Hi all,

Firstly let me say that while I came up with this on my own I recognize that it is NOT an original design, I just found a thread where someone did something similar in April, however I made a few discoveries which they seem to have overlooked,m and I feel my design is better (simpler) and could also be simplified slightly. Also quite proud of it because I came up with it on my own independently!

This is a machine for cleaning your dwarfs and training their swimming skills at the same time, most IMPORTANTLY it also doesn't risk injuring them unlike most designs.



Basically dwarfs push minecarts down into the water where they gently crash at the far point. Dwarfs then swim back to the exit, triggering a pressure plate which returns the minecart at the same time. The pumps at the top can be employed to clean out the water once it becomes filthy. Please note that I placed the minecart stops before the start square, thus preserving dwarfen babies from being drowned by their own parents.

However I noticed that Dwarfs seemed to train while still INSIDE the minecarts. This lead me to design a second machine which basically consists of a minecart loop through 6/7 water which loops until I pull a lever. I can leave dwarfs in there for a while to do some serious training. This also opened up the opportunity to try out magma swimming lessons and leaves you free to design dwarfen Water slides/rollercoasters which serve a functional purpose of training swimming (perhaps ending in a nice water mist for good thoughts?)

SCIENCE Lessons learnt:
- Dwarfs WILL gain swimming while riding minecarts
- Dwarfs WILL drown while riding minecarts through 7/7 water, and even a mix of 6/7 and 7/7 water (once they start drowning they don't stop until they exit the minecart
- distance traveled has no effect on swimming training speed. A dwarf rushing through water in a high speed minecart trains the same as a dwarf sitting completely still in 6/7 water
- Dwarfs will gain approx 5 levels of swimming (approx) and 10 stat points in willpower, strength, spatial sense, kinesthetic sense, endurance and agility if forced to train constantly for 10 minutes (at full FPS in 6/7 water)

Next I'm going to build a magma prototype and see if they train faster/slower or just cook. Would be cool if they can ride safely through a magma tunnel on a regular basis for swimming training =O
It seems that the information I'd read was false... Dwarfs cannot ride a minecart through magma without dying. They heat up and melt