A Thought on the New Rail Placement System

[TheRobot]

A while ago, I was reading up on the FFF about the new Rail placement in Factorio 0.13, and we all know that it's gonna be awesome once we get it. But thinking back on it now, I realised some things that I thought could happen at the time can't, and that was going up by 1-2 tiles at a time (kind of like at big popular train stops where there's a lot of tracks and a big switch board to get any train on the right line). But how the engine (eehh? Engine, train?) works to make the auto-curvy-rail placement works, I'm pretty sure this isn't possible. And I was wondering if the guys at Factorio would be able to make this possible? Maybe as a revisit to the train system in 0.14?

Here's a scenario if I wasn't clear enough: You're making a huge rail line, or a really neat and tidy, perfectly OCD-gasmic one, and you've just realised that the curved tracks go one tile too far, sure this could be fixed by going back on yourself and creating some form of space somewhere, but that may involve going back by miles! Or you may sacrifice the OCD wonderful completion-ey feel you get when your rail line is perfectly symmetrical.


You gotta admit, it would be pretty handy and helpful to get it done.

[bobingabout]

S rails. They've been mentioned a few times, currently, the closest thing to an S track you can make is a right curve, then left curve, or vica verca, which moves you 3 (double) tiles over (because track works on a 2 tile grid). They're also quite long.

A nice alternative would be special case entities that are about 3 double tiles long, and move you over 1 tile, an S piece about the size of a curve piece.

I suppose they also need to revisit how the curves work, so you don't need that straight piece on the 45 degree plane.

[Ghoulish]

S-Rails or something similar would be a nice addition. I often do find that I need to nudge a rail over by a grid to make things line up neatly and easily, yet can't because of having to use 2x bends instead. Sure good design would be the answer, but our factories evolve.. Additional track components, like the above would be a useful thing to have.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19953 New types of rails (curves, s-curves ...)

[bobingabout]

Another "Annoying" one to me is that you're forced into this 2x2 grid. Lets say you start planning early on before you get rails, and leave a gap saying "I want track to go through here later", only to find that 5 hours down the road after you've built a huge factory, that... you can't place the track there, because the 2x2 grid doesn't line up.

It would be nice if track could be placed, so that 2x2 piece in your 2x2 grid can just be placed to take 4 tiles of a 1x1 grid.

In fact, you're redesigning the rail placement system all together anyway so that you only need straight pieces to make curves etc, so in theory you could break those larger curve pieces into smaller single pieces, and use those as components in a much more complex and customisable layout.

For starters, it would first remove the need for that straight in the 45 degree of a 90 degree bend, the curve would be broken up so that final piece in the 45 degree end of the curve could be removed, butting the 2 curves directly together without the small gap (And likely create a much rounder curve)

Assuming to continue with this system, you start with the first piece of a curve, but the part that is 1 tile over... instead of continuing the curve, you place the pieces to curve back the other way, there's your mythical S bend. I suppose doing that trick though, the hardest thing would be making the graphics line up.

[ratchetfreak]

The reason why it lines up with a 2x2 is so that you don't get screwed over when you try to join 2 separate rails that are offset 1 relative to each other

[Neotix]

Like this:

[ssilk]

Well, one incident with this even-grid-placement is, that it's difficult to plan ahead with it, when you don't have rail researched yet. A planning tool for that is needed... but not more.