthoclase                                                                             █
█                                                      d: Dump   h: Hide                  █
█ -+/*: Scroll                Enter: View selected     v: Description                     █
█ Set Follow Hotkey (F1 etc.): None                                                       █
█                                                                                         █
██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████


Granted, I only had nine minecarts lying around, but there seems to be no problem filling 8 of them with stone and throwing those all into the ninth. The capacity used is the same as if the carts were empty: 64% (plus a bit more for the other junk that happened to be inside the outer minecart).

I had actually come back to say that this might make an alternative to magma pistons... 144 minecarts with 2/7 magma each, stored in twelve wood minecarts, in turn stored in a single wood mine cart, which is then hauled aloft in style by a single dwarf with a wheelbarrow. Build two track stops side by side, out of magma-safe materials, surrounded by magma-safe grates over your cistern. Max friction, each dumping onto the other. Have a dwarf push the first cart in, it dumps twelve onto the other, they all dump their twelve each back on the first. Voila... 40 tiles of 7/7 magma, one more 6/7, and two stuck on the track stops (lost to evaporation).

It would take a lot more user time to set everything up, but a lot less game time, I would think: only three round trips to the depths, plus the time to fiddle with stockpiles at top and bottom. You could probably do several rounds in the time it takes to mine out the piston, get everything set for the cave-in, and clean up the mess afterward to reset it.

Myself, I plan to do this with just 8 minecarts so I can get two smelters and two forges up and running. Done right, I could have magma power before my second spring!

[zuglar]

Voila... 40 tiles of 7/7 magma, one more 6/7, and two stuck on the track stops (lost to evaporation).

Follow-up: I tested this with the stone-filled carts, and it works beautifully. 8 carts dumped onto a dumping track stop unloaded their 40 stone ... all in a single tick. But what happens if you dump 40 magma on a single tile? Lots of teleporting fun? What if the dumping zone has less than 40 open tiles, or if the only open tiles are above? Too bad I don't have a fort to test *that* in... maybe I could do it with water instead.

[Sabreur]

No - one minecart can hold twelve other minecarts, since SIZE values are also divided by 10.

To bad we can't put fully-loaded minecarts inside other minecarts.

You can't? Somebody forgot to tell the dwarves:
- Snip -

Oh.  Oh my.  I never could figure out what to do with all that lead from smelting galena for silver.  Now I know.  I wonder how much a single minecart with an entire fortress' worth of lead weighs?  And what kind of impact damage it does when it hits after being accelerated down a few miles worth of powered rollers?

Voila... 40 tiles of 7/7 magma, one more 6/7, and two stuck on the track stops (lost to evaporation).

Follow-up: I tested this with the stone-filled carts, and it works beautifully. 8 carts dumped onto a dumping track stop unloaded their 40 stone ... all in a single tick. But what happens if you dump 40 magma on a single tile? Lots of teleporting fun? What if the dumping zone has less than 40 open tiles, or if the only open tiles are above? Too bad I don't have a fort to test *that* in... maybe I could do it with water instead.

You might have just invented the dwarven cruise missile.

[Triaxx2]

Dwarven MIRV. Because this could continue quite ridiculously.

[zuglar]

Voila... 40 tiles of 7/7 magma, one more 6/7, and two stuck on the track stops (lost to evaporation).

Follow-up: I tested this with the stone-filled carts, and it works beautifully. 8 carts dumped onto a dumping track stop unloaded their 40 stone ... all in a single tick. But what happens if you dump 40 magma on a single tile? Lots of teleporting fun? What if the dumping zone has less than 40 open tiles, or if the only open tiles are above? Too bad I don't have a fort to test *that* in... maybe I could do it with water instead.

You might have just invented the dwarven cruise missile.

Rats. I filled 12 carts with stagnant water, loaded them into a thirteenth cart, and pushed the whole thing into a pit with a pair of dumping track stops at the bottom. Of the 24 units of water that went in, only 3/7 and 4/7 remained when the dust settled: exactly one full tile. The other 17 units of water just evaporated, if you will. So much for instantly filling multiple tiles with liquid by dumping a single minecart.

Dwarven MIRV. Because this could continue quite ridiculously.

Only if we can figure out how to give the dumped carts some momentum *and* send them all to different destinations (each with a dumping stop)... even though they all start from the same place at the same time. Seems unlikely, which is unfortunate. I could just imagine the awesomeness of sending a single wooden minecart hurtling down a ramp to dump 2/7 magma simultaneously over every tile of a long corridor full of very surprised invading goblins. I guess a retracting bridge could have the same result, but using one minecart per tile would have been dwarfier for sure.

Oh well, at least I can still power up my magma forges by sending one wooden minecart to the depths and back in a wheelbarrow.

[zuglar]

1.  Make 144 lead minecarts and fill them with lead bars.
2.  Make 12 lead minecarts and fill each of them with 12 of the lead-bar filled minecarts.
3.  Make a single lead minecart and fill it with 12 minecart-filled minecarts.
4.  Fire it at a single kobold to see what happens when a humanoid is struck by the dwarven equivalent of pure neutronium.

Don't forget to put four blocks in each outer minecart -- the 12 minecarts only take 96% of its capacity.

Also, I just realized that I hit galena in the test fort I've been using. Turns out that a lead block weighs 68Γ and somebody mentioned that a minecart hold 100 of them. Lead minecarts weigh 453Γ a pop. Grand total for your setup would be 1051205Γ, or 2300 times more dense than lead. Not bad, but neutronium is still 60 trillion times more dense.

That said, it's probably more than enough to knock a dragon off its feet (and the 10 dragons behind it) and make them all slam into an obstacle. You just have to come up with the 4000 galena ore it will take to forge all that stuff (or melt a *lot* of lead coins...).

[Urist_McDrowner]

I see no reason why you couldn't continue the tree on forever to create a world-ending minecart stuffed with galena/lead blocks.

It just might need this