This invention is designed for clan warfare, where forward guard posts are essential for gathering intelligence about enemy encroachment.
When your guard takes off in the main minecart, the booster that sends him home also triggers the massive collapse of the entire booster system, the local section of mine track, the guard shack, and the lookout tower. Five minutes later the loose items disappear and there's no trace of your outpost, leaving nothing to fall into enemy hands.
The booster track should obviously be longer in a real deployment. A water shortcut is used in the tutorial; you'll probably need a standard water trigger and/or some redstone. You may also want to suspend sand blocks above the water source block to quash the mess upon escape, especially during testing.
Suggested improvements: The buildings can be much bigger, using any mix of sand and gravel paired with signs, ladders, mine track, and other blocks that disintegrate when their supporting block goes away. Lava could be stored in a box of signs and sand to destroy the left behind items quicker and cause trouble for the arriving enemy. Torches can be hidden better or replaced for light discipline, e.g. half blocks can destroy falling sand towers.
tl;dr: Minecarts on pressure plates next to water triggers near torches supporting sand supporting signs on signs supporting more sand and minecart tracks and a small tower fortress all go poof when used.
It'd be great to have the tower collapse into completely flat sand with no visible items left behind.
The laddered tower actually does get completely disintegrated by a second torch a couple spaces under it. The small tower of sand you see in the 'After' picture is from a different section of the guard house that I didn't dig under deeply enough. With correct counts and digging it's possible to erase that footprint entirely. (Dropping everything to bedrock or lava layer is another option.) Sand is a lot easier to gather than mine track and signs, so tall thick sand walls over disintegrator torches can be assembled cheaper than the rest of the base.
PSA: When experimenting, be aware that moving hundreds of sand blocks and their attached items in a large chain reaction can cause server lag.
I don't understand why you'd do this? What's it... for? As far as I can tell it's a sign and track dispenser for "your enemy"?
I could say it's for those occasions when the intelligence gathered and the lives saved and the boostered outpost denied to the enemy all outweigh the cost of the minetrack and signs. Not that these should be on every corner, but now and then the design could be useful to a commander trying to manage a large territory.
I love your designs! I cant wait to see another amazing contraption.
Building fortresses/castles entirely out of sand and torches is almost all I do, I didn't know that you could place signs on signs though :ohmy.gif: this is an amazing new breakthrough, although I prefer using torches due to the great looking interiors it forces you to make.
I'm a little confused here though, after this thing blows and you dash off in your minecart, there is still going to be a track leading directly to your base right?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Redstone enthusiast for hire. If you need any help feel free to drop me a PM. My creations
After this thing blows and you dash off in your minecart, there is still going to be a track leading directly to your base right?
Ideas:
- Make a larger portion of the main track collapsible.
- Point the first few hundred blocks of the track in a misleading direction.
- Build extra lengths of starter track in other random misleading directions.
- Start on a hill and release water or lava to wash away a big section of track after you're gone.
- Build your outbound track underground and drop gravel to hide the entrance.
- Build your outbound track underwater. (Signs allow this!)
- Make your entire main track out of 100 block collapsible sections that boost you before falling into the ocean. I can build a demo if anybody wants it.
Come to think of it, I've done the self-powered canal and the self-destructing booster, so why not the self-destructing canal? Sand could quash water in a pit, leaving behind smooth beach. Most people still don't know that boats can travel at the same max speed as mine carts, and water is a lot cheaper than iron.
I had to boot up Minecraft to try a couple other ideas, like mine track on wool, which works. You can ignite the wool with lava but there's a random delay so a lighter might be best. Build the wool path double or triple wide to help the fire along, as single rows of wool can snuff out.
On that note, have you ever placed mine track on leaves? An alternate version of this thread's tutorial is simply,
"Build fort and booster in tree; light on fire when vacating."
Wow, building them on trees is an epic idea! It might leave a burning log or two, but this can probably be fixed by chopping down every log except the highest up one, and it will burn as its surrounded by leaves.
What would be better, is building it inside a hollowed out large tree, and cutting down the trunk, then when you want to get inside, you build a log pillar up where the trunk was to get in, and you'd be completely concealed inside.
And I think that water would be a much better escape route, especially if you build it underground, perhaps with the sand falling into it when you leave.
I'd just opt for building a tiny area in an inconspicuous mountain side, where I can get a view from high up, and just close the door off with smoothstone when you leave, to make it look un-tampered with.
Again, I really love your ideas :happy.gif: especially the upscalator, I was just amazed
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Redstone enthusiast for hire. If you need any help feel free to drop me a PM. My creations
Sure, it makes an effective forward guard tower, with a way to save the guard/sentry himself, but in the end, they get a whole bunch of ladders and minecart tracks. Its also pretty expensive as others pointed out.
Tutorial: Self-destructing guard tower minecart booster
This invention is designed for clan warfare, where forward guard posts are essential for gathering intelligence about enemy encroachment.
When your guard takes off in the main minecart, the booster that sends him home also triggers the massive collapse of the entire booster system, the local section of mine track, the guard shack, and the lookout tower. Five minutes later the loose items disappear and there's no trace of your outpost, leaving nothing to fall into enemy hands.
The booster track should obviously be longer in a real deployment. A water shortcut is used in the tutorial; you'll probably need a standard water trigger and/or some redstone. You may also want to suspend sand blocks above the water source block to quash the mess upon escape, especially during testing.
Suggested improvements: The buildings can be much bigger, using any mix of sand and gravel paired with signs, ladders, mine track, and other blocks that disintegrate when their supporting block goes away. Lava could be stored in a box of signs and sand to destroy the left behind items quicker and cause trouble for the arriving enemy. Torches can be hidden better or replaced for light discipline, e.g. half blocks can destroy falling sand towers.
tl;dr: Minecarts on pressure plates next to water triggers near torches supporting sand supporting signs on signs supporting more sand and minecart tracks and a small tower fortress all go poof when used.
The Tesla to Etho's Edison.
The laddered tower actually does get completely disintegrated by a second torch a couple spaces under it. The small tower of sand you see in the 'After' picture is from a different section of the guard house that I didn't dig under deeply enough. With correct counts and digging it's possible to erase that footprint entirely. (Dropping everything to bedrock or lava layer is another option.) Sand is a lot easier to gather than mine track and signs, so tall thick sand walls over disintegrator torches can be assembled cheaper than the rest of the base.
PSA: When experimenting, be aware that moving hundreds of sand blocks and their attached items in a large chain reaction can cause server lag.
The Tesla to Etho's Edison.
I could say it's for those occasions when the intelligence gathered and the lives saved and the boostered outpost denied to the enemy all outweigh the cost of the minetrack and signs. Not that these should be on every corner, but now and then the design could be useful to a commander trying to manage a large territory.
Really though, it's just fun blowing stuff up.
The Tesla to Etho's Edison.
Building fortresses/castles entirely out of sand and torches is almost all I do, I didn't know that you could place signs on signs though :ohmy.gif: this is an amazing new breakthrough, although I prefer using torches due to the great looking interiors it forces you to make.
I'm a little confused here though, after this thing blows and you dash off in your minecart, there is still going to be a track leading directly to your base right?
My creations
Ideas:
- Make a larger portion of the main track collapsible.
- Point the first few hundred blocks of the track in a misleading direction.
- Build extra lengths of starter track in other random misleading directions.
- Start on a hill and release water or lava to wash away a big section of track after you're gone.
- Build your outbound track underground and drop gravel to hide the entrance.
- Build your outbound track underwater. (Signs allow this!)
- Make your entire main track out of 100 block collapsible sections that boost you before falling into the ocean. I can build a demo if anybody wants it.
Come to think of it, I've done the self-powered canal and the self-destructing booster, so why not the self-destructing canal? Sand could quash water in a pit, leaving behind smooth beach. Most people still don't know that boats can travel at the same max speed as mine carts, and water is a lot cheaper than iron.
The Tesla to Etho's Edison.
On that note, have you ever placed mine track on leaves? An alternate version of this thread's tutorial is simply,
"Build fort and booster in tree; light on fire when vacating."
The Tesla to Etho's Edison.
What would be better, is building it inside a hollowed out large tree, and cutting down the trunk, then when you want to get inside, you build a log pillar up where the trunk was to get in, and you'd be completely concealed inside.
And I think that water would be a much better escape route, especially if you build it underground, perhaps with the sand falling into it when you leave.
I'd just opt for building a tiny area in an inconspicuous mountain side, where I can get a view from high up, and just close the door off with smoothstone when you leave, to make it look un-tampered with.
Again, I really love your ideas :happy.gif: especially the upscalator, I was just amazed
My creations
Sure, it makes an effective forward guard tower, with a way to save the guard/sentry himself, but in the end, they get a whole bunch of ladders and minecart tracks. Its also pretty expensive as others pointed out.