Rails

[Pi-C]

I've found an issue with rails:

Screenshot at 2020-10-08 21-25-59.png (37.2 KiB) Viewed 3165 times

Mentioning that the rails are straight is unnecessary because there's no distinction between straight and curved rails anymore. They still exist as separate prototypes, but from the players' perspective, these are all the same old rails. I guess it would be a good idea to check all rails-related strings and remove "straight" or "curved" from them.

[Pi-C]

Stumbling over this thread again after several months, I noticed that the original screenshot was from a modded game. However, the issue exists even with vanilla Factorio:

straight-rails.png (90.4 KiB) Viewed 2984 times

Apart from this, I think the wording should be changed even more:

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Use to build straight rails manually or through the rail planner.

Should be "Used" or "Use this" instead of just "Use".

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The rail planner can build short paths directly using Left-click, or place long ghost paths using Shift + Left-click.

This doesn't really make sense: It's not the rail planner that does the building, but the player who uses the rail planner! How about this?

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You can build short paths directly with the rail planner (Left-click), or place long ghost paths with it (using Shift + Left-click).

[Kyralessa]

Except that straight rails and curved rails are distinct, as you'll find if you try to remove just "rails" with a deconstruction planner. If you don't add both types to your deconstruction planner, you won't be removing both.

[Pi-C]

Except that straight rails and curved rails are distinct,

They are distinct internally, for the game. But from a player's perspective, it doesn't make sense to build just straight rails. As I understand it, the rail-planner is a simplification for players so they don't have to put stacks of straight rails and curved rails into their inventories -- because the game will automatically place just the right type rail anyway. (According to the wiki, there used to be distinct items/recipes for straight and curved rails, but that was changed for Factorio 0.13.0.)

as you'll find if you try to remove just "rails" with a deconstruction planner.

You can't use the deconstruction planner to deconstruct rails unless they have been built. But according to the message, you can use the rail planner only to build straight rails. Somebody new to the game may wonder how to build curved rails. In this particular case, giving more information is less helpful; it would make more sense if the adjective was left out entirely.

[valneq]

The text is indeed correct, although maybe confusing.

If you place rails like any other entity, you can only place straight rails.
In order to place curved rails, you have to enter the rail planner, i.e. left click on an existing rail with a rail in your hand.
Only after that can you start planning out rails that are curved or long or avoid obstacles …