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[Monsieur Fish]

Just started playing DF from a long hiatus and noticed they added mine carts and tracks and all that cool shit. But since I'm stupid, this will probably take me forever to use. How essential are they? Can most forts do without them? Is the benefit of setting up mine carts bigger than the trouble they cause by having to build them?

Sorry if this has been asked already.

[Gigaz]

Minecarts greatly increase the FUN. I always try to solve problems with minecarts.

[Lich180]

Mine carts reduce the size of stockpiles to 1x1, speed up the hauling of pretty much anything except cloth, since it takes a crap ton of cloth to fill a cart up, and give several dozen new ways to kill greet visitors. Oh, and all the new ways to make logic circuits and repeaters.

All in all, not essential, but very fun to use. Not the easiest thing to learn to use, but once you do its totally worth it.

[evictedSaint]

They've lead to the highly inefficient methods of counter-seiging.

For example, you can fill a cart with *steel spears* and hurl it across the map at some goblins who came by for a visit. 

You can fill a cart with magma and hurl it across the map at some goblins who came by for a visit.

You can murder your own dwarves with accidental cart-collision.

You can fill a cart with goblins and hurl it across the map at some goblins who came by for a visit.

Or you can be boring and use it for automated quantum stockpiling.  You know, whatever floats your boat.

[Urist_McUser]

Minecarts provide a very low-tech solution to bring magma to the surface.

Minecarts make quantum stockpiles easier than ever.

Minecarts love to mow down dwarfs and thier pets.



Q: Is it possible for a dwarf to ride a minecart underwater without drowning?

[Dr_Nocturne]

They've lead to the highly inefficient methods of counter-seiging.

For example, you can fill a cart with *steel spears* and hurl it across the map at some goblins who came by for a visit. 

You can fill a cart with magma and hurl it across the map at some goblins who came by for a visit.

You can murder your own dwarves with accidental cart-collision.

You can fill a cart with goblins and hurl it across the map at some goblins who came by for a visit.

Or you can be boring and use it for automated quantum stockpiling.  You know, whatever floats your boat.

I tried to learn how to use minecarts for this purpose... I wanted to put dwarves in them... And have cart races...

[Sutremaine]

You can also use them to move stone from your mining areas, though I find that use of minecarts to be inefficient. Each minecart holds only five chunks of raw stone, so unless you have enough routes to keep dwarves at the mine site moving stone they'll wander back to where the jobs or the idling areas are and have to walk back to the mine site to reload the minecart. With wheelbarrows, you'll always have dwarves walking there and back again, but they'll always be bringing something back with them. You can also use the number of wheelbarrows to a stockpile to limit how many dwarves are wandering around scooping up lumps of rock, but this doesn't work as well as it could because there's a three-wheelbarrow limit on a particular stockpile. You can get around this by either making numerous identical general stone stockpiles and having them all feed into one main stockpile (via quantum stockpiling) for ease of linkage to workshops or other stockpiles, or by making numerous, more specialised, stockpiles from the start.

The new stuff provided in the hauling update is really more of a method or a means to an end. Asking 'are they essential? Can you go without?' about minecarts and all the other cool stuff is as general as asking those questions about, I dunno, constructions or something.

[EvilBob22]

They've lead to the highly inefficient methods of counter-seiging.

How's this for efficient? The perpetual motion minecart grinder

[Remuthra]

On that topic, is it possible to create a minecart shotgun that resets itself for rapid firing? I know minecarts can't be remotely loaded, but is an autococking system possible with rollers?

[gchristopher]

They've lead to the highly inefficient methods of counter-seiging.

How's this for efficient? The perpetual motion minecart grinder

And QuantumMenace: The Wave Cannon eats sieges alive, and will stop a high percentage of a clown rush.

On that topic, is it possible to create a minecart shotgun that resets itself for rapid firing? I know minecarts can't be remotely loaded, but is an autococking system possible with rollers?

TinyPirate did timed/staged release of multiple minecarts in his Dwarven Auto-Shotgun

[Triaxx2]

A simpler solution to the stone problem (only 5 stone in a cart) is to have the mason's workshops near the stone quarries, then move the finished product. IE if you're making blocks, move cart loads of blocks instead of stones.

[Remuthra]

On that topic, is it possible to create a minecart shotgun that resets itself for rapid firing? I know minecarts can't be remotely loaded, but is an autococking system possible with rollers?

TinyPirate did timed/staged release of multiple minecarts in his Dwarven Auto-Shotgun

Something like that, but not exactly what I'm looking for. I'll work on this and report my findings, though.
Essentially, the goal is to make a more sustainable (more steady fire rate) shotgun which returns carts to the loading area, and preferably doesn't have that neccesary bit of wall.