Vehicle Assembly Plant / no hand crafting of tanks / trains

[vanatteveldt]

It bothers me that you can carry a complete train or tank in your pocket and just pop it out when you need it. Also, the little train icon when dropping a locomotive on the ground is strange compared to the size of the actual thing. (and the idea of a train wagon full of locomotives or a car trunk full of tanks is just weird).

I propose two new buildings to craft vehicles, a vehicle assembly plant and a train (locomotive) assembly plant. The first outputs the vehicle to the exit direction (and cannot produce if there's no room, like a mining rig with blocked output). The train assembly plant has a rail ending coming out of it which should be connected to the rail network. Assembly works as normal, set the recipe and input raw materials manually or automatically. Assembly should also take longer, more like 30 seconds for a locomotive.

Locomotives and vehicles should not be "mineable" and should never be in inventory or handled by logistics/inserters/chests etc., but will remain on the map until destroyed. Locomotives can be rotated manually, otherwise it would be really tedious. If the player wants to use a separate train or locomotive to move himself around (as I often do), the locomotive will block the track like a normal train unless it is put on a spur.

Edit: as pointed out by hitzu, this also paves the way for automatic deployment of trains and (in some future) automatic tanks/combat robots similar to the droid assemblers in the robotarmy mod

(sorry if this is a dupe, it feels sort of obvious but a search on train manufacturing / train crafting yielded no hits)

[Peter34]

There needs to be a way for a player to dis-assemble a Locomotive or a Cargo Wagon, if it's on a Rail and is blocking traffic.

The simplest way to achieve that is to say that the player can pick it up, but if he does so, it becomes dis-assembled into its component parts in his inventory. Most likely with some loss. The player being unable to re-assemble it manually, that's sufficient discouragement from doing that unless absolutely necessary. Pickin up a Loco or Wagon in this way should also be super slow, taking perhaps 20 or 30 seconds.

Same with Cars and Tanks. Trying to pick them up should dis-assemble them into the player's inventory. And with a long progress bar, at least 5s for the car and preferably 20s or more for the Tank, that's also plenty of warning for the player to change his mind and not "destroy" his vehicle, after it has happened to him once before and taught him. So it'd be good game UI too.

[vanatteveldt]

I think cargo wagons should be kept as is, it would be a lot of hassle to send trains back to the plant for rearranging them.

Disassembling locomotives on picking them up would be strange as nothing behaves that way, but I agree that otherwise it could be quite tedious...

[bobingabout]

This should actually be possible via modding (No I'm not going to do it). Obviously a mod would be a bit of a bodge, but it could be done in 3 stages.

Stage 1. Separate the item from the vehicle. This means changing the vehicle to not be minable, and changing the item to not be place-able.
Stage 2. Change the production system. Basically, you would need to create a new factory for each with a unique crafting category. since the category isn't on the player, it would be made only in that machine.
Stage 3. A script to monitor the output slot of the new machine to see if there is an item in it. if there is, the item would then need to be deleted, and the corresponding entity created near the machine. It probably wouldn't look very pretty though, the vehicle would just appear within range of the factory.


As for train management... well... in real life, that's why you had shunters to break the train apart and re-arrange it. If such a system was created in factorio, you'd basically have to create a yard for train management, or a siding and back your train into it manually if there were line issues. If you want realistic, you go full realistic, don't half arse it just because it's difficult.

[hitzu]

It would be worth it only if this factory could build the whole train with custom number of wagons and locomotives with a custom station in its schedule.

[Axios]

+1 for the OP and +1 for the idea of disassemble on removal from rail.

Also a flatbed wagon for transport vehicles. Maybe with ramps on sides.

[Xelephant]

I don't see the benefit of this idea for the vanilla gameplay. And why only trains? what about the assemblers or the steam engines?

This sound more like tedious "realism" gameplay which is not really fun for me.

[Deadly-Bagel]

It probably wouldn't look very pretty though, the vehicle would just appear within range of the factory.

Could you possibly have intermediate items, also non-minable and non-interactive at all? So like it spawns a "30% vehicle", then "60% vehicle", then the completed product? Don't know if you can script events halfway through a recipe, if not then you might have to do something similar to the rocket or there's a couple things you could do but damn that would be a huge-ass mod for stripping a load of functionality out of the game =/

[hitzu]

Well the rocket is built right in the silo. Vehicles can be built right in the some sort of depot or workshop.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Of course, the problem isn't building it but if you want it to look *good* you won't have something that just spawns a car next to it when it's built. Ideally it would roll out of a shed or something but that's probably not possible.

[hitzu]

Of course, the problem isn't building it but if you want it to look *good* you won't have something that just spawns a car next to it when it's built. Ideally it would roll out of a shed or something but that's probably not possible.

IDK if spawning a vehicle inside an entity is possible, but it would be nice if the car/tank were moved outside via double belts and the train via connected rails.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Not sure how configurable the hitboxes are, can you say outer tiles count as hits but inner ones don't? I assume so as I saw a mod that put a (non-hitbox) farm next to a (hitbox) chest.

[MalcolmCooks]

I think it's basically a good idea. It would add a little more complexity to the first stages of setting up a train, because you would have to design and build a good train depot to put trains together. As long as you were able to walk up to a coupling and disconnect the two wagons at that point, it wouldn't be that difficult. And once set up, trains usually run forever without intervention, so overall I don't think it would make things much more difficult. I think it would make sense if it worked like this: locomotives are pushed out of the plant, with a destination station loaded in, but it's up to the player to put a fuelling system in place at the exit, and that there are enough platforms for each train to go to. Cargo wagons would just be pushed out and coupled to the next one in a string, and then it's up to the player to get in a train and pull the cargo wagons where they need to go. That way you can automatically produce trains of whatever length you need. Moving trains out of the way wouldn't really be a problem either, as you can always build extra rails and manually drive the train onto them.
As for other vehicles, you only really need one at a time, so it would be fine to have the car or tank sit blocking the exit of the factory until you get in and drive away.

[mattj256]

I don't see the benefit of this idea for the vanilla gameplay. And why only trains? what about the assemblers or the steam engines?

This sound more like tedious "realism" gameplay which is not really fun for me.

+1

This doesn't make the game more fun. If you make locomotives and cargo wagons not mineable it introduces an extra puzzle that I'd rather do without.

Is it realistic for the player to be able to carry around 500 rails? Of course not. But it's fun.

[ssilk]

Read that topic again.
This is added to
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30589 Factory Streets / Star Wars like robot factories / Frame Mounting / Modular Production
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=23008 Warehouse / Depot / Storage / Stock (and related)
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...)

[hitzu]

I don't see the benefit of this idea for the vanilla gameplay. And why only trains? what about the assemblers or the steam engines?

This sound more like tedious "realism" gameplay which is not really fun for me.

+1

This doesn't make the game more fun. If you make locomotives and cargo wagons not mineable it introduces an extra puzzle that I'd rather do without.

Is it realistic for the player to be able to carry around 500 rails? Of course not. But it's fun.

I would prefer it to be an option. Now I cannot automate train building+launching and expand my train network without manually adding new trains to it. I would like to build such a network that can build, launch and dispatch new trains as the factory grows. It doesn't mean that trains should be unminable and unpoketable.