A Speed modifier for rail types

[d3x0r]

As a basis of this idea, concrete path/brick path/(solar mat in a mod) have a walking_speed_modifier.

It would be nice if rails could have a quality setting that a simple speed modifier similar to walking speed modifier, and a maximum speed cap (wouldn't matter how good the train is, if the rail is utter crap).

But setting regular rails at 1.0 and 300km/h cap would be good. ( a standard locomotive with wood fuel goes 259.9 or something; call it 260. with rocket fuel it goes 298.1km/h.

There's a mod that has scrap rails and junk trains. Junk trains on wood go 40km/h and on rocket fuel go 60.4km/h. (the fuel multipler says rocket is +180 acceleration; not sure how that's equating to +150% speed on the low side and +40km/h(140%) speed for standard trains. But the rail modifier would then keep even standard locomotive limited in speed on scrap rails. Bio Industries mod has modified cement rails graphics and darker wood rail graphics; I would think cement rails could have a speed modifier > 1.0 and wood slightly less than 1.0 (wood is mean to bridge water; although there is another mod which is just bridge rails and train signals that can be placed on water).

I would set scrap rails at 0.5 modifier with a cap of like 80km/h....

I really like this image (google search, 'abandoned railroad tracks') for junk trains, scrap rails, was thinking of applying a jitter to the rails, and a alpha splotches to the underbed....

6a0105371bb32c970b017c31743c78970b-small.jpg (70.83 KiB) Viewed 2037 times

[Tekky]

I like the idea of being able to set a speed limit on rails, because I don't like trains going through my main base at a speed of 250 km/h. I would prefer a speed limit of about 100 km/h inside my main base and no speed limit everywhere else.

However, I don't think that this should be a limitation of the rail type, but rather an explicit speed limit set by the player. This could be implemented as a property of the signal, so that you can set speed limits for all trains that pass the signal. At a later signal, the speed limit can be changed again or cleared.

The reason I am currently against introducing new rail types is that this would mean that the total number of items in the game would increase even more. Factories that produce every single item in the game would have to be larger than they are already now.

EDIT: The developers have also stated in Factorio Friday Facts #122 that they dont want to add too many entity types to the game for this reason:

In the end game, some people like to have a factory that makes all the possible entities in the game. Too many entities means unreasonably big manufacturing location.

However, I hope that some day, it will be possible to dynamically change the production of an assembler using the circuit network (suggestion threads: 1, 2), so that this would no longer be a problem. However, until then, I believe that one should be very conservative in adding new item types to the game.

When these issues with handling many different item types are resolved in Factorio, I would also be in favor of your suggestion of different rail types. It worked very well in OpenTTD with NuTracks and would also be nice in Factorio.

[d3x0r]

I'm not suggesting adding more rails to the base game, merely providing support for a setting that can be applied for mods; though true, this would add an additional lookup for the train 'what type of rail am I on' and 'speed *= rail.speed_modifier; if( speed > rail.max ) speed -= ( speed - rail.max ) * 0.20; ) or I dunno something like that; the former check being the greater load. though perhaps with multi-threading maybe adding a thread just for train movment would mitigate any slowdown there.

Bob and Abgel mods already add lots of items to the game
And having auto mod sync option for multiplayer will simplify that whole process

[Tekky]

I'm not suggesting adding more rails to the base game, merely providing support for a setting that can be applied for mods;

I believe it would be more appropriate to post such suggestions in the Modding Interface Requests sub-forum.

[d3x0r]

Although speed limit signs might be nice
(I'll repost it over there then)