Just when I thought trains were Bad.....

[ray4ever]

Wow, great! So the PushMePull train is actually reversing its direction after a train stop so you don't need track loops to turn the train around?

This didn't come for free and we had to spend quite some time to make this work. Maybe we should "advertise it better" in a way of tips and tricks or something.

Yeah, some more tips and tricks for such things would be really helpful!

[jeroon]

Whaddayamean trains are bad?! How can trains be bad??

a few things on ridiculously long trains:

- put auto-save on one minute, i've had a crash while trying to create a long train, and you will destroy some locs/wagons in the process
- running while placing locs on the rail places loc on top of the previous loc. Trying to drive the train destroyes half the locs, or might crash the game (happened once, can't reproduce..)
- in a same way, placing wagons this way will place every wagon on top of the back of the previous wagon, destroying the first one when you drive away, leaving the rest behind
- while driving a long train yourself: acceleration power is insane, breaking however, is just as bad as while driving just a single loc. You will crash.

No more single tracks! This train was once one, before the front of the train plowed through the middle



since my game is bugged till .9.3 i will test some more

[ssilk]

Wow, great! So the PushMePull train is actually reversing its direction after a train stop so you don't need track loops to turn the train around?

This didn't come for free and we had to spend quite some time to make this work. Maybe we should "advertise it better" in a way of tips and tricks or something.

I point back to the idea of "training levels". https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=2507

And to make my vague tellings more clear: Make maps about one theme (in this case railway), with some kind of free-play and some kind of tasks/lessons/stations.

Solving it helps to understand the abilities. And the free-play helps to create new ideas.

[jeroon]

This was pretty crazy. Its all one train.

how do you get these stats?

[ludsoe]

Wow, great! So the PushMePull train is actually reversing its direction after a train stop so you don't need track loops to turn the train around?

This didn't come for free and we had to spend quite some time to make this work. Maybe we should "advertise it better" in a way of tips and tricks or something.

I point back to the idea of "training levels". https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=2507

And to make my vague tellings more clear: Make maps about one theme (in this case railway), with some kind of free-play and some kind of tasks/lessons/stations.

Solving it helps to understand the abilities. And the free-play helps to create new ideas.

"So and so factory needs a constant supply of resources! Design a station so the cargo trains can deliver the required goods!" And your given a medium plot of land to design a station for the incoming trains to pick up goods that are shipped to you from a off screen factory.(Just spawned and moved into the map via belts or bots.)
Or maybe a mission where you have to connect two factory's with a train system that you have to build entirely. Just some train based "training level" ideas. Also I might drop by your thread and dump some mission ideas off.

[jeroon]

- running while placing locs on the rail places loc on top of the previous loc. Trying to drive the train destroyes half the locs, or might crash the game (happened once, can't reproduce..)

I found a nice way around this: have two parallel tracks with a loop at the end, with the front of the train on one track, while the back still goes the other way. While driving (slowly), you can place the wagons to the back of the train by just keeping the mouse button pressed, and the wagons will just be added.

[immibis]

Wow, great! So the PushMePull train is actually reversing its direction after a train stop so you don't need track loops to turn the train around?

This didn't come for free and we had to spend quite some time to make this work. Maybe we should "advertise it better" in a way of tips and tricks or something.

I vote to leave it for people to discover. It's more fun to accidentally (or deliberately) find something like this than to learn about it at the start.

[ludsoe]

Wow, great! So the PushMePull train is actually reversing its direction after a train stop so you don't need track loops to turn the train around?

This didn't come for free and we had to spend quite some time to make this work. Maybe we should "advertise it better" in a way of tips and tricks or something.

I vote to leave it for people to discover. It's more fun to accidentally (or deliberately) find something like this than to learn about it at the start.

We just need a tip to let players know you can have multiple engines per train, they can do the rest.

[jeroon]

This was pretty crazy. Its all one train.

I take your 600 and raise it with 1000

This train (save file added at the end of the post) has about 80 locs and 1600 wagons (the numbers are a rough guess, don't know how to get the numbers on the screen like you had). Started out with 8 parallel tracks, but that wasn't nearly enough, so i just re-used my existing track to get some more wagons in

Half the wagons are loaded with coal, because i had a loading platform for the locs, but every time the train stopped unexpectedly, wagons were filled instead

Top speed is 0.22 , top fps is 14 fps

The start:



Completed, the train just started driving from the furthest point back to the loading station:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/whh31r7xy850y ... 0wagon.zip

[Malacodor]

I don't see a good reason why locomotives can't drive backwards in automatic mode, and I don't see a good reason why they have to be slower when driving backwards.

[ssilk]

The first one, is because of the second. And the second is for some locomotives indeed the case. Especially steam locos have optimized steam flow into forward direction. Some need the wind to cool efficiently.

For diesel it doesn't make sense, yes...

But another important reason is, that a train, which automatically finds it's way, will find eventually a different way, depending, if the train is able to change direction or not. It is eventually not wanted, that a train changes the direction. This way can you can control it.

[aussiegaylord]

i actually prefer creating giant loops with out sections for trains. it allows me to add more pieces on whenever to get resources from far away and several trains to be going at once along this giant loop. eventually i run out of space because of all the trains, 1 engine and 4 carts - to get resources from far away and to transport around factory. then when i need more space i just add more on and it is easy than just having a single track for every different thin when everything can just share the one with some smarts

[ssilk]

Hm. From my experiments I would say 4 wagons are the best compromise between speed and capacity.

[Reygan]

OMG, yo're crazy train demons!

[ludsoe]

I was thinking about trains, and fighting biters while in one. Then i remembered quite possibly my favorite trains of all time.

TWAIN

We need rail mounted weapon systems now, that would be awesome. And it would solve some problems with defending our trains against biters on really long stretches of rails where its just too expensive to put towers on the entire thing.