Page 1 of 1

Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:52 am
by cpy
Idea is simple, build landing strip, build another landing strip, craft cargo airplane, load it with fuel have inserters load it like train, set waypoints like train, time in station aaaaand you're good to go! 2-4x higher fuel use than train but 50% faster and can carry only 50% of one train car. Just don't let your plane run out of fuel ^^.

Obviously propeller plane with black exhaust smoke, because this is factorio and whatnot.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 6:16 am
by Dev-iL
So you're suggesting a teleporter which runs on fuel? Interesting :)
Next thing you know you get co-op games where each team-mate is on their own island, containing only a fraction of resource types.

This is probably something they planned. In one of the levels of the campaign you're supposed to build a plane (or research flight - w/e) in order to get from one place to the other.. I think it's a matter of time before cargo & transport planes become an actual game mechanic.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 6:18 am
by kiba
Dev-iL wrote:So you're suggesting a teleporter which runs on fuel? Interesting :)
Next thing you know you get co-op games where each team-mate is on their own island, containing only a fraction of resource types.

This is probably something they planned. In one of the levels of the campaign you're supposed to build a plane (or research flight - w/e) in order to get from one place to the other.. I think it's a matter of time before cargo & transport planes become an actual game mechanic.
And paratrooper drop. :D

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 7:12 am
by cpy
I still hope for ships ocean liners and cargo ships and more ocean water love :D
Wood -> boat + paddle -> row row...

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 1:26 pm
by bobucles
So it's a train, except it flies? Build enough air strips and you won't need trains anymore.

No, fuel use is not a limiting factor. Fuel is infinite and a depleted pump is still enough to supply half a dozen trains. A large structure also isn't a limiting factor. Train tracks and stations take up HUGE tracts of land.

It would be nice if players could build some boats though. A wooden boat vehicle would be very handy for dealing with those huge lakes. But that sort of thing doesn't matter much until players can build things in the water (such as train bridges).

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 1:40 pm
by LaMangousteDuMal
Airport technolgy could be so fun :
- Cargo airplane
- Bomber airplane (with bomb or napalm)
- Scouting airplane
- Helicopter for personnal transport
- Logistic airplane (can deliver some material from a long distance)
- Control Tower to avoid colision (you can loose instantly the planes, the ressources, and destroy your building around the explosion)

Airport technolgy is faster than train, but it is quite expensive in fuel and it make aliens very angry :twisted:

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 3:17 pm
by wwdragon
More forms of transport is always good.

I do have one constructive criticism of OP idea, though: Cargo planes in real life can carry entire transport trucks, etc... so no reason to limit them to half a cargo car. ;-)

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 3:32 pm
by cpy
Cargo plane makes chem trails dude, piss off lot of biters and spitters that will try to take it down. High cost, smaller cargo than 1 wagon, 4x higher fuel use, airplanes will need to clear runway before they can take off or land and airports would be limited by size to hold 1-4 planes too long wait? Crash!

Fun facts about fuel efficiency: http://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel ... ed-by-mpg/

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 4:26 pm
by Align
Could give it tiltrotors to get a VTOL plane. Would probably make it easier to implement, at least...
Image

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:43 pm
by bobucles
airplanes will need to clear runway before they can take off or land and airports would be limited by size to hold 1-4 planes too long wait?
So just like build more runways? It's the same issue if a player runs too many trains through one station.

Even then the whole point of cargo planes is to do away with the horrible nightmare of designing train intersections. A new layer of elevated/submerged rail would fix that headache.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 7:06 pm
by Takezu
Train intersections arent that hard in the first place. And with the 0.12 signals their a piece of cake.
It's more that a train looses his value on long ways. After certain distances its to slow.
And every train more isn't guaranteed to make it faster, worst case the trains block each other and make it slower.

A more costly transporter for longranges is a good idea.

Trains wouldn't loose their usefullness, they have theoreticly unlimited cargo capacity.
Cargo planes, i think, would more an expand to trains, no replacement.
As bypass for long tracks, where your ore would run short in between tow train unloads.
Or for low Cargo volume where a train just would be to much.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:36 pm
by kiba
The natives currently have no anti air capability. They will not be able to threaten a plane unless they attack the support infrastructure underlying it all.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 1:03 am
by Takezu
Well a train is almost imune if it doesn't stand around anywhere.
And who cares about the natives, i want to automate and optimize, thats a thing factory makes brilliant.
Spitters could be able to hit it if one flys over, or it would be as it is with bots which do fly and get scraped anyway, but to be honest, i've never lost a train to natives and some routs where fairly close to nests. They are vunerable if they stand, and that should be a place well guarded, which would be more or less the same case for planes.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 2:43 pm
by wwdragon
cpy wrote:Cargo plane makes chem trails dude, piss off lot of biters and spitters that will try to take it down. High cost, smaller cargo than 1 wagon, 4x higher fuel use, airplanes will need to clear runway before they can take off or land and airports would be limited by size to hold 1-4 planes too long wait? Crash!

Fun facts about fuel efficiency: http://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel ... ed-by-mpg/
Since a plane can move a LOT faster then a ground based quadruped, it doesn't really matter, cept at the landing point.
I put very large laser turret groupings at all corners of my remote bases, so any aliens who followed would be dead in seconds.

That plus not needing to lay tracks makes it very safe.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 5:55 am
by cpy
So spiters could try to shoot it well but it's fast anyway so lol yeah.

Airports are large. Cargo planes carry less than 1 wagon. Planes are faster and if they run out of fuel you get explosions.
Planes do not care about water. Chemtrails! Epic ride.

I wonder if it would be hard to implement train weight system, full wagon = heavier than empty, they already have weight.

Without RSO i don't see any reason to use cargo planes because you can build train with 8-12 wagons and lol at distance and have big load/unload buffers.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:03 pm
by Kilaha11
I think the main thing is that planes wont be targetable.
The increased fuel usage and lowered capacity, combined with required runway space are a pretty balanced trade in my opinion.

Its a hell to manually place tracks + set up lasers EVERYWHERE due to huge mobs running in its way and possibly stopping the train alltogether.

Yeah, oil is infinite, but you will have to expand oil production if you want to keep more planes flying. So expansion will be still necessary, just not as annoying to connect to outside facilities.
If its really necessary you can make planes consume more fuel to make it balanced, but it should have a reasonable amount of carrying capacity.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:39 pm
by Koub
One of the best necros so far, mate.

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:21 pm
by mp0011
Koub wrote:One of the best necros so far, mate.
That's the internet forums paradox. Whatever You post, You either "should use searchbox & It was already posted many times", or "You should make new topic, instead digging this old one"...

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 7:33 pm
by steinio
Koub wrote:One of the best necros so far, mate.
necro isn't a word at all

Re: Cargo planes

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 8:42 pm
by Jap2.0
mp0011 wrote:
Koub wrote:One of the best necros so far, mate.
That's the internet forums paradox. Whatever You post, You either "should use searchbox & It was already posted many times", or "You should make new topic, instead digging this old one"...
Yeah, I've noticed that before. You can argue for both sides of the issue - and people do. Which is, arguably, the issue.