it would help to have a tunnel system that can safely be used to transport items from A to B, and it would provide an 8 to 1 shortcut through the Overworld.
You can use this to transport items over a long distance, be it from a raid farm or not, it does not matter, it'll work for just about anything. Even if you were to battle a Wither while doing this, the portal would most likely be destroyed before the Wither could enter it and wreak havoc on your minecart cargo system.
Edit: there's also ender chests, but this isn't very efficient unless you got shulker boxes, as there are only 27 item slots.
This works for transporting items in small mining expeditions but it'll be a problem in raid farming, or any farming in general.
Edit: there's also ender chests, but this isn't very efficient unless you got shulker boxes, as there are only 27 item slots.
This works for transporting items in small mining expeditions but it'll be a problem in raid farming, or any farming in general.
Depending on the items involved this can work very well - this is how I transport tens of thousands of resources at a time back to my main base, all with just my inventory and ender chest (up to 63 slots) since you can craft mineral resources into blocks for 9 times the storage capacity; even the more than 3,000 resources I collect per play session is only about 6 stacks and I typically only have to make a trip back about once a week (about a full day of playtime nearly all spent caving, so certainly not a "small mining expedition", even a single caving session is 6-8 hours long, without any interruptions due to a lack of space, other than smelting iron and gold as I run out of space, and even then I just set up furnaces at a marked location and continue caving while it smelts), which is infrequent enough that I still don't consider the time to be an issue (all my railways are in the Overworld, with a maximum distance of around 4000 blocks, which would ideally take 8.3 minutes).
Depending on the items involved this can work very well - this is how I transport tens of thousands of resources at a time back to my main base, all with just my inventory and ender chest (up to 63 slots) since you can craft mineral resources into blocks for 9 times the storage capacity; even the more than 3,000 resources I collect per play session is only about 6 stacks and I typically only have to make a trip back about once a week (about a full day of playtime nearly all spent caving, so certainly not a "small mining expedition", even a single caving session is 6-8 hours long, without any interruptions due to a lack of space, other than smelting iron and gold as I run out of space, and even then I just set up furnaces at a marked location and continue caving while it smelts), which is infrequent enough that I still don't consider the time to be an issue (all my railways are in the Overworld, with a maximum distance of around 4000 blocks, which would ideally take 8.3 minutes).
You can send much more items per session with 2 or more minecarts with chests due to the increased overall capacity, this is why if the game were coded to allow minecarts to exceed the normal ticking distance they would be made much more useful early to mid game for long distance transport of items.
The ender chest was only intended for limited storage and inter-dimensional transfer of rares or 1 inventory worth of items, or 27 slots, which can include shulker boxes with the items they contain, but these are end game equipment and so players need a cheaper and more efficient solution for this before they get to this point.
The ticking radius doesn't even go up to 4,000 blocks distance from the player on Java edition or bedrock edition. The max I've seen it go is about 12 chunks which is equal to 192 blocks away from where the player is standing. Unless you travel with your minecarts this is ineffective at transporting items in bulk and I could see it becoming annoying having a bunch of minecarts with chests being frozen 64 to 192 blocks out.
in 10 seconds you cover 80 blocks,
in 20 seconds you cover 160 blocks,
in 30 seconds you cover 240 blocks.
in 60 seconds you cover 480 blocks
so your math is correct, it would take about 8.3 minutes to travel by minecart at a 4,000 blocks distance, this would be the same for any minecart be it with chest, hopper or TNT or by itself, on fully powered rails.
It would take even more time to keep going back and forth across your map to pick up more items from your strip mine if it were that far out. This time is effectively doubled for each round trip.
Now do you see why people are asking for minecarts to be able to operate at a greater distance out? we have these massive worlds but we are constrained by these ludicrous artificial limitations Mojang coded in the game that can only be worked around using mods. It's almost patronizing at this point, because some of us do have PC's that are capable of running the game smoothly if the minecarts could move further out.
It would take even more time to keep going back and forth across your map to pick up more items from your strip mine if it were that far out. This time is effectively doubled for each round trip.
As I mentioned before, by crafting coal, iron, etc into blocks I effectively increase my storage capacity by 9-fold so I only need to return once every 7 play sessions, which is also reflected well by my statistics:
1254730 meters traveled by minecart / 8000 meters round-trip distance = about 157 round-trips, divided by 1093 play sessions = about one trip every 7 sessions. Also, 1254730 / 8 m/s / 86400 minutes per day = 1.81 days, which seems like a lot but 1.81 days / 159.71 days of playtime = about 1.1% of my total playtime spent riding a minecart, spread out over 1093 sessions for about 2.4 minutes per 210 minute session. Also, I've collected about 3.48 million resources, an average of 3,184 per play session and 22,287 per return trip (For comparison, 63 stacks can hold up to 36,288 resources, or more than 50% more than I've actually carried per trip, mainly due to items that can't be crafted into blocks and partial stacks).
These numbers are not exact since the distance has increased over time but the area explored increases quadratically so my progression outwards has significantly decreased over time. In fact, I actually haven't gone much further along an axis for the past 5 years - still only a bit over 3000 blocks or mostly within a 6144x6144 block area centered around the origin (the furthest distance by minecart would be around 5120 blocks if I built a base near 2560, 2560, with the remaining distance to the extreme corners covered by foot between individual caving sessions; as it is 3 of those corners would be in the ocean so I haven't explored them, leaving only the southeastern corner as possible land; if I ever completely explore all land (1.6.4 has actual continents surrounded by vast oceans) then I'd definitely make a Nether railway to reach the next landmass).
You also have to realize that I'm probably well in the top 1% or even 0.1% in terms of resource collection compared to the overall player base - those 3.48 million resources include over 2/3 of a million iron, a staggering number even for a large-scale iron farm and practically anybody who actually needs such mass amounts of resources will farm them (I certainly don't need it myself, it is simply a byproduct of caving for fun), yet still only 6.6% of the iron that originally existed in the world.
As I mentioned before, by crafting coal, iron, etc into blocks I effectively increase my storage capacity by 9-fold so I only need to return once every 7 play sessions, which is also reflected well by my statistics:
1254730 meters traveled by minecart / 8000 meters round-trip distance = about 157 round-trips, divided by 1093 play sessions = about one trip every 7 sessions. Also, 1254730 / 8 m/s / 86400 minutes per day = 1.81 days, which seems like a lot but 1.81 days / 159.71 days of playtime = about 1.1% of my total playtime spent riding a minecart, spread out over 1093 sessions for about 2.4 minutes per 210 minute session. Also, I've collected about 3.48 million resources, an average of 3,184 per play session and 22,287 per return trip (For comparison, 63 stacks can hold up to 36,288 resources, or more than 50% more than I've actually carried per trip, mainly due to items that can't be crafted into blocks and partial stacks).
These numbers are not exact since the distance has increased over time but the area explored increases quadratically so my progression outwards has significantly decreased over time. In fact, I actually haven't gone much further along an axis for the past 5 years - still only a bit over 3000 blocks or mostly within a 6144x6144 block area centered around the origin (the furthest distance by minecart would be around 5120 blocks if I built a base near 2560, 2560, with the remaining distance to the extreme corners covered by foot between individual caving sessions; as it is 3 of those corners would be in the ocean so I haven't explored them, leaving only the southeastern corner as possible land; if I ever completely explore all land (1.6.4 has actual continents surrounded by vast oceans) then I'd definitely make a Nether railway to reach the next landmass).
You also have to realize that I'm probably well in the top 1% or even 0.1% in terms of resource collection compared to the overall player base - those 3.48 million resources include over 2/3 of a million iron, a staggering number even for a large-scale iron farm and practically anybody who actually needs such mass amounts of resources will farm them (I certainly don't need it myself, it is simply a byproduct of caving for fun), yet still only 6.6% of the iron that originally existed in the world.
Yes, but chests can also hold the blocks of coal, iron and diamonds as you well know by now.
If minecarts with chests didn't have a purpose then they wouldn't be in the game, most items do have a purpose.
But right now there isn't enough incentive to use a train of minecarts with chests, and while it is true sometimes you'd travel with your minecarts, sometimes you wouldn't because you might be using them to send items to a friend on the server, or you may want to ride a horse home since they are much faster with the maximum speed stats.
If minecarts were allowed to function at a better distance from the player, even if it required that the minecarts be tagged to remain loaded at a distance of up to 2048 blocks from the player, and that there were still limits on how much further it could be before being frozen, it would improve the game considerably. You like mining so this is right up your ally, I can't see why you'd have a problem with this and you've given no indication that you disagree either.
Furthermore Mojang could encode a priority system for the minecart update, that is only a limited number of minecarts can be processed when they are beyond the normal ticking radius, the closest minecarts getting the highest CPU priority while the other ones have to wait or be frozen until the nearest minecarts have stopped, if all minecarts exceeding the moving entity limit are at the same distance from the player, then they should be coded to be randomly selected, freezing the other minecarts until the other ones have come to a natural stop at the end of their rails.
Do you understand what I'm trying to explain here? there are possibilities to update the minecart system for the better.
If fans can think of a good solution, surely developers are capable of implementing this feature.
This thread is old but if you stumbled here like me looking for a better way the solution I came up with was just making a large piston/slime flying machine out of as many barrels as possible, then grind and fill up a massive cargo shipment, brakes to stop the flying machine at each end where you load/unload.
Even though the flying machines are slow you can load with a TON of stuff and they require no roads if you build them high enough. You can even unload with hoppers if you're careful. You can fit so much on one machine it got hard for me to justify making a railway, you only have to make the trip every once in a while due to the bulk. Just let it run while you grab dinner or whatever (make sure you have a block in front and behind so you don't fall if it lags)
You can also use honey for the outside blocks(you still need 2 slime blocks being pushed/pulled by pistons,) so this method is REALLY CHEAP it basically only costs
1 sticky Piston
1 normal Piston
2 Observers
2 Slime Blocks
2 Honey blocks + extra honey and barrells for making the machine bigger.
You just swap the sticky and normal piston to make it reverse direction.
have a raid farm setup about 700 blocks away from my home base...any way to transport them efficiently without multiple trips?
Use the nether for shortcuts
it would help to have a tunnel system that can safely be used to transport items from A to B, and it would provide an 8 to 1 shortcut through the Overworld.
You can use this to transport items over a long distance, be it from a raid farm or not, it does not matter, it'll work for just about anything. Even if you were to battle a Wither while doing this, the portal would most likely be destroyed before the Wither could enter it and wreak havoc on your minecart cargo system.
Edit: there's also ender chests, but this isn't very efficient unless you got shulker boxes, as there are only 27 item slots.
This works for transporting items in small mining expeditions but it'll be a problem in raid farming, or any farming in general.
Depending on the items involved this can work very well - this is how I transport tens of thousands of resources at a time back to my main base, all with just my inventory and ender chest (up to 63 slots) since you can craft mineral resources into blocks for 9 times the storage capacity; even the more than 3,000 resources I collect per play session is only about 6 stacks and I typically only have to make a trip back about once a week (about a full day of playtime nearly all spent caving, so certainly not a "small mining expedition", even a single caving session is 6-8 hours long, without any interruptions due to a lack of space, other than smelting iron and gold as I run out of space, and even then I just set up furnaces at a marked location and continue caving while it smelts), which is infrequent enough that I still don't consider the time to be an issue (all my railways are in the Overworld, with a maximum distance of around 4000 blocks, which would ideally take 8.3 minutes).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
You can send much more items per session with 2 or more minecarts with chests due to the increased overall capacity, this is why if the game were coded to allow minecarts to exceed the normal ticking distance they would be made much more useful early to mid game for long distance transport of items.
The ender chest was only intended for limited storage and inter-dimensional transfer of rares or 1 inventory worth of items, or 27 slots, which can include shulker boxes with the items they contain, but these are end game equipment and so players need a cheaper and more efficient solution for this before they get to this point.
The ticking radius doesn't even go up to 4,000 blocks distance from the player on Java edition or bedrock edition. The max I've seen it go is about 12 chunks which is equal to 192 blocks away from where the player is standing. Unless you travel with your minecarts this is ineffective at transporting items in bulk and I could see it becoming annoying having a bunch of minecarts with chests being frozen 64 to 192 blocks out.
in 10 seconds you cover 80 blocks,
in 20 seconds you cover 160 blocks,
in 30 seconds you cover 240 blocks.
in 60 seconds you cover 480 blocks
so your math is correct, it would take about 8.3 minutes to travel by minecart at a 4,000 blocks distance, this would be the same for any minecart be it with chest, hopper or TNT or by itself, on fully powered rails.
It would take even more time to keep going back and forth across your map to pick up more items from your strip mine if it were that far out. This time is effectively doubled for each round trip.
Now do you see why people are asking for minecarts to be able to operate at a greater distance out? we have these massive worlds but we are constrained by these ludicrous artificial limitations Mojang coded in the game that can only be worked around using mods. It's almost patronizing at this point, because some of us do have PC's that are capable of running the game smoothly if the minecarts could move further out.
As I mentioned before, by crafting coal, iron, etc into blocks I effectively increase my storage capacity by 9-fold so I only need to return once every 7 play sessions, which is also reflected well by my statistics:
1254730 meters traveled by minecart / 8000 meters round-trip distance = about 157 round-trips, divided by 1093 play sessions = about one trip every 7 sessions. Also, 1254730 / 8 m/s / 86400 minutes per day = 1.81 days, which seems like a lot but 1.81 days / 159.71 days of playtime = about 1.1% of my total playtime spent riding a minecart, spread out over 1093 sessions for about 2.4 minutes per 210 minute session. Also, I've collected about 3.48 million resources, an average of 3,184 per play session and 22,287 per return trip (For comparison, 63 stacks can hold up to 36,288 resources, or more than 50% more than I've actually carried per trip, mainly due to items that can't be crafted into blocks and partial stacks).
These numbers are not exact since the distance has increased over time but the area explored increases quadratically so my progression outwards has significantly decreased over time. In fact, I actually haven't gone much further along an axis for the past 5 years - still only a bit over 3000 blocks or mostly within a 6144x6144 block area centered around the origin (the furthest distance by minecart would be around 5120 blocks if I built a base near 2560, 2560, with the remaining distance to the extreme corners covered by foot between individual caving sessions; as it is 3 of those corners would be in the ocean so I haven't explored them, leaving only the southeastern corner as possible land; if I ever completely explore all land (1.6.4 has actual continents surrounded by vast oceans) then I'd definitely make a Nether railway to reach the next landmass).
You also have to realize that I'm probably well in the top 1% or even 0.1% in terms of resource collection compared to the overall player base - those 3.48 million resources include over 2/3 of a million iron, a staggering number even for a large-scale iron farm and practically anybody who actually needs such mass amounts of resources will farm them (I certainly don't need it myself, it is simply a byproduct of caving for fun), yet still only 6.6% of the iron that originally existed in the world.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Yes, but chests can also hold the blocks of coal, iron and diamonds as you well know by now.
If minecarts with chests didn't have a purpose then they wouldn't be in the game, most items do have a purpose.
But right now there isn't enough incentive to use a train of minecarts with chests, and while it is true sometimes you'd travel with your minecarts, sometimes you wouldn't because you might be using them to send items to a friend on the server, or you may want to ride a horse home since they are much faster with the maximum speed stats.
If minecarts were allowed to function at a better distance from the player, even if it required that the minecarts be tagged to remain loaded at a distance of up to 2048 blocks from the player, and that there were still limits on how much further it could be before being frozen, it would improve the game considerably. You like mining so this is right up your ally, I can't see why you'd have a problem with this and you've given no indication that you disagree either.
Furthermore Mojang could encode a priority system for the minecart update, that is only a limited number of minecarts can be processed when they are beyond the normal ticking radius, the closest minecarts getting the highest CPU priority while the other ones have to wait or be frozen until the nearest minecarts have stopped, if all minecarts exceeding the moving entity limit are at the same distance from the player, then they should be coded to be randomly selected, freezing the other minecarts until the other ones have come to a natural stop at the end of their rails.
Do you understand what I'm trying to explain here? there are possibilities to update the minecart system for the better.
If fans can think of a good solution, surely developers are capable of implementing this feature.
This thread is old but if you stumbled here like me looking for a better way the solution I came up with was just making a large piston/slime flying machine out of as many barrels as possible, then grind and fill up a massive cargo shipment, brakes to stop the flying machine at each end where you load/unload.
Even though the flying machines are slow you can load with a TON of stuff and they require no roads if you build them high enough. You can even unload with hoppers if you're careful. You can fit so much on one machine it got hard for me to justify making a railway, you only have to make the trip every once in a while due to the bulk. Just let it run while you grab dinner or whatever (make sure you have a block in front and behind so you don't fall if it lags)
You can also use honey for the outside blocks(you still need 2 slime blocks being pushed/pulled by pistons,) so this method is REALLY CHEAP it basically only costs
1 sticky Piston
1 normal Piston
2 Observers
2 Slime Blocks
2 Honey blocks + extra honey and barrells for making the machine bigger.
You just swap the sticky and normal piston to make it reverse direction.