If you have a question about hopper mechanics, check the page on stationary hoppers first. I posted a question here, moved on to the hopper page and found what I was looking for. Rashkavar 07:13, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
This page could use content about why Minecart with Hopper is used in farms to catch food tossed from one farmer to another. Why not just put a hopper into the ground between them, maybe with a carpet above that, and use a trapdoor at head level to keep the villagers apart. It's common to see videos that say "put a rail down, put the minecart with hopper on it, then break out the rail". The cart falls down to rest on what's under it, usually a hopper or chest. Is that just to maintain alignment? A minecart placed like this can still be moved if not held in place by other means. What mechanics are being used with this technique? CaptainStarbuck (talk) 19:10, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Proposal for new text, numbered for reference/discussion only :
Automated farm mechanics
- Many automated farms use a minecart hopper between two villagers to rapidly collect items tossed between them.
- When a farmer villager is full with 8 stacks of food, it will toss 5 full stacks on the ground as a gift to the other. This initiates the breeding process. The goal of the farm is to collect these items. (The exact timing and number of items is more complex. See Breeding.)
- Without a collection mechanism the receiving villager gets all of the items. With a plain hopper, at 2.5 items per second pulled in from the ground, many of the items will remain on the ground, allowing the receiving villager time to retrieve them, drastically lowering the farm efficiency. (Hearts between the villagers indicates some items were exchanged.)
- With a minecart+hopper between the villagers, pulling at 20 items per second, all of the items (5 stacks, not 64x5=320 items) should be intercepted immediately.
- When tossed, the items appear to be received by the receiving villager but they are caught mid-air by the minecart between them.
- Once captured, the items will flow down from the minecart+hopper into a hopper or chest at the normal 2.5 items per second rate.
- In the block between the villagers, the minecart+hopper can be in the block level with the ground, or at ground level.
- A minecart occupies more than a single block. (Dig out a single block, a minecart cannot be placed in the hole.) To get the minecart+hopper into a single block, a technique is used where a rail is placed down first, then the minecart, then the rail is removed from under the minecart. The minecart falls down, remaining within the single block, and items will flow through the minecart to the block below, again usually a hopper, a chest, or even another minecart with hopper.
- To get two minecart+hoppers above one another, with the top one flowing items into the one below: First place the bottom rail and minecart, then knockout the rail. Place a block of sand above the minecart - it will fall into the same block. Add another rail and minecart onto the sand block. Knock out the sand block, the rail will fall out too and the top minecart will fall down to rest on the bottom one. Items dropped into the top minecart flow in and out at the rate of 20 items per second. The bottom minecart receives the items at 20 items per second, but again, items will only flow from there according to the speed of whatever is under it.
-- CaptainStarbuck (talk) 21:44, 27 December 2020 (UTC)