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Author Topic: Items in falling minecarts  (Read 929 times)

Stargazer

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Items in falling minecarts
« on: May 21, 2020, 04:57:47 pm »

To get materials down to my magma forges I channeled a big vertical shaft. Problem is, a portion of the way down, I had to shift the tunnel over 1 tile so I can't just drop the items directly down it. I thought that perhaps I could load up a minecart, drop it down, it'd bounce off a single track-ramp on the shifted portion and head down the rest of the shaft. It DOES do this, but all the items inside it fall out. Is this because items will naturally fall out of a falling minecart? Or is it because the minecart hits a track ramp? Would the items fall out the moment it hits the very bottom of the shaft regardless? And is there anyway to stop this from happening or am I gonna have to give up on the idea?
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Items in falling minecarts
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2020, 03:05:19 am »

It's possible to transport items using a drop shaft that has the cart landing on a ramp to roll to the destination, and items won't drop out of the cart due to the fall. However, if a cart smashes into a wall at a sufficient speed, the items in it will spill out, so what's probably happening is that your cart builds up speed from the fall, lands on the ramp, which transfers that speed into a horizontal speed, smashes into the wall, and spills the items.
I've always made sure my drop shafts are completely straight, but I've had had to adjust the shaft entry speed (from the side, to drop into the shaft) to avoid items spilling out.

I guess you can work reduce the speed of your cart by having it pass over track stops with suitably adjusted braking before entering the next shaft, although I haven't done that.
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Stargazer

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Re: Items in falling minecarts
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2020, 08:46:19 am »

It's possible to transport items using a drop shaft that has the cart landing on a ramp to roll to the destination, and items won't drop out of the cart due to the fall. However, if a cart smashes into a wall at a sufficient speed, the items in it will spill out, so what's probably happening is that your cart builds up speed from the fall, lands on the ramp, which transfers that speed into a horizontal speed, smashes into the wall, and spills the items.
I've always made sure my drop shafts are completely straight, but I've had had to adjust the shaft entry speed (from the side, to drop into the shaft) to avoid items spilling out.

I guess you can work reduce the speed of your cart by having it pass over track stops with suitably adjusted braking before entering the next shaft, although I haven't done that.

I see. Do you know if there is a way to get a falling minecart to continue on without using a ramp? I tried it with a E/W ramp and it just got stuck in place. I had to use a curved ramp, like an impulse ramp, to get it to bump over into the next hole. That's probably what's causing it to slam into the wall and lose all the items. And do Track Stops work on vertically falling minecarts?
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Items in falling minecarts
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2020, 11:55:27 am »

You have to have a ramp with carved tracks on it, or the cart will just slam to a stop, just as if you had no ramp at all. Thus, building a traps stop instead of a ramp would have the same effect (using more effort) as to dig away the ramp. I would guess rollers could get the cart moving again after landing on it and losing all momentum, but that requires power. To use a track stop you'd have to redirect the card away from the hole in a loop, and just doing that might actually shed enough momentum to cause it not to spill the contents. There are people who know the exact formulae for cart physics, and it's probably documented on the wiki as well.
I believe carts don't spill their contents when going through corners "helped" by walls, so a detour friction path ought to work, at least with the help of track stops, but I haven't done much of that.
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