Rail Upkeep

[Planks]

This is something that's bothered me for a while - there's no disadvantage to rail creeps.

Except in the very very very early game when trains have just been researched, I've felt completely unlimited by rails. Once you have a blueprint to lay down two (or later four) lines together, even in vanilla you just sit in a train and let your personal roboport build the rest. There's no ongoing cost to maintaining a rail network, which means there's no disadvantage to running 2 lines to wherever you need them.

In the "real world" maintaining unnecessary track *is expensive* and comes with a cost. If you have a highly trafficked line, it is maintained more often. If you have a very low service, you run one track, not two, with the associated cost of capacity. In my screenshot, the upper branch took much longer to build than the lower branch, as considering train lengths when creating passing places adds decent complexity. Other than the fun of trying to create a longer single track line, there was no advantage in me doing so and I should have just laid down the landfill for my two track blueprint.

I'm not sure exactly how this would work out, but I might like to see some kind of upkeep damage attached to track per time and per train. As rail ages, speeds could be limited to 50%, 25%, 10%? This way, busy areas cost more, and unnecessary extra lines cost more. Making the repair robot based wouldn't make sense as maintaining a continuous roboport coverage along rail lines to mines is silly. Maybe a special rail maintenance wagon which can be attached to a train which automatically slows to repair damaged sections?

I realise nothing else in the game has upkeep of this sort except structures and armour during biter attacks, so making the degradation intuitive might be hard. I'd nevertheless like to put forward this idea for discussion and consideration, in an effort to add some more late game challenge in vanilla.

[eradicator]

I realise nothing else in the game has upkeep of this sort except structures and armour during biter attacks [that's damage not upkeep], so making the degradation intuitive might be hard. I'd nevertheless like to put forward this idea for discussion and consideration, in an effort to add some more late game challenge in vanilla.

As you have already realized factorio is not a game about limiting the player. It's a game about building more, not less. If you want more "challenge" then you're free to increase the biter settings up to 11 and install mods that make biters more aggressive. Also there is ofc a drawback to having more rail then nessecary, which is quite simply the cost and time to build them. And player time is the most valuable resource in factorio.

[Kyralessa]

I would guess one of the main questions that has to be answered about a feature like this is: Is it fun?

If rails randomly break and you have to ride or drive around and fix them, and the more of a rail network you have, the more time you have to spend doing that, it doesn't sound very fun.

If that only happens until you create some kind of automatic rail repair machine, then it's not as bad, but then what's the point? It's one more thing to worry about. You could just cut the middleman and leave the rails intact instead.

Various versions of SimCity had pipes break, road wear out, etc., but this only happened if you set your respective budget below 100%. So it wasn't a normal, expected thing; it was a consequence of cheaping out on your upkeep.

I've been playing games of Factorio lately with extremely sparse ore, oil, etc., so I have to traverse many screens to find a patch. Laying rails to such a patch is an accomplishment (especially with cliffs and lots of water). Having those rails break occasionally would only be irritating.

[dood]

You do realize, if there was an automated rail repair machine that drives on rails, you would need 2 rails for it to work because that's what it takes for an arbitrary amount of trains to to reach every section of rail?
1 rail systems would get destroyed by a random blockade, 2+ rail systems get minorly inconvenienced.

So that would only push people to go for 2 rails.