I think we're just trying to refine this design to its max. I'll wait until TB pulls out some adult logic and makes the big fixes, and then I'll continue to count pixels and watch the time drop equally.
I think a problem that needs to be solved is the carriage itself. It needs to go up and over the hump more smoothly. I smoothed it out a bit and gained 6 seconds off TB's but I'm sure it can be done more. Since the ramp opens super quick now I don't think much attention is needed to that. Maybe a lighter carriage with only two wheels? Hmm...
Here's my two-wheel at 261. I'd recommend not modifying this particular link though because I accidentally deleted the ramp line, and when I replaced it the whole thing didn't work right so I had to fiddle with stuff a bit. Lots of things are off by one or two pixels from the ones before. But it is 5 seconds quicker.
So now that the crawler is refined enough, I would suggest creating a smoother water rod linkage. I tried to create such a thing and it snapped. =/ It was considerably faster in moving up the ramp though.
Wrcsti and everyone who worked on that design, you did well. Basically about 12 hours ago before I went to school I tried to make that design so that the ramp opened before the carrier got there so it would improve time. Well some really smart person got that ramp up in all of a second. So that design was worked to the max.
Now with this new design...i'm going to have to have a fiddle to get it fast.
My design just went utterly spas. I dont know what the above design was made of. I didn't understand what the pieces were connected to so I made my own design and it is working to well.
I started a contraption this weekend that was past 3500000 on the clock. Unfortunately, I had to turn my laptop off so it didn't finish. I saved it, remote desktoped to my computer at work and started it running on Saturday. It ran the rest of Saturday, all day Sunday and Monday (at least up to 5pm) and possibly into this morning. I arrive at work and there's a notification that FF has crashed. Another 4+ million down the drain.
At least once it's started I don't need to do anything but wait.
It's running again. I'm going to take screen shots every morning so you guys can see the progress. I might even animated gif 'em...
You could try running them in a slightly safer environment - Chrome is my browser when it comes to long contraptions, since other tabs don't affect it. I almost panicked when, at two million, one of the Facebook albums nearly brought down Firefox...