Train and size (matters)

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ssilk
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Train and size (matters)

Post by ssilk »

I pulled that out from the "factory"-thread. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 1016#p7189
tonberrytoby wrote: I was thinking more of a railway station building. Tracks are just so enormously large in the game.
...There the character is to scale to the engine and to nothing else.
For the kind of train that would be realistically used by someone like the character, they could be much smaller
The Problem starts if you look at a actual steel mill, factory,coal power plant or a mine. There you can see that the railways should be much smaller. This is especially obvious if you use the new characterless mode.
And even if the size was realistic from a gameplay perspective it is even worse.
Trains are much more annoying to set up then everything else in the game. Primarily due to their massive size.
Hm. I don't know how to answer...

I take that serious, because I also thought some times about that. I wouldn't see it so negative, because it is a game. But I tried to think about right sized items.

I think the developers had the idea, that one field is 1x1 meter. Minecraft sends greetings. :) Then I would say inserters, pipes, belts could be as they are. A burner should 2x2 or maybe better 2x3 (so it is symetric). A steam engine about 5x8. A huge thing! A furnace 6x6! An assembly could be smaller, 5x5. A furnace is bigger than an assembly. The locomotive, I think with about 5 meters they aren't too small...

And what does it mean? Realistic sizes will take much space, when building, it is hard to calculate the exact number of fields you need without a plan.

The needed space is big. I measured it. 24 furnaces (a normal iron-plate production after 1-3 hours) take about 1/8 of the hole screen, when completely zoomed out. (you cannot build 24 furnaces side by side, you need some space for the inserters etc.). And that is only for the steel. For copper the same. And steel some extra. About half of the screen is full only with furnaces. It will take you about 10-12 seconds to run through that. I write that just to imagine the dimensions, and not to make someone fear that.

Problem #1 with this size is that the dimensions of the map doesn't fit with that of the houses. You'll reach the creepers much earlier and ... that's the reason, why i begun this discussion about map-generation. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=1011
Problem #2 is, that bigger size means more time. It just takes more time to craft all, because you need to run more around.
And problem #3 is: A furnace costs 5 stones. How is it possible to craft a big furnace (6x6) with five stones? I mean it's a game, but that is ridiculous. :) Hm. You need a "small furnace" first and maybe you can craft 1 furnace from 5 small furnaces. But this costs time to research and time to built. And is a normal furnace then faster than 5 small?

You see, the balancing will get totally out of control. It might work, or not. Nobody knows.

But what can be said is the following:
- for such dimensions you need some kind of building helpers.
- Gamespeed will definitely go down. And it is by now slow - I think.
- Needed resources for building is definitely not longer in tune with the size of an item. I mean the whole game needs then re-balancing. And how this ends does nobody know.

Suggestions for making everything bigger:
Building helpers could be everything, which help building. For example
-- lines which repeat the current selected items-size in every direction so that you can estimate better.
-- Some would think to robots. I see no more possibilities.
-- Also some type of "place and craft" instead of "craft and place". https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =985#p6990

Summary
I don't know if a change is really needed to make things bigger. If yes the results are unforeseeable. And I don't know if the reason for not building trains is the size.
Maybe it's easier to make trains smaller!
But that has impact to with how many inserters can I load a wagon. Or wagon-inserters are needed... dunno - and the nice idea of having 1 meter = 1 field vanishes.

With this we came to the second part.
No, I didn't use trains by three reasons:
- No need to. As already mentioned by others, belts are more efficient. Even for long ways.
- building of a working railway is really hard. I would wonder if this is fun over distances, where trains begin to make sense.
- managing is also hard. You won't know what's on the other end of a track; if the supply stops you need to travel to the other end. Players fear that.

On the other hand: It's a game... and it is in progress, so it can be changed...
I personally like the trains. They look realistic, eventually a little bit low but still ok. They drive so smooth. I like that! And maybe it's a matter of imagination, if you think, that the size of the furniture or burner is "right". I would say "Ok, where living in the future, everything is smaller..." Why not?

Suggestions for trains:
- One idea is that after some time of gameplay (2 hours?) belts change from neutral to enemy for the creepers. The creepers will see the belts as danger. This will change the hole game, because the longer the belts, the more weapons you need to guard them. Then it begins to be easier to lay trains. Or you live with creepers, which destroys belts, but then you don't have supply... I guess, that this idea has not much friends, even myself is not a fan of this. Please make suggestions.
- maps need to be much bigger. There is the maps-thread https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=1011
which says, that there are zones around the starting place. The creeper-free land is about 1-2 minutes by feet around the start. Thats about 2 kilometers around the base. Then you will find nearly no more resources and after another 2-4 kilometers there the next resources begin. You see, the dimensions become gigantic and I don't know if the game is built for that.
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MF-
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Re: Train and size (matters)

Post by MF- »

Agreed to all (If I didn't miss something)
What about creepers damaging belts a bit? (I don't like that much)
I don't want the trains to get even smaller.

I wish we had a "parallel translation" track piece that would shift the train one tile to the side
( a combination of two curved rails moves it 3 tiles to the side, which is too big for creating multi-lane railways )

Perhaps we need to make the railway more competitive?
Right now it's trains: lots of coal, belts:free.
Do the trains even consume coal proportionally to cargo size?
It looks like as if they just consumed coal at fixed rate when acceleration key is held

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