Dwarf Fortress - Quick Tutorials - Minecart Switches (The Beginning of Automation)

[@jjohansen86]

This reminds me of seven years ago when I designed and built an arbitrary function generator, a series of clocks that triggered off each other, each with exactly a 200 tick period that could send triggers to different things at any arbitrary tick within the period, and had five of them stacked together, so I could do arbitrary timings over a 1000 tick period. Doesn't do a ton of useful things, but here's one: Tick 50: Door on the inner end of a hallway opens, luring enemies into the long hallway; tick 150: near door closes; tick 200: lava floods the hallway; tick 600: open the lava drain, close the lava inlet; tick 900: close the lava drain; tick 950: close the inner door; tick 980: open the outer door; tick 1000: everything resets.

[@ryanb665]

This setup might be better described as a minecart "clock" or "timer". Either way, it's an admirably concise illustration of several useful minecart mechanics!

[@AlgaeNymph]

"Build it about this size-" _measures track length and dimensions_ The example is 9x5, and is 24 tiles total.

[@CasualBeans]

This is great! It feels much more reliable to me than a pressure plate in a busy area

[@ElfyBean]

This is some next level dwarfin', and I'm stoked to try it out; thank you for putting together this tutorial! 😊

[@truefreak]

Right to the point. The way a quick tutorial should be.

[@evilgingerminiatures5820]

These are really useful

[@jaazc8674]

Huh, learned something new. I thought the 'Add Stop' button on the Minecart window had to be a constructed minecart stop. I guess I just wasn't paying attention to the wiki when I first looked this up.

[@rattlesalad4472]

Still plausible without it but dwarfs won't guide minecart if it wasn't track stop

[@Moncew]

glorious!

[@dsapp6412]

Man, link that all together. Link the switch to close the front door and open the !FUN! guest entrance, pressure plate linked to the spike traps in the !FUN! entrance, and now you have 1,000 well ventilated guests

[@vanguze]

Funny enough I'm just now trying power.

[@ivegotavandetta]

I can never get vertical axels to work properly idk what I'm doing wrong. I stopped trying. XD

[@BlindiRL]

You stack them the exact same way you stack mechanisms.

[@rattlesalad4472]

Doors works quicker everytime it's switched

[@malformedshrub]

how dorf dig down

[@rattlesalad4472]

Stair designation then scroll down always works nice