Simple and clever idea to fix ladder building stupidity once and for all

[IvanX]

The ladder building process looks like this atm:

1. You mark long ladder (5+) to be built
2. Bring in materials
3. Dig a tile
4. Build ladder
5. -- dismissed
6. repeat for next piece from 2

 

The major problem here is the --dismissed part. It's caused by dupes only being able to carry materials for the ladder once the ladder is ready to be dug/built, which is piece by piece. But what if we could say that LADDER, independant of its length is one solid building? as in 20 tiles of ladder is just one building, requiring 20x100 sandstone. If we did that, dupes would actually be able to carry the materials packed up for the large portion. Hell, we could even split the job - one delivers, another digs and builds!

If the ladder gets built from the middle, you could reassign building in two different sections, sharing carried materials accordingly.

If the ladder building gets cancelled, the materials fall off (mind the teleportation abuse).

With that tiny fix the schema could look like that:

1. You mark long ladder (25+) to be built
2. Bring in 600 materials
3. Dig Tile
4. Build Ladder
5. repeat 5 more times
6. -- dismissed
7. repeat from 2

If another dupe joins in with the delivery, the 6 might not even happen! Build that ladder in one queue...

To prevent material overabuse, you could limit amount of precarried materials to some number like 1200.

 

[Kasuha]

Hmmm I understand what you mean but there are ways around it (unless you don't have room to use 2 columns when building the ladder).

 

Step 1: dig a "spiral staircase"

Step 2: plan the ladder in one of the two columns.

 

The "Spiral staircase" looks like this:

[Maciej75]

But work-around, is only work-around. It should not replace full solution, when the times come.

BTW. nice design, why the hell I din't find it myself? I was just to propose jetpack-exosuits for scouting tasks. Its hell to transport materials for every ladder step.

Edit: work-around, thanks

[Kabrute]

I use the above design as well because if dupes run out of air/bladder/gut they drop stuff, this way it falls where they drop it, when I flip this to a ladder well, I pick a side, every other block gets left behind as a catcher, firepole goes beside the ladder but not inside the staircase.  This way the staircase remains intact as a bypass for the catcher built into the ladder, fire pole provides swift drop,

[Kasuha]

5 hours ago, Maciej75 said:

But walk-around, is only walk-around. It should not replace full solution, when the times come.

I believe you mean "workaround".

Yes, it's a workaround but I'm not sure if the proposed solution is a good solution either. It kind of assumes delivery of materials through a set of undug tiles.

Maybe it would help if the miners were able to "carve" ladders straight out of the mineral they're digging without delivery (and dropping the excess on the floor). It would only work for materials that can be used to build ladders but I think it would help a lot.

[IvanX]

Maan, totally missed that workaround idea, guess laddering issue just got a priority down in my eyes