Minecart

Minecart

150px

Type	Vehicles
Durability	N/A
Renewable	Yes
Stackable	No
Network ID	42
Savegame ID	MinecartRideable
Drops	Minecart (1)
Health points	6 ()
First appearance
Data value	dec: 328 hex: 148

Minecarts are rideable entities placed on rails that can be used to carry items, mobs, and the Player. They are used as a form of transportation to cover long distances, since they are much faster than walking. Additionally, they are used for recreation - intricate roller coasters have been created through clever track placement and design.

Minecarts are placed in the same manner as other blocks; however, they can only be placed on top of rails. Once placed, they may be derailed by pushing them off of the end of the track.

Crafting

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output
Minecart	Iron Ingot

Once placed, minecarts can be hit, which reverts them back to an item. This can be done even while they are being ridden. Swords and picks can do this in one hit with no decrease in durability; one arrow will do the same, but the arrow will be lost.

Ingredients	Input » Output
Chest + Minecart
Furnace + Minecart	32x32px   32x32px
Hopper + Minecart	32x32px
TNT + Minecart	32x32px

Basic minecart usage

File:RideableMinecart.png

The rideable minecart on rails surrounded by wooden slabs

Minecarts can be ridden by right-clicking them. Once inside, the player can move, but an external impulse (a powered minecart, powered rail, or other player) may be needed. It is possible to push the minecart yourself and then jump in. The player can slowly move the minecart while riding it, by using the direction keys. Mobs (notably tamed ocelots) can also push minecarts. You can now also move a minecart without an external push by holding the move forward key and facing the direction you want to go, but the speed will be slow.

Players can exit the minecart by right clicking it, however if there is only one block of headroom above the cart the player will take half a heart of suffocation damage as his head will be temporarily through the ceiling. When the minecart is right-clicked, it searches for an adjacent or diagonal 2x2x3 area to put the player 1.5 blocks away from the cart. If none is available, the player is deposited directly above the minecart. Consequently, the player falls inside the minecart. It is possible to interact with the environment while riding a cart, such as shooting a bow at enemies or laying down track in front of the minecart while it is moving.

After rolling off of the end of a track, a minecart can be pushed around on open blocks. If a minecart is pushed onto or falls onto tracks, it will "snap" to those tracks. A minecart will transfer any fall damage it suffers onto its rider, and will not be destroyed upon impact.

A minecart will stop dead when it encounters an arrow, whereas it will bounce off or fly past (if fast enough) a player.

If a mob is pushed into a rideable minecart, the mob will ride it, until being displaced by the player entering the cart, or when the world is quit and reloaded. For example, if a zombie is punched into a minecart sitting on a powered rail, and the rail is switched on, the zombie will start riding the minecart. However, mobs will NOT enter a minecart unless pushed in by a player (meaning that a creeper won't enter a minecart to chase you down).

Speed

Minecarts have a predefined speed limit of 8 m/s per axis of travel. ^{1 block = 1 meter; 8 m/s = 17.89 mph = 28,8 km/h} This means that a minecart traveling on two axes will travel faster; for example, a sufficiently boosted minecart traveling diagonally will move at 8 m/s on the x axis and 8 m/s on the z axis, resulting in an actual speed of 11.314 m/s. In this sense, diagonal cart physics violate taxicab geometry. This also applies to carts moving downhill (and uphill, if they have been properly boosted)

Boosting

Powered rails, while powered, will boost the speed of a minecart, and while not powered, will bring it to a halt. Maximum momentum can be attained immediately by using a double-stacked minecart in Minecraft 1.1 as shown here This no longer seems to work under 1.4 however.

Loss of speed

One unit of kinetic energy could be defined as the energy gained by a cart going down a one block slope, and lost by a cart when it goes up a one block slope. If a 45 degree downward slope is connected directly into an upward slope, an initial height of 60 blocks will result in a final height of 40 blocks, a loss of 20 units of potential energy. But if 20 sections of flat track are inserted between the slopes, the final height will be 35. This implies that one unit of energy is lost for every 4 sections of horizontal track traveled with an initial stored energy of between 60 and 40. At much lower speeds, much less energy is lost, implying that the energy lost is a percentage of the cart's current energy. The above gives about 0.5% energy loss per section of track. One implication of this is that more energy lost when the cart has more energy, so a gradual slope should allow you to travel much farther distances than a steep slope followed by a long flat section. (This is different from real-life physics, where friction does not increase with velocity. However, it may be an attempt to mirror air resistance, which is proportional to the square of velocity.).

Anything in the way of the minecart will take it to a dead stop, including: blocks, items, and mobs. Once a minecart has left the track, it will rapidly decelerate within one or two squares. It is possible to have a sufficiently boosted minecart "skip" over one square without a track, then rejoin the track at reduced energy later. When a mob touches a minecart they affect it in the same way a player would, i.e. mobs that move up against a still cart will set it in motion. When an empty minecart hits a mob, the mob will ride it.

If a minecart leaves your rendering distance it will lose all energy until it re-enters the rendering distance. Also, all minecarts will lose all energy when you leave the game and will render at the same point when you left. This could lead to stalling minecart loop boosters. This is untrue for servers even after restarting the server it should still be moving at the same pace it was before the restart, possibly due to a new physics upgrade in the coding around 1.4 or 1.5.

Merged minecarts

Merged minecarts are two or more minecarts merged. This can be done in various ways, one of which is putting a minecart on a 1-piece slope-track and letting another minecart fall on top of it. When minecarts are merged the player can still ride them. What makes them useful, however, is their odd way of losing speed. When coming off a track, merged minecarts initially lose their speed to around walking speed. But after first contact, they won't lose their speed anymore.

This way they can be used to cross certain distances when the player's only goal is to not actively walk towards the player's goal / target. Or when the player doesn't have enough resources to cover the complete distance, this measure can be considered. Note: for this concept to work, at least 3 minecarts will have to be merged. Doing this can detach the minecarts by pushing one off of the rails, or the one the Player is riding might get stuck on a tight turn. Speed may decrease when merged.

Unoccupied carts, incline and a boost

This table shows the distance traveled by an unoccupied minecart on an incline, with a boost (or no boost). The most efficient way is to use only 1 boost at the bottom of the incline on the flat surface. Using 2 will increase by about 20% or 1.5m. All distance trends based on the height seem to be logarithmic. The carts started from rest, on an incline (at Height).

-Height-	No Boost	Bottom	Bottom and Top	All boosts on incline and bottom
1	2.77m	8.77	10.8	10.8
2	4.59m	9.59	10.83	13.37
3	5.81m	9.81	11.66	15.12
4	7.04m	10.04	12.46	16.95
5	7.87m	10.87	12.29	17.95
10	11.65m	13.38	15.12	21.68
100	15.87m	17.05	17.54	25.34

Detecting minecarts

The detector rail is a switch activated by minecarts. It generates a Redstone charge when a minecart is on the rail.

Minecarts can also be detected when their corners run over pressure plates as they go around a curved track. The effect is similar to the detector rail, but can only occur at curves.

Collision

Minecarts seem to have about the same size as a block; 1x1. Because of this, a sign or door will prevent it from falling down a 1x1 hole. This can be utilized to make minecart dispensers, by stacking carts on top of each other and dispensing them with the help of a booster. A single cart dispenser using a door can also be made by using a sign to block the cart from falling off the door. As of snapshot 12w15a, minecarts can also be placed directly on rails using Dispensers.

Additionally, you can transport carts along 1 block wide water streams without the minecarts falling by placing signs underneath. By alternating the signs, items can still fall through. Because streams carry minecarts at a very slow rate, a trap can be made where anyone sitting in a cart will be suffocated in a block directly above the stream, and their items can be collected below.

Carts on minecart tracks will also ignore collision in certain situations. A cart traveling downhill or on a curve with a block placed in front of it will go through the block. If it is going fast enough, it can skip through one block and reattach to track on the other side, at significantly reduced speed.

A player riding in a minecart will not collide with or suffocate in any transparent blocks, including glass, half slabs, and leaves.