Subway - easy player transportation
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 12:01 pm
TL;DR
Subway stations that players can use to quickly travel around their factory.What ?
Subway stations are small buildings you can place. Once there are two on the map, you can go to either, open up a UI and connect them - this will cost resources based on direct distance. After this the UI will offer to travel to all connected subway stations which teleports the player - or hides him while the camera quickly moves across the map to the destination (because player is underground). Distance can be limited, but should not be too harshly limited.Why ?
Power armor with more than one exoskeleton comes very late. Way before that you need oil, which often is far away from the rest of the factory and needs tons of space. Traveling from one end of your main bus to the other can take really long, even with stone brick paths. Then there is mining outposts as well, which require you to always have a locomotive in your pocket if you want to get their quickly (this is where the idea comes from - a more convenient version of it.)Why underground?
If not underground you would need to plan your factory so you can use trains to traverse it, which defeats the point of the idea - this is about noticing "here I need to go often" and then placing a subway station as reaction - not proactively building for it.
Why automatic connection?
Placing the actual rails would not be an interesting part of the game, as you would just straight up connect two points. Might as well just let the game remember "these two are connected" save some performance and just charge per distance.
When?
After blue science would be a good point in the game to unlock this, as this is when your factory starts growing large.
Limited Distance?
For really large distances trains can/should be used, this is more a "move around your factory faster and maybe to the closer outposts" kind of transportation. The limit should not be too harsh, otherwise the whole purpose is removed.
Pretty Picture:
