Stockpiles as a liftable slot.

[qoonpooka]

The current system for moving stockpiles over large distances involves a multiplicity of wheelbarrows. If the intent here is to make stockpile transport resource expensive (lots of leather and glue needed for half a dozen barrows) simply jacking up the price of the cart will accomplish the same thing without making the process feel hacky/exploity.

The idea is basically thus: Instead of lifting a full wheelbarrow and depositing it into the cart, the wheelbarrow can interact with the cart on right-click like it does, e.g. the Tar Kiln, dumps the stockpile it's holding into the inventory. For the cart, this takes the whole stockpile regardless of size, and fills an inventory slot. If you want to get fancy, a differently shaped graphical cue can appear than the classic 'grey-mottled tie-bag' but it really doesn't need a different visual cue if that's a PITA; simply returning an error of 'you must unload this with a wheelbarrow' is sufficient. Right-clicking on the bag that represents a stockpile while driving a barrow will result in that barrow loading that stockpile from the cart and proceed as normal.

I would then also suggest that the wheelbarrow's ability to be lifted while full be removed. This helps preserve some of the cost: you'll either give up the 6th slot to move the empty wheelbarrow around with the cart full of stockpiles, or you'll need wheelbarrows at both ends of the transit.

If you'd like to further restrict this, adding some kind of rule that you can only have one kind of stockpile in a cart/boat/wagon/knarr at a time, i.e. no carrying dirt piles AND feather piles, or mixing onions and rocks, etc. This helps limit the hauling with freight systems to single-type bulk freight.

This would be a substantial quality of life improvement without adding additional capability.

[Sevenless]

Can they be lifted while full? They used to be able to, but they don't seem to any more when I tested a couple weeks ago.

[Carnation]

Can they be lifted while full? They used to be able to, but they don't seem to any more when I tested a couple weeks ago.

you can put them in a wheel barrel and then lift it.

[qoonpooka]

Can they be lifted while full? They used to be able to, but they don't seem to any more when I tested a couple weeks ago.

If you mean wheelbarrows, then yes. I've been doing it.

[jorb]

Not sure I find wheelbarrows that much of a PITA. Idk. Arguably there should perhaps be stockpile containers and sheit, but, myeah. Idk. Not where my mind is at right now.

[Granger]

Giving the option for the cart to be loaded with one (higher capacity, like factor five) stockpile would be nice, should be possible to access with a wheelbarrow, by hand and for building (following the rules of a normal stockpile).

So an empty cart would accept rmb-ing a lifted objects (as of now) or right clicking an item / filled wheelbarrow. An object in that cart would disable the latter (only allowing further objects) - while the latter would put the cart in stockpile mode (disabling acceptance of lifted objects, reverting to empty cart mode when the last item has been withdrawn from the carried pile), for RMB interaction the cart could check for hand being empty for attach/detach and delegate the rest to the stockpile code.

Graphics wise it could use the already existing ground stockpiles visuals, rendered in the middle of the cart's loading area (possibly scaled a little for best visual effect).

So coding wise each stockpile definition on the server would need orientation and scale for cart mode (should not take that long to add), the client would need to be taught to render another type of load (shouldn't be that hard as the current sacks are already handled individually somehow) and a small state machine to switch the cats behavior depending on what is currently loaded into it.