Railroad

[hitzu]

I drive often with two locos (cause much faster). You can put the loco also at the end.

I use two-headed trains, so it would have so sence.

[TurielD]

Ok guys, I can't be the only one who's driven ever so slightly loopy by the straight track piece you need to complete a 90 degree turn,,,



Is this particularly hard to fix? I know it's just an aesthetic thing, so it can't be a real priority, but it would be great to see the loops look, well, curved

[ssilk]

Make a suggestion, how this could be fixed without introducing new rail types.

[damerell]

I notice the train is called a diesel locomotive (in English anyway), but it runs on coal rather than a liquid fuel. It would be cool if there were two tiers of train, with a slower steam locomotive first that uses coal, and then the current train becomes fuelled by heavy or light oil (or a mix?) loaded by a special machine.

Yes, please. I imagine Factorio having some heavy articulated type like a Garratt, which would undeniably make it slower than diesel. But the main limiting resource for a steam locomotive's range is not coal (or oil, or wood, or solid fuel) but water; balanced right, this could make for an interesting exercise in establishing watering facilities - towers at stops, or troughs. And having the diesel burn diesel already implies adding a way to add liquids to vehicles, so there's no additional work to be done to be able to put water in locomotives.

Taking another leaf out of OpenTTD's book, if an early-game crude track didn't require steel plates, but would only take smaller wagons and a lighter tank engine, this would allow access to trains quite early (but with limited utility). It could then be upgraded to take the normal track pieces and heavier locomotives, with the progression from tank engine to heavy locomotive to diesel traction to electric (which might go at the current diesel's hefty speed) being potentially interesting.

I'd suggest that in the harsh Factorio environment, electric trains might run on third-rail traction, being less fragile than overhead rails. This would also avoid the question of whether you can build the electric network just by building an electric railway; on the contrary, the third-rail system might require a substation to be feeding a track tile within a given distance, meaning electrification could involve a challenging expansion of electric facilities.

The other thing I'd like to see from TTD is better loading orders at stops. "Wait for full load or n seconds", etc.

[warmadmax]

I like the idea of having a steam train, water and the whole nine yards..

I'd prefer it at the late red, early green science stage, buildable using Iron ingredients ideally, could even take a boiler and steam engine.

two tiers of train carriage?, iron carriage with the current 20 slots, then steel carriage with 40 or 60 slots?.

[damerell]

I like the idea of having a steam train, water and the whole nine yards..
I'd prefer it at the late red, early green science stage, buildable using Iron ingredients ideally, could even take a boiler and steam engine.
two tiers of train carriage?, iron carriage with the current 20 slots, then steel carriage with 40 or 60 slots?.

I think that's pretty much what I had, except two tiers of steam locomotive - one small one to go at the iron stage, one large one at the steel stage; not as good as a diesel, but burns absolutely anything, so you can run it without a refinery chain (or, if locomotive fuel costs become significant, without choosing between running locomotives or making plastic bars).

[ofca]

Make a suggestion, how this could be fixed without introducing new rail types.

Obviously there would need to be new rail types and old rail types would need to become "legacy", i.e. they can exist in the game and on maps, but cannot be built anymore and would need to replaced when destroyed, and railroad network would need some minor changes. All "legacy" objects would become destroyed if placed on the map, and removed from storage if stored once the final release version hits, to keep the codebase clean. And yes, I've been puzzled by this too, that this one piece is always needed. All of this however may become moot once the planned auto-building of railway networks comes to fruition - drones wouldn't care much about this one extra bit of work

[TurielD]

Make a suggestion, how this could be fixed without introducing new rail types.

Indeed!

So, rail curve segments basically take up (most of) a 2x3 grid. While flat-to-flat connections make a great 90 degree curve along any cardinal direction, they currently have to be connected by a flat segment on the inside of that curve to join up to the next 90 degree set. Here's my suggestion, allow the option on the right:



This wouldn't require removing or really altering anything about the current rail system - those would all still work exactly the same as always - but it would allow for tighter and more natural looking corners through the direct linking of two curved sections.

All it would require is a little graphical cleanup, I think - basically cutting off the last little part of the graphic of each side of the linking curve along a 45 degree angle.

[wwdragon]

I agree with OP.

While the current train setup allows moving resources, it lacks any intelligence and is simply time based. I also want the train to fill up before coming back.
I also want the train to wait at home base until it's completely empty.

[bobucles]

I'm surprised there's no form of electric train. The tracks are already metallic, so put a few MW in there and the train won't have to refuel ever again!

Trains could have some niceties (stronger engines, bigger cargo, etc.), but I think the most critical piece that's missing is ELEVATED rail. The weakest link for a train network are the intersections, where trains have to take their turn going through and can get quickly clogged up. Intersections are the primary reason players stick to small, low capacity trains. An elevated rail can bypass that, letting one train travel over another and creating the possibility of express high capacity train lines. Only two new items are NEEDED for this- A massive ramp piece that allows trains to move from low to high elevation(two way), and a generic high elevation track piece. A high elevation corner piece would be nice to have, and a splitter for making "highway ramps" would also be nice. But they aren't critical.

In terms of resources the elevated rail would utilize more steel (double or triple) compared to regular rail.

In the grand scheme of things an elevated rail would allow players to make a "highway cloverleaf" that allows constant traffic flow with no collisions.

[ssilk]

This has already been discussed: If, then this will be underground tubes, cause elevated constructions have the problem, that everything behind them is more or less hidden.

[bobucles]

So? Power poles hide stuff behind them and they work just fine. Just make the sprites have enough transparent pixels to see stuff behind them.

Elevated rail can't be interacted with so it has little use inside the base. It can also stretch for long distances, which is something underground rail can not.

[wwdragon]

So? Power poles hide stuff behind them and they work just fine. Just make the sprites have enough transparent pixels to see stuff behind them.

Elevated rail can't be interacted with so it has little use inside the base. It can also stretch for long distances, which is something underground rail can not.

Also, we could just have a hold button to see above ground and another to see below ground stuff.... just like many minecraft mods that take up the same block.

HOld shift to hide all but above, maybe and hold ctrl to hide all but below... or reverse those keys.

[bobucles]

The alt overlay can also just place important icons where they're needed, so nothing is really hidden.

Another option is to make elevated rail fatter, such that horizontal lengths don't allow hidden stuff behind them. Standard rail is already 2 tiles wide, a little wider isn't going to hurt anything.
One possible perk of elevated rail is the ability to go over water. Of course it has very limited use if the player can't travel on the water himself. One option is to walk on the bridge planting the rail across water, which kills two birds with one stone.

[Farogan]

We are saying everywhere, that the game is inspired by Transport Tycoon.
There is already some proof of concept of trains (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmp66SmUztQ), but this is still far from transport tycoon.

I believe, that we could use the concept of transport tycoon in this area of the game almost completely.
Player would create stations and specify rout of the train, the train would stop at the station and wait until inserters have nothing to do.

This would help the game a lot for two reasons.
a) I like to play with trains, so I will enjoy the game more, there might be people like me out there
b) The game is missing some late game mechanism to transfer big amounts of resources from distant mining sites.
c) Diversity of logistics.

As a OpenTTD player i would love to see more influences from that game in Factorio. Here some crazy ideas for you guys...

- There could be a different end goal / gamemode. Like colonize the planet... with growing settlements/citys that need to be supplied with resources to grow. It should be probably abstract like in OpenTTD where you do not see any people, just numbers... but that would make your character a bit useless. Like still the lonely guy on a planet But imagine you would build your first star-port where people can arrive and than designate some location for them to settle ( or let the game choose the location ). That would bring some new transportation and meaning into the late game. I know that i can play OpenTTD for days until the whole map turned into a city...
Questions would be: What about a currency in that world? I think we would not need it. You pay with resources and peoples lives. if you do not care for the settlements they would die or fly back to earth.

- to make long railroad projects easier to build there could be tech where you character enters a building from where you than can lay down tracks via "remote" robots or some crazy thing. It could be some sort of Satellite that you launch first from where you view the surface to plan the tracks and some robots are going to lay them for you.

[kiba]

This has already been discussed: If, then this will be underground tubes, cause elevated constructions have the problem, that everything behind them is more or less hidden.

I am already building underground tubes with subsurface mod.

[Alukat]

As a fan of OpenTTD i like train maps too

so i set everything except monsters to:
frequeny: low
size: small
richness: poor

using Dytech Mod and then gambled untill i had desert and about 50k iron ores near start zone. So i had to use trains

- There could be a different end goal / gamemode. Like colonize the planet... with growing settlements/citys that need to be supplied with resources to grow. It should be probably abstract like in OpenTTD where you do not see any people, just numbers... but that would make your character a bit useless. Like still the lonely guy on a planet But imagine you would build your first star-port where people can arrive and than designate some location for them to settle ( or let the game choose the location ). That would bring some new transportation and meaning into the late game. I know that i can play OpenTTD for days until the whole map turned into a city...
Questions would be: What about a currency in that world? I think we would not need it. You pay with resources and peoples lives. if you do not care for the settlements they would die or fly back to earth.

that'd be awesome.
Also wondering if someone's still working on the homeworld mod.

[ssilk]

Please use the Show your Creations board for such posts.

[Farogan]

- to make long railroad projects easier to build there could be tech where you character enters a building from where you than can lay down tracks via "remote" robots or some crazy thing. It could be some sort of Satellite that you launch first from where you view the surface to plan the tracks and some robots are going to lay them for you.

so basically i would be the same view as you would run around with the player. Except the player would not be there and you could scroll faster around and access all train and signal config to make the management easier... exchange of inventory from and to the player would not be possible of course...

[Farogan]

Also wondering if someone's still working on the homeworld mod.

Looks interesting this mod!