Friday Facts #378 - Trains on another level

[Acid_Burn9]

Absolutely huge change. Truly elevates train gameplay. Love it.

One small piece of critizism though - i don't really like red colored metal structure on the ramps and supports. On upper level tracks that only have colored safety railings i think it works pretty well and does a good job of distungushing upper level tracks from ground level, but on the ramps specifically it is kind of off putting. The red is just too concentrated there.

I could ask you to change the color of the structural metal part of the ramps and supports to something more neutral, but i think the best way to approach this would actually be to keep it red by default, but let the player re-color them to any color of their liking just like they can do with train stations and trains themselves.

I really just can't see any downside to this approach and in my eyes it is a very easy to implement net-positive change no matter how you look at it.

[Saphira123456]

I am wondering if the train physics now account for the elevation change? Do trains roll down ramps driven by gravity? Do they have reversing locks? Is there a difference in manual/automatic mode?

No, i decided it would not be fun mechanic and it would have its own performance impact for all trains running in all cases since i would have to scan entire train if each rolling stock is on a slope to compute some additional forces acting on a train, so i just skipped it. There are also some internal assumptions like a train on automatic must never go backward (it can only consume its path to destination, never revert) so if a train would go out of fuel and would start moving backward the game would have to handle that case as well. I am ok with performance impact if something is fun to play but Factorio is not about realizm, its about fun and this would not be fun.

Not to stomp on your statement, sir/ma'am, or argue with a staff member, but respectfully: People need to remember that "fun" is subjective. What's fun for you may or may not be fun for others. Just wanting to point that out as. for some people, the realism aspect would be part of the fun.

[infogulch]

So who's gonna make the first diverging diamond train crossing?

[Builder_K]

This is awesome work, I'm excited to play with it.

Just two cents I want to contribute:

1. Elevated rails shouldn't have wooden ties; maybe a few red-metal girders instead. IMO this would look more realistic, and also being able to see through more would help to see what's under the tower.

2. Elevated rails look too high up (i.e. too far offset in the Y axis). It would look better only offset a little bit, to the ramps don't look so steep. There's a lot of visual trickery going on to make things look isometric, so it doesn't need to be at the "correct" height, instead a height that "feels" right.

[DarkIrek]

The ramps concrete base look like they are placed at an ~10 degree angle it looks really weird.

[seltha]

After last week's news, I didn't think I could be any more excited... OMG, I need this in my life right now!!!!

[Cerberus]

2. Elevated rails look too high up (i.e. too far offset in the Y axis). It would look better only offset a little bit, to the ramps don't look so steep. There's a lot of visual trickery going on to make things look isometric, so it doesn't need to be at the "correct" height, instead a height that "feels" right.

I don't agree, otherwise it would be silly how a low elevation can go over buildings.

[Gemma]

Rollercoaster tycoon engaged.

[Toastinator]

You guys keep impressing us! Simply amazing! The only thing left on my check list for trains is 45 degree Train Stations.

I'm curious if the Rail Supports have a required MAX Distance? 16 Tiles? (Same as the ramp) (EDIT Its been answered - 20 Tiles or after every 90 Degrees)

It would be pretty sweet to allow the Upper Rail to have Power Poles and run Copper/Red/Green wires for Power and Signals for transmission only, Power pole required to power things.

Take My Money Already!

[FuzzyOne]

... But can't we even get the old 45-degree angle straightaways to slope up or down?

It's not just the sprites for the ups and downs, but also for all of the rolling stock on that slope as well. Adding in the 45° slopes would double the number of extra train sprites that the elevated trains feature has added.

[gGeorg]

What happens if the player exits the train in an elevated railway over water? Instant death?

You just can't exit, simple as that

What if an elevated train get out of fuel with player on board ?
Player would be locked inside forever, ... very interesting game over.

[Yinan]

When I started reading this Friday Facts my first thought was that I really didn't like that idea...

But as I continued, and considering that it's only one additional layer, it actually feels kinda fitting (considering that we have the same for belts already.

I just hope it never devolves into what we see in Satisfactory where you can have basically hundreds of layers of belts and rails etc. over each other, taking away the "puzzle"-esque element of the Factory.

But the one thing I absolutely hate is that it seems like the rail support having a different hitbox depending on whether or not its rotation is directly along the X and Y axis or somewhere in the middle (looking at the picture with the different rotations of the support).
Should imho just be a solid 4x4 hitbox in all directions of rotation.

[Oscar]

Love this update!

Just curious, is there a reason why there are no diagonal ramps? its not geometrics, since the shapes are already there. Is it aesthatics or something else?

Additionally, in terms of graphic design, I very much like the rail ramp and rail support structure (heavy, sturdy, and industrial, yes!). However, somehow the elevated rails themselves didn't sit with me well. They have bit too much of a rollercoaster feel to them, and do not seem able to carry the weight of the trains that go over them (this is especially noticeable with the picture in the FFF showing elevated rails over a body of water with a island in the middle). Just wondering if you feel the same, and perhaps graphics for elevated rails can add some metal cross structures along the side to make it bit thicker? Just nitpicking some

[morsk]

I'm excited to try gimmicky rail networks, where all north-south rails are elevated and west-east are ground, or maybe a checkerboard pattern where white squares have clockwise tracks elevated, and black have counterclockwise elevated.

Also we don't know the recipes, and I hope they don't reveal any because it would lead to people trying to make blueprints before release, but it obviously has refined concrete because it's in the texture! It's nice to see more uses for refined concrete since it has an interesting recipe chain.

[Benchy]

Someone may have answered this already but do we know if there will be any other way of refueling trains that have stopped over oceans besides driving a new one out to it.

[FuryoftheStars]

Hey, this is great seeing. Definitely puts a + in my book for the expansion. I honestly wasn't sure if you'd go there, though, due to the idea that elevated tracks would have to block the line of sight to some entities behind (above) it.

(Wow are there a lot of posts I want to reply to, as well! Long string coming up....)

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As we can’t walk on the bridges what happens if for example a train runs out of fuel on elevated tracks over water?

If you're going to allow building long stretches of elevated track over water, we're going to end up with trains running out of fuel where they can't be rescued unless there's a parallel track very close by, or having to run a personal train manually against the signals to get in front of the dead one. On the other hand, doing that would be so terrifying and prone to crashes, it's kind of fun to think about.

Well, aside from the answers we've gotten (and apparently only on Discord did they actually mention that the player can now manually push a fuel-less train), there's always the option of driving another locomotive to it. You can either go against the signals to come in from the front and then refill it, or you can come at it from the rear (or front) and hook onto it, allowing you to then push/pull it off from the bridge and/or to a refuel depot.

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As excited as I am, I do have a small critique: Even though the ramp entities are huge, they still feel a little small and steep for how fast trains in Factorio can get. In the GIFs shown, it feels like the trains should be launching off of the rails. I don't think Factorio trains have upstop wheels!

My suggestion is therefore to force trains to slow down if they're going on a ramp. Or another idea, if you're feeling adventurous, would be to have another even huger ramp (2x size?) that lets trains go at full speed.

Yeah, I kind of agree with this, though I've always felt as though trains in this game move (and accelerate/decelerate) much faster than what a freight train conceivably should, but as I suppose boskid said here, they're going more for the fun factor. Which I get. To a degree.

That said, I hope these will be moddable. Then we could create ones of different lengths and (as a simple graphical solution) just stretch the existing graphic as needed.

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Can we walk on the bridges?

You can't. biters also can't walk it.

But why? Sounds funny to me when biters possibly could attack from my spaghetti bridges btw, awesome train news, HYPE TRAIN

This is probably a technical limitation. As the game is a 2D game faking 3D, there probably isn't anything in place to allow (or would be hard to implement?) the idea of walking on an entity, but then not being able to walk off from it, without also affecting anything trying to go under it.

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First, I don't like how you can rotate the support in 8 directions, that conflicts too much with the rest of the game imo.

(Edit: Misunderstood something here, so I've revised this.)
The reason for this, I think, is because they have now split the curve into 2 pieces, so this will allow the option of placing diagonals at new angles. Couple this with the requirement of having the stanchions every 20 track pieces, and it makes sense that they have these extra rotations.

And it does not make sense that the ground footprint becomes different when the support is rotated, it's the same structure after all.

Sure it does.
(This is a rough approximation considering the devs tend to put their sprites slightly off-center and the 3D -> 2D perspective makes it hard to get the exact footprint.)

New stanchion at 0 and 45 degrees.png (3.34 KiB) Viewed 3746 times

Then just figure that the devs decided that if the sprite doesn't extend very far into the tile then there's no reason to not allow you to build there.

This adds unneeded un-fun complexity IMO.

There's been a fair amount of calls to add more entities that don't have perfect square/rectangle bounding boxes. Idea being I guess to add another layer of complexity and puzzles to your factory layout. One that isn't necessarily required, but allows you some advantages if you choose to use it. And really, all these rotated bounding boxes do is give you back the corners of the 4x4 square rather than keeping them occupied.

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A trestle instead of a center support is a cool idea, since a lot of the time you're running parallel tracks anyway, and it would let you run a continuous belt (or pavement) under the train, instead of having to weave around supports every once in a while.

There may be technical reasons why they're not allowing this, but otherwise, yeah, I think it'd be nice to see that, too.

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Looking at the "island crossing" example more closely. There is a radar powered by accumulators, but there don't seem to be anything refilling the accumulators.

When setting up something for the purposes of screenshots, why does it have to be perfect?

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Would an elevated artillery train be invulnerable?

So the answer on this is "no", because at the least, the biters would be able to destroy the railway stanchions which would cause the tracks to collapse.

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It doesn't look like you can elevate stations, and artillery trains don't fire when stopped at signals.

They do fire when sent to a tempory stop with the condition changed to "inventory empty."

They will from manual mode, too.

But I think a good solution here would be to just disallow firing of artillery from elevated railways. A logical reason that can be given would be because the elevated railways are not strong/stable enough to withstand the force of the recoil from the artillery.

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The shadows, the reflection, the stuff behind; and all of that without the ability to turn the world around!?

Start working on Factorio 2 using unreal engine 5, slap Satisfactory around.

Yes, please!! Man I would love this. (Satisfactory doesn't count. )

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It would be neat if big electric poles also received similar treatment to the rail supports by being one of the only entities that can be placed on water, though that's more of an aesthetic desire than anything, I just don't like having to landfill when I don't need to.

I would like to vehemently second this notion. Having to place little 2x2 patches of landfill in the water, which can't automatically be done via a single blueprint pass and can't be removed (without mods), is ugly, unsatisfying, and unfitting with rail supports that can be simply plopped directly into water with their own concrete base support. Even if you needed a recipe to make an "offshore big electric pole" out of BEP and concrete, I would still wholeheartedly approve!

Agreed!

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I'm not sure if this has been brought up. But could locomotives help with pulling/pushing power even when the locomotive is driving backwards?

I work in the rail industry (best way to describe it without sensitive information) and no modern locomotive cares which direction it's driving. It has full power in either case.

I'm not saying that a locomotive should be able to pathfind in both directions. Just provide tractive effort. There are mods which use custom locomotives with 2x power to mimic this. Which I find to be a, messy solution.

Another one that I would love to see done!

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I believe that biters can attack trains on the ramp from the ground. Also, if biters destroy the critical supports, the rails wih not enough support will collapse, including the train on top of it so .... No the train is not unkillable on the elevated rails.

Hey, with this in mind... will there be some kind of system in place to tell us when we need to place the supports, or are we just going to have to "know" when to place them?

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Any specific reason why you didn't want to add something like a lifebuoy into the game? (moving in this thing is excrutiatingly slow so it literally just prevents the player from dying when coming in contact with water)

That would be a neat solution.

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It would probably be better to remove the handrail and add some supports under the tracks instead. They seem pretty fragile.

I would agree with this. The current design is ok for light passenger rail, but it would not support heavy freight.

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There are a couple of changes I would ask for here, one being that this become a vanilla thing, so that you could play using these elevated tracks without requiring the DLC in order to use the mod. That feels like an unfair advantage to people who have the DLC as elevated rails, quality and other mechanics are game-changing, capable of radically altering the way one plays the game.

I don't understand the logic here on how you feel it's an "unfair advantage".

I would also like to echo the calls for elevated stations and appropriate methods of loading and unloading some kinds of elevated trains instead of requiring them to come down from the elevated line to a station on the ground. Having a hopper or silo would work for loose loads like coal and ores, gear wheels, wire, etcetera. Not for other items though.

While I agree that it'd be a nice thing to see, I do have a couple of concerns:
1) It's perhaps a step too far in further removing some of the puzzle aspect from the game
2) How do you actually differentiate "loose" materials from non?

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What if an elevated train get out of fuel with player on board ?
Player would be locked inside forever, ... very interesting game over.

Apparently this was only answered on Discord: the player will now have the ability to manually move a train (at a very slow pace) when out of fuel.

[wizcreations]

How do I fuel a train on elevated rails? How can I load and unload a train on elevated rails in general? Sounds like there is an upcoming FF telling me how to get resources to a higher level to load and unload trains.

[Saphira123456]

There are a couple of changes I would ask for here, one being that this become a vanilla thing, so that you could play using these elevated tracks without requiring the DLC in order to use the mod. That feels like an unfair advantage to people who have the DLC as elevated rails, quality and other mechanics are game-changing, capable of radically altering the way one plays the game.

I don't understand the logic here on how you feel it's an "unfair advantage".

I would also like to echo the calls for elevated stations and appropriate methods of loading and unloading some kinds of elevated trains instead of requiring them to come down from the elevated line to a station on the ground. Having a hopper or silo would work for loose loads like coal and ores, gear wheels, wire, etcetera. Not for other items though.

While I agree that it'd be a nice thing to see, I do have a couple of concerns:
1) It's perhaps a step too far in further removing some of the puzzle aspect from the game
2) How do you actually differentiate "loose" materials from non?

1. Regarding my logic for "unfair advantage": There is a PvP scenario. Those that have the DLC would have the advantage in said scenario as they would have items the other side doesn't. Additionally, as this is a radical game-alteration, not having it be vanilla feels like they are essentially forcing you to buy the DLC to make the planetside game easier on yourself, enabling you to avoid at least some types of junctions and all the signaling and other things involved, as mentioned in their OP.

2A: I apologize as I have never seen a puzzle in this game, so you'll have to explain what you mean by "puzzle aspect". To me, there is no puzzle aspect and never was; and since there was never a puzzle aspect, you cannot remove what you never had to begin with.
2B: As in real life, loose materials are those like coal, iron ore, gears, screws... small components and other items that you want a LOT of. Another term would be "bulk materials". Larger items like inserters, conveyor belt segments, entire locomotives and train cars, assemblers, etcetera are not "loose".

[FuryoftheStars]

1. Regarding my logic for "unfair advantage": There is a PvP scenario. Those that have the DLC would have the advantage in said scenario as they would have items the other side doesn't.

Someone without the DLC cannot join a game where the DLC is enabled and someone with the DLC would have to disable it in order to join a game without it.

Additionally, as this is a radical game-alteration, not having it be vanilla feels like they are essentially forcing you to buy the DLC to make the planetside game easier on yourself, enabling you to avoid at least some types of junctions and all the signaling and other things involved, as mentioned in their OP.

Well, yeah. They just put months of work into this new system. They shouldn't be expected to give it up for free into the main game. And as they said, they did this in part because they expect factories to grow even larger and for the player to be away at other planets... thus unable to see or deal with any issues that arise. They wanted to give additional tools to help alleviate this.

2A: I apologize as I have never seen a puzzle in this game, so you'll have to explain what you mean by "puzzle aspect". To me, there is no puzzle aspect and never was; and since there was never a puzzle aspect, you cannot remove what you never had to begin with.

The entire game is a puzzle game.

2B: As in real life, loose materials are those like coal, iron ore, gears, screws... small components and other items that you want a LOT of. Another term would be "bulk materials". Larger items like inserters, conveyor belt segments, entire locomotives and train cars, assemblers, etcetera are not "loose".

You misunderstand. Internally, ore is no different from locomotives (as items). There is no concept of size or weight, so how do you differentiate?

[neltera]

getting to be able to build rail sytems on another level and work it into the factory or junctions is truly elevating my imagination and possibilities.
thank you so much wube, for what factorio is and how you work on it.