[MOD 0.12.x] More Locomotives!

[Sebb767]

Type: Mod
Name: More Locomotives
Description: Adds several new locomotives.
License: MIT
Version: 0.3
Release: 2016-03-19
Tested-With-Factorio-Version: 0.12.26x64 Linux DRM-free
Category: Vehicles
Tags: locomotive, locomotives
Repo: https://github.com/Sebb767/more-locomotives
Download-Url: Github Releases

A factorio mod which adds several more locomotives.

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/rrgEo

new locomotives

cargo locomotive

A cheaper, more efficient but slower diesel locomotive.

- Is slower (max speed is about 90 km/h) and has better brakes.
- More fuel efficient (about 60%) than the stock locomotive.
- Is hardly affected by the wagon count.
- Has a bigger light cone and will activate it earlier.
- Cheaper to build: Only needs 12 engine units, 16 gears, 20 iron & 4 steel plates.

Why should I want a slower locomotive? Well, it's actually not that slow. Its probably not the best choice for transporting things over long distances, but its ideal for small transport within your factory. Also, you will survive being hit by it!

high-speed locomotive

The complete opposite to the cargo locomotive.

- Is extremly fast (max speed is about 360 km/h).
- Has pretty bad brakes and will need some time to get to max speed.
- 5 fuel slots - which you should really fill. For comparison: A cargo locomotive will be powered by a single solid fuel block at max speed for about 1,45 min and a distance of about 1,9 km - this will run a high-speed locomotive for about 10 seconds! But this is enough for nearly 1 km, so if you can afford it, your ressources will arrive pretty quickly.

Why should I want a faster locomotive? Let's be serious for a second.

license

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Sebb767

The some part of the codebase is taken from color coding, (c) 2014 d3phoenix
The graphics are (c) 2014 hitzu (thanks!)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.


http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

What's upcoming?
* A faster but far more fuel consuming high-speed locomotive. Done!
* The cargo locomotive should not be impacted much by a high load. Done!
* Automatically dual-headed cargo locomotive.
* Speed upgrade for the cargo locomotive while keeping its efficiency.
* Electro locomotives!

I'm always happy about constructive criticism and pull requests!

[Burny]

Hey,

great mod idea!
In my savegame, it really starts to be annoying to travel from main base to the latest mining outpost. Even if I travel only in a single locomotive, it still takes about 2 minutes to get there.
The faster locomotive will help me on that.

Additionally I tried to use single-headed-trains now to save fuel, but the cargo-locomotive delivered with this mod makes this obselete aswell and I could go back to double-headed-trains.
Thanks!


Btw there is something wrong with the recipes.lua file:
The result of the high-speed-locomotive recipe yields actually a cargo-locomotive.

Code: Select all

result = "cargo-locomotive"

needs to be changed into

Code: Select all

result = "hs-locomotive"

I suppose.


Greetings
Burny

[Sebb767]

Hey,

great mod idea!

Thanks a lot

Btw there is something wrong with the recipes.lua file:
The result of the high-speed-locomotive recipe yields actually a cargo-locomotive.

You can find a fixed release (0.2.1) at github now

Additionally I tried to use single-headed-trains now to save fuel, but the cargo-locomotive delivered with this mod makes this obselete aswell and I could go back to double-headed-trains.

My primary concern for it was to have trains driving arround my factory while still staying alive But I'm happy you found another use. I'm currently thinking of increasing its speed a little more, but I this needs some testing.

[Xterminator]

Awesome looking mod so far! More train stuff is always great.
Hope you do still plan to add electric ones as I think that would be really cool.

Also, not entirely sure if this is possible, but a combat one would be awesome. Or at least just one that has a turret or two on it so it can shoot any biters that decide to chase after it. Haha

[Burny]

I'm currently thinking of increasing its speed a little more, but I this needs some testing.

Haha, the cargo-locomotive is indeed quite slow. I have to send 15x 1-8 trains with cargo-locomotives to my furthest iron mining outpost at the moment to be able to keep up with it's mining speed. On the other hand, the mining outpost is quite big (those are 4 belt lines on each side of the rail track to load up the steel chests).

I'm wondering if increasing the max speed would make it too easy. I really like it at the moment, it makes for great challenge.

[Sebb767]

That's quite a bit of troughput, indeed :)

I'm not thinking about a high increase, but from about 60 to about 80 km/h.

I did some testing actually, the cargo locomotive is deadly until you have a basic modular armor w/ some shields at least. This is doesn't change if you're hit at about 86 km/h.

At least this would be a 33% speed increase, making it somewhat more feasible for mid-range transport. What do you think?

[Sebb767]

Awesome looking mod so far! More train stuff is always great. :D
Hope you do still plan to add electric ones as I think that would be really cool.

Also, not entirely sure if this is possible, but a combat one would be awesome. Or at least just one that has a turret or two on it so it can shoot any biters that decide to chase after it. Haha

Did actually overlook that post :o

Yes, I still plan to add electric ones, but it will take a while since this needs a rather 'deep' work-arround and I need to get into the API yet (this is actually going to be the version 1.0). A combat one isn't really planned as those are usually implemented as wagons, but if I find a nice way to add weapons I'll surely reconsider this ;)

[Burny]

What do you think?

Haha, I am not really sure. All I am saying is, higher max speed would make train use "easier" or it requires to send less trains per station.
The idea to limit max speed so you can't get killed by the train if you have some proper shield equipment on, seems good!
After all, it is your mod, and the decision lies with you.

Also I see that cargo locomotives accelerate really quickly - is there a way to reduce acceleration?
Compared to real life trains, super long cargo trains accelerate really really slowly, like maybe 1 m/s² or even slower?

After all, I (and everyone else) can still customize your entities.lua file to my specific needs, if I personally feel like trains are too fast or slow.

One more suggestion though (I am not really sure if this is a problem at current times of internet speed or HDD space):
The mod uses up 75mb at the moment, half of which is another copy of the .git folder - if more people are using the mod, is there a way you could reduce the size of the .zip, if it doesn't take too much effort for you?
I have only worked a few times with .git, so I have basically no idea. ^^
Also the blue and yellow locomotives aren't used just yet, so you could exclude the graphics from the .zip until you start using them.

Edit:
I wish I could help you but I can't find much info in the Factorio Api on what variables to change to change acceleration, or how all of the variables (power consumption, max speed, friction, air resistance) are used to calculate acceleration and max speed (in kph).
I guess I could change a few variables in the locomotive entity file and use time stops to create a table of how the variables affect acceleration and max speed.

Edit2:
I found out, that all the following variables affect acceleration:

Code: Select all

cargo_loc.weight
cargo_loc.friction_force
cargo_loc.air_resistance
cargo_loc.max_power

Weight also affect deacceleration (= braking). And now I also realized, that trains with full cargo-wagons aren't actually slower (= less acceleration, lower max speed) compared to trains with empty cargo-wagons. I would really want the developers to have that "fixed". Like one item in the cargo-wagons of anything item entity could be "one unit of weight".
So for myself as a conclusion, I might be using 5 to 10 times the amount of weight in the cargo-locomotive aswell as maybe reducing its max_power setting. I really like slow acceleration and braking.

Friction and air resistance seem to only matter at high speeds. The max power seem to affect acceleration aswell as (obvious:) power consumption, so the fuel it requires. Locomotives use full power consumption for as long as the max speed isn't reached. So setting max speed to a high amount while having slow acceleration is a bad idea haha.

Also in case you didn't know, the default locomotive max speed is calculated through: 259.2 kph = 1.2 (= variable) * 60 (= frames per second) * 3.6 (= conversion meter/second to kilometers/hour)

Edit3:
In the german wiki article of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport they talk about that cargo freight transports drive between 90 and 120 kph.

[Sebb767]

All I am saying is, higher max speed would make train use "easier" or it requires to send less trains per station.
The idea to limit max speed so you can't get killed by the train if you have some proper shield equipment on, seems good!
After all, it is your mod, and the decision lies with you. :D

I don't think 80 km/h would overpower it ;) I'll push an update in the next few days. Actually, my usage scenario is to have fast locomotives driving between outposts and my base. I use cargo locomotives only for distribution of the ores and other resources in my base ;) But I like the idea to use a lot of cargos to save fuels actually.

Also I see that cargo locomotives accelerate really quickly - is there a way to reduce acceleration?
Compared to real life trains, super long cargo trains accelerate really really slowly, like maybe 1 m/s² or even slower? [...]
I found out, that all the following variables affect acceleration: [...]

I actually increased the cargo loc acceleration :) I love slow accelerating locomotives, too, but I thought if the cargo locomotive is so slow to begin with it should not be further hindered by slow acceleration. Its intended use case is an inter-base locomotive and as such it should be able to handle some stop-and-go. On the other hand, it would be a good nerf (or bonus ;) for the fast locomotive. Maybe I'll add a config variable to change the cargo locomotive acceleration. Thanks a lot for figuring out how the variables work together, anyway :) My approach was trial-and-error.

And now I also realized, that trains with full cargo-wagons aren't actually slower (= less acceleration, lower max speed) compared to trains with empty cargo-wagons. I would really want the developers to have that "fixed". Like one item in the cargo-wagons of anything item entity could be "one unit of weight".

This suprised me aswell. If I'd knew a way to change train variables on the fly though I'd have a lot easier time implementing electric locomotives. But getting deeper into the API is kinda hard :/

One more suggestion though (I am not really sure if this is a problem at current times of internet speed or HDD space):
The mod uses up 75mb at the moment, half of which is another copy of the .git folder - if more people are using the mod, is there a way you could reduce the size of the .zip, if it doesn't take too much effort for you?

I didn't even realize I included the git folder in the finished zip xD It is not required unless you want to contribute to the mod so it's pretty much useless in the zip. Next time it should be somehwat smaller. A lot of space is consumed by the textures though, which are taken (with kind permission) from the color coding mod, which has a >100mb zip - so it's not gonna get that low.


Thansk for the research and the long post, though :) I'll push an update in the next few days.

EDIT: Added paragraph about cargo wagon.

[Burny]

I did some more research and statistics, changed around the variables of your locomotive, because I wanted to find out how the variables affect the acceleration. The best approximation of reverse-engineering the developers code I could come up with, is:

Each ingame loop (there are 60 in a second if game runs smoothly on 60fps, 60ups) there are 3 caclulations done.
If the train is accelerating, only then the following step is executed:

Code: Select all

current_speed = current_speed + (max_power / weight) * time_in_seconds * 60

Then the friction and air resistance is applied:

Code: Select all

current_speed = current_speed - friction_force * time_in_seconds * constant / weight          ,with constant = 3600
current_speed = current_speed * (1 - air_resistance * constant)^(time_in_seconds)            ,with constant = 60

I guess the 60 constant is the fps or ups number.

So a train with power of 100kW and weight 10,000 will take 46 seconds to accelerate to 100 kph (if friction and air resistance is at 0).
Another train driving at 100 kph (not accelerating or braking), with friction = 0.1, air_resistance = 0, weight = 1000 will come to a full stop after approx 77 seconds. (constant deacceleration, depandant on weight, but independant on speed)
And another train driving at 100 kph (not accelerating or braking), with friction = 0, air_resistance = 0.0001 (weight doesn't seem to matter here) will be at 50 kph after 115 seconds, and at 25 kph after 230 seconds, 12.5 kph after 345 seconds. (Linear deacceleration - dependant on speed, but independant on weight it seems)

Edit: Of course this is only for single locomotive testing ... more wagons add more weight. I'm not sure if cargo wagons also increase friction - but at least I now found out what variables affect which acceleration and how they do it.

I hope this is somewhat useful to you or anyone who is interested in the train-acceleration mechanics.

[Sebb767]

That's some interesting research you did there! This should enable me to tweak the locomotives far better than my old approach could.

However some things look quite unlogical in this. For one, it suprised me quite a lot that the current speed doesn't affect acceleration. On a closer look (on your pseudo-code), it doesn't really affect anything at all. A (nearly) constant deceleration is not that implausible, but a constant acceleration surely is. But watching my trains, it does look pretty constant.

If the train is accelerating, only then the following step is executed:

Code: Select all

current_speed = current_speed + (max_power / weight) * time_in_seconds * 60

This has some problems. For one, the train is always accelerating since it is permanently decelerated by friction and air resistance. Also is max_speed ignored here. I'm not quite sure what this constraint does anyway, since this value is neither kp/h nor m/s or mp/h. The "real" maximum speed is about (2,2 * max_speed) as kph.

I guess the 60 constant is the fps or ups number.

Seems unlikely, since it's being multiplied by. Most units used are with seconds, so this would need to be divided by. You may think you need this value somewhere, but if you can be sure that one ingame-second is always 60 updates, this is less important (the game would simply run slower if your PC doesn't manage 60 ups).

While thinking about this, this may be a constant calculated from game_speed and max_speed. I have no idea how game_speed is internally implemented, but limiting the maximum speed by resolving deceleration via constant = acceleration is quite a good solution. The constant could also be simply an effectivity modifier like air thickness.

Another possibility is that this is an off-screen optimization; if you can't see the train, there's no need to do the math 60 times each second.

Code: Select all

current_speed = current_speed - friction_force * time_in_seconds * constant / weight          ,with constant = 3600

Unlikely. This would decrease the friction coefficient with increasing weight. You probably switched two things here ;)

One thing I noticed while experimenting with the cargo locomotive is that air_resistance seemed to decrease acceleration with increasing wagon count, while changing friction hardly had any effect.


Thanks for the research again! I'll play around with the values tomorrow, but it's too late for math now. Feel free to PR (or PM) your intended slow cargo locomotive acceleration if you find some nice values, I'd integrate them as optional config value in 0.3 ;)

[Sebb767]

So while I was working on 0.3 I was testing a lot and it really seems that acceleration is only affected by engine power. This is quite unfortunate since this makes it hard to

a) have slow acceleration while initially accelerating (>10 m/s)
b) have slow acceleration while being hardly affected by wagon count.

The formulas seem mostly correct though from what I observed, so maybe I'll just wait out 0.13 and see if the train physics improve.

[Jackalope_Gaming]

Hey there Sebb. I noticed your mod when Xterminator spotlighted it and decided to add support for it with my 8L Train Project mod.

[Sebb767]

Hey there Sebb. I noticed your mod when Xterminator spotlighted it and decided to add support for it with my 8L Train Project mod.

Thanks! I'm thinking about adding a recommended mods section. If I do, I'll link back to you

[DenFromEarth]

I found this mod from a Youtube spotlight video, I can't remember the guy's name, but he gave a great opinion of it. I like the flavors you add for the locomotives. I can't wait to try them out. I'm playing with RSO and expect to utilize these a lot.

[Bi0nicM4n]

I took the liberty of continuing research conducted by sillyfly (here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8145#p64914 ) to figure out a way that a train's max speed is determined with. I've varied same parameters for both cargo wagon and locomotive (such as air_resistance and friction force) independently from the other ones, and the results are:

1. At constant friction_force (0.0015 by default), with number of wagons per pulling locomotive:

Code: Select all

Locomotives -- Wagons  = Max Speed (air_res = 0.001) / Max Speed (air_res = 0.002 - default)
1    --    0    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --  0.5    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --    1    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --  1.5    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --    2    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --  2.5    =    259.2 / 239.4
1    --    3    =    259.2 / 215.4
1    --  3.5    =    259.2 / 195.8
1    --    4    =    259.2 / 179.5
1    --  4.5    =    259.2 / 165.7
1    --    5    =    259.2 / 153.8
1    --    6    =    259.2 / 134.6

2. Default air_resistance and friction_force = 0.0000:

Code: Select all

Locomotives -- Wagons  = Max Speed (friction_force = 0) / Max Speed (default)
1    --    0    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --  0.5    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --    1    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --  1.5    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --    2    =    259.2 / 259.2
1    --  2.5    =    239.5 / 239.4
1    --    3    =    215.5 / 215.4
1    --  3.5    =    195.9 / 195.8
1    --    4    =    179.6 / 179.5
1    --  4.5    =    165.8 / 165.7
1    --    5    =    153.9 / 153.8
1    --    6    =    134.7 / 134.6

Basically it means that train's max speed is mostly determined by air resistance, so friction force is excluded from formulas below. During my calculations I found out that air resistance applies braking power on moving train, and it scales linearly with it's speed and total air-resistance-and-mass momentum, the latter being the sum of multiplications of wagons and locos air resistance values by their masses. So, the results are:

Train's max speed condition:

Code: Select all

Train_Power_Total = Air_Resistance_Power;
where Train_Power_Total = Number_of_front_Locos * 600 kW

Air braking power:

Code: Select all

Air_Resistance_Power = UPS * Train_Air-Mass_Momentum * Train_Speed;
Train_Air-Mass_Momentum = N_Locos_Total * Loco_Mass * Loco_AirRes + M_CargoWagons_Total * Wagon_Mass * Wagon_AirRes;

UPS is a framerate = 60, Train_Speed is in game-engine units; Air_Res = 0.002 is air_resistance parameter, the same for wagons and locomotives. Wagon_Mass = 1000; Loco_Mass = 2000.

With all this, max speed is determined as:

Code: Select all

Max_speed = Train_power_total / (60 * 0.002 * Train_Total_Mass), but no more than 1.2 game units (1.2 * 60 * 3.6 = 259.2 km/h)

So, for example, we wanna know max speed of a L-WW-L train:

Code: Select all

Train_Power_Total = N * Loco_Power = 1 * 600 = 600;
Train_Total_Mass = N_Loco * Loco_Mass + M_Wagons * Wagon_Mass = 2 * 2000 + 2 * 1000 = 6000;
Max_Speed = Train_power_total / (60 * 0.002 * Train_Total_Mass) = 600 / (60 * 0.002 * 6000) = 10 / 12 = 5 / 6 = 0,833..;
Max_Speed_kph = 60 * 3.6 * Max_Speed = 60 * 3.6 * 5 / 6 = 180 km/h;

I've tested several trains, and this formula gives values only +0,5 km/h away from experimental.

[Vas]

Based on your post main, I see that this makes no sense and thus I can not use or endorse this mod.

A cargo train, must pull a large amount of mass between places. Therefor, its engines must be more powerful to pull more cards and needs to be built better. It would obviously require more engines to work, and consume more fuel, and move and stop more slowly due to the sheer mass it has to pull. It simply can't stop 10 carts on a dime.

A passenger train, or personal transport train, would be able to pick up speed very rapidly, and slow down very rapidly, depending on how many carts it is pulling. This would be the easiest and cheapest to build because you do not need a whole lot of power to move light weight people around, rather than transporting 500 tons of iron sheets.

[Sebb767]

I took the liberty of continuing research [...]

Thanks a lot! While testing it myself, I found out that kW seems to define the speed mostly (max_speed not so much) and air_resistance how much a train is affected by wagons. Your formulas make a lot of sense and seem too fit. Thanks for researching!

[...] It would obviously require more engines to work, and consume more fuel, and move and stop more slowly due to the sheer mass it has to pull. [...] you do not need a whole lot of power to move light weight people around, rather than transporting 500 tons of iron sheets.

This is about efficiency. If you move at very high speed you're wasting tons of fuel just on air resistance. And air resistance does increase exponentially: If you drive two times as fast you need 4 times as much fuel. The fast locomotive is about 4 times as fast as the cargo locomotive. This would equate to 16 times the fuel usage. Not accounting for actually accelerating to this speeds, which it doesn't do that slow actually. Plus, if you do not need an engine to go that fast, you can do some clever engineering to save even more fuel.

Now it being cheaper has two reasons:
- It is designed as an early game locomotive for short distances (that's why it was built with good brakes, too, by the way)
- It doesn't need high RPMs, high-speed tires and a very aerodynamic design since it simply won't go that fast.

I admit that there's a little bit balancing in the values over engineerish correctness, but the overall values are realistic.

[Vas]

Well I prefer realistic engineering correctness. To pull more mass, you need more engines. To go faster, you need more engines. I built a train with 1 locomotive and 7 tankers, it started off slow and had moderate stopping speed, just as it should be. My friend builds his trains with 1 locomotive per 2 carts, so that he can get high speeds with fast stop and go. This is logical, because it used more engines in the construction and burns a lot more fuel. I'd like this mod, if the car for cargo hauling was slower to speed up, but was able to support the mass that two and a half standard locomotives while costing roughly the same as two and a half, for a more compact train so I don't need 2 or 3 locomotives to move some large amount of materials at once or a super long train. The whole idea I looked at this mod for was to reduce the amount of engines I need so I can shorten a train a bit and then make a personal transport train that could go around quickly to a place and stop on a dime because of not pulling any weight.

[Sebb767]

I'd like this mod, if the car for cargo hauling was slower to speed up

Unpack the mod (version >= 0.3 from about a month ago) and change the following in prototypes/config.lua:

Code: Select all

CARGOLOC_SLOW_ACCELERATION = false 

to

Code: Select all

CARGOLOC_SLOW_ACCELERATION = true

This should fit your needs.