Toggleable transparency mode for elevated rails

[CZdigger146]

Hi, recently I got into building a lot of rail intersections with the new elevated rails. I love the new posibilities, but i feel like there's a big issue with trying to build underneath the elevated rails, signaling is the issue to be exact.

Like on this picture of an actual intersection i built - there's a rail signal right under the elevated curved rails, I'm trying to mine it, but at this orientation i cannot.

Snímek obrazovky 2024-11-25 165547.png (2.16 MiB) Viewed 193 times

I need to break the elavated rails first (destroying all signals attached in the process), then do whatever i need to do, rebuild it back.
Sure i can copy it all before destroying and paste it back, but i think that's kinda cumbersome and a better solution should be available.

So my proposal: a toggleable mode (similar to how alt-mode works) for elevated rail transparency.
When turned off, we get just the normal view like what we have now.
When turned on, all elevated rails in view get semi transparent (not fully transparent, you still want to see the elevated rails for context) and become non-interactable. That way you can signal everything underneath with ease, just with the press of a button.

Also as it might be only useful for signaling, maybe make it switchable only when holding a signal, and also turn off automatically when not holding a signal? I'm just thinking out loud here, you guys are smart and can figure it out!

Anyways that's it, thanks for reading. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would really welcome this feature as it has been really annoying to signal intersections without this feature.
Thanks to everyone at Wube for your hard work with Space Age, keep doing what you're doing!

[AileTheAlien]

+1 I'd definitely use a toggle, to make elevated rails transparent or opaque. (Same for other tall structures, like rail ramps, and tall electric poles.)

[Nemoricus]

While I heartily agree that we need the ability to toggle the elevated rails, you can work around it in situations like this by using a deconstruction planner with an appropriate filter set.

It's not ideal, but it will at least let you get at stuff under the rails without deconstructing the rails first.

[CZdigger146]

While I heartily agree that we need the ability to toggle the elevated rails, you can work around it in situations like this by using a deconstruction planner with an appropriate filter set.

It's not ideal, but it will at least let you get at stuff under the rails without deconstructing the rails first.

Yep, that totally works for deconstructing (actually i already use that a lot ), but it doesn't fix the issue of building signals. You might be able to place them underneath, but the visual clutter of all the signal placement locations on the elevated rails make it difficult to actually be sure i placed it in the right location. If the placement locations got disabled and el. rails got transparent, I can imagine it would be MUCH easier.

[IsaacOscar]

This is a duplicate of 122046

[simon4096]

While I heartily agree that we need the ability to toggle the elevated rails, you can work around it in situations like this by using a deconstruction planner with an appropriate filter set.

It's not ideal, but it will at least let you get at stuff under the rails without deconstructing the rails first.

Not if you don't remember what's under the rail, of it what's under the rails is exactly the same as what's above the rail, which is the case when you have parallel rails running elevated and on the ground, at certain angles the signals line up exactly and end up being exactly one on top of of each other.