Split locomotives into three: Steam, diesel and electric

[Svip]

This has probably been suggested before, but I couldn't find any recent discussion on the matter, so here is my take on it.

First a summary of the proposal, then an explanation:

Summary

The train locomotive will be split into three different variants: Steam locomotive, diesel locomotive and electric locomotive.
A new type of train car: Battery car.
A new type of liquid will be added: Diesel (and by extension diesel barrels).
A new type of item to be added: Diesel canister.
A new type of rail will be added: Electrified rail.

Reasoning

My favourite part of Factorio has to be railway management. But I also find it a bit stale, when there is no technological improvement to one's rails. And there is no interesting choices in what sort of locomotives and rails one choose to pick/lay.

I always thought that an electric train would be fun, but the simplest ideas of an electric train + electrified rail always had a serious issue for me: Why would the player ever pick that over the conventional locomotive? It can hardly be faster, and even if more fuel efficient, it would still not be worth the cost of electrifying one's rails.

Then the solution hit me: Make the current locomotive... worse. The current locomotive is weird (so is the car for that matter), as it can basically run on anything that burns. That sounds like a steam engine locomotive to me. But steam locomotives are slow and have very low acceleration rates. And are very weight sensitive due to low torque.

But also compensate for those not wishing to electrify their rails by adding a proper diesel locomotive. But this locomotive must be fed with diesel, a liquid, in the same way that fluid tanks are filled (i.e. with pumps).

The locomotives
Steam locomotive
The steam locomotive is significantly slower than the current locomotive. The exact numbers, I don't know yet. In addition, this locomotive can at maximum pull 3-4 cars, and will run significantly slower when the cars are full.

But - of course - it should not be so slow that it dampens the wish to even use it in the early game, but rather that the player knows that down the line, the same set up can be used for a faster locomotive.

The steam locomotive runs on anything that burns, and can drive on any rail (electrified and not). It should also be cheaper than the current locomotive, perhaps costing half as many engines to build. Indeed, the steam locomotive is going to be very cheap compared to the two others.

Diesel locomotive
For all intends and purposes, this is basically - in terms of speed and pull - the same as the current locomotive. Except it can only run on diesel. And diesel must be fed into the locomotive via a pump. Diesel is an expensive (compared to coal or solid fuel) commodity, but 1 unit of diesel will run a lot longer in the diesel engine than 1 unit of coal in the steam engine.

A diesel engine is therefore an excellent choice, if you have a lot of oil in your base.

The diesel engine has a high top speed and excellent torque, and is therefore the least weight sensitive of the three locomotives, and haul many cars. The diesel locomotive can run on any rail (electrified and not). It is more expensive than the current locomotive to build, and should probably require some more advanced items?

Electric locomotive
The electric locomotive can reach a higher speed than the diesel locomotive, and also accelerates faster. But its torque is lower and can therefore pull fewer cars. This is advantageous for hauls where speed, rather than throughput, is of the essence.

The electric locomotive is built using electric engines (rather than standard engines), but is relatively speaking a bit cheaper than its diesel counterpart in terms of raw resources.

It must have access to electricity at all times to run, which it can gain from two sources: Electrified rail or a battery car. If it loses access to electricity for any reasons, it stops. And will restart whenever it gains access to electricity again.

However, despite its nature, it can run on regular rails, provided it has access to a battery car.

Other items
Battery car
This train carriage, which is half the size of a regular train carriage, is stuck full of batteries. It charges through electric rail or a nearby electric pole in the same way the accumulators do (i.e. only if there is spare electricity in the network), and can store two-four times as much energy as an accumulator.

This is sort of replacement for electrifying railways or some railways, where you want to use an electric locomotive. An electric locomotive will prioritise getting electricity from the railway, unless the network is overloaded, then it will use a battery car (if one is available). In a sound electric network, that means the battery car will remain unused while the electric locomotive is on electrified rail, but come into use as soon as the electric locomotive are on regular railways.

The battery car can be stacked, meaning you can have several of them. But they must be in immediate contact with the locomotive(s) they are supposed to be charging. Two or more electric locomotives can be charged through the same battery car (of course at higher discharging rates).

Diesel
I must confess, I don't know enough about diesel to know exactly which liquids need to be combined or refined in order to produce diesel, but I would consider it as a separate liquid than any of the current ones in terms of gameplay challenge. And so far, this resource can only be used for powering the diesel locomotives.

Diesel canisters contain less diesel units than a barrel, but can be used directly on a diesel locomotive if it runs out, in the same way repair kits are used to repair things. Use the canister by holding it down on the locomotive to fill it up, hopefully giving it enough fuel to return to a pump.

Electrified rail
Basically, the recipe for an electrified rail is about 5 regular rails with a medium electric pole. It produces 5 electrified rails. (These number may be adjusted.) When placing the electrified rails, an electrified pole will only appear at every fifth rail tile. Although, any time a fork occurs, a pole will appear visually, although it does not change the cost.

Electrified railways behave as regular pole network, and must therefore simply be near an existing electric pole, from where a wire will be automatically attached.

Electrified rails also allows one to transfer regular electricity via the rails rather than building big electric poles, as an alternative. (This may not be super realistic, but in terms of game play mechanics, I think it's OK.)

To upgrade regular rails to electrified rails, the same process as upgrading conveyor belts must be performed, albeit using the rail placing system over the existing rails.

Locomotive combinations
It's worth considering what happens when different kinds of locomotives are combined. An obvious one would be electric and steam/diesel, as a replacement for the battery car. But if either of those locomotives are empty on fuel, then the electric locomotive will have to carry them, and the locomotives are heavy (all of them), far more than a full carriage.

All locomotives will attempt to run if scheduled to, so even though there are two locomotives, they won't conserve fuel, if one would run 'cheaper' than another. They will both run.

The steam engine is problematic combining with the two others, because it mostly slows them down.

Final thoughts... for now
This, at least, is my suggestion at a way to make the locomotives and the railway construction more interesting. I also feel with the late(r) game additions of diesel and electric locomotives, it puts the players in an interesting decision making; should I burn my oil or burn my electricity to keep my supply line moving? Or should I diversify? Some long stretches will be operated by diesel, while shorter stints will be done by electric engines.

This could, perhaps, also create a dynamic, where diesel trains deliver to a nearby 'station', where the resources are then loaded onto electric trains for the last stint.

And I also feel this solution solves the basic issue; making electric locomotives actually viable. Of course the true path to ensuring that is that of balancing, but the basic mechanics seem sound to me.

I'd love to hear people's comments and suggestions to this.

Edit: Added diesel canister idea as per discussion below.

[dood]

Electrified rails came up before, it's not going to happen because it would create too much overhead.
Trains running on liquid came up before. One of those things is out of fuel, mid-junction. What do you do?

As for shittifying steam locos and new fuel, vehicles just got different types of acceleration based on their fuel.
Why throw that mechanic out the window? Why clutter up the intermediates menu with one more specific type of fuel that only one specific type of vehicle uses?

[Svip]

Electrified rails came up before, it's not going to happen because it would create too much overhead.

What do you mean by 'overhead'? For the player or in terms of programming. If it's the former, then I'd disagree; it's part of the challenge. Upgrading conveyor belts is also an overhead, but is quite manageable. I don't see how upgrading to electrified rails should be too much of an overhead.

If it's a technical issue, then all right, but I guess I don't realise it would be so difficult.

Trains running on liquid came up before. One of those things is out of fuel, mid-junction. What do you do?

Allow the locomotive to run on barrels with the same liquid, but since you can store so few barrels - compared to just the liquid - it's not a viable long term option. Moreover, like the battery car and the electric locomotive, allow the diesel locomotive to use diesel from an adjacent fluid tank, if it contains diesel.

As for shittifying steam locos and new fuel, vehicles just got different types of acceleration based on their fuel.
Why throw that mechanic out the window?

For starters, the reason for 'shittifying' steam locomotives was to ensure there was an amble incentive for the player to decide to use other locomotives unlocked later on, such as diesel and electric.

Vehicles getting different types of acceleration based on fuel is an interesting change (I wasn't fully aware of this), but it seems minor compared to the interestingly strategic decisions the diversity of train usage would be. I am not against it (even for the steam locomotive in my proposal), but how significantly different are the types of acceleration?

Why clutter up the intermediates menu with one more specific type of fuel that only one specific type of vehicle uses?

I will grant you that the resource/production menus are already pretty cluttered, and more items might not help. But even with the current amount of clutter, it might be worth considering some alterations to it? I've wondered why train cars appear as two separate items, and not as 'variants' of a car. That is, it has a tiny drop down menu where you pick either regular or fluid car. Same could go for the locomotive(s), where there are simply three variants of the locomotive.

Variants wouldn't work for all items, such as poles, because medium and big poles are not interchangeable in the same sense that the cars might be (since it's not as common an item to produce).

[dood]

What do you mean by 'overhead'?

Game performance.
Iterating through every single piece of rail, also possibly adding a new "electrified rail" entity after they just cleaned up rails and got rid of curved ones.
It came up before but got shot down due to something like that.

Allow the locomotive to run on barrels with the same liquid, but since you can store so few barrels - compared to just the liquid - it's not a viable long term option. Moreover, like the battery car and the electric locomotive, allow the diesel locomotive to use diesel from an adjacent fluid tank, if it contains diesel.

Well that sounds a whole bunch more annoying than "I chop down some trees and slam that into the train", don't you think?

but how significantly different are the types of acceleration?

Up to 250% more acceleration with nuclear fuel.

[Svip]

What do you mean by 'overhead'?

Game performance.

That's fair, since each railway would 'technically' have to count as a pole, not a wire. A solution could be to 'cheat', and internally only have every fifth (or so) actually be electrified, and the train would have an internal countdown before it 'really' ran out of electricity, that is just one tile shorter than actual input of energy.

That at least means you'd only iterate over every fifth or so rails.

Iterating through every single piece of rail, also possibly adding a new "electrified rail" entity after they just cleaned up rails and got rid of curved ones.

Well, again, if the UI was modified to allow for variants, then that might help that. But of course, that point is sort of related to the extra locomotives, car and liquid. They all too clutter up the menus, particularly if the diesel fuel will need separate barrels (the decision to add a barrel in the menus for each liquid is a bit baffling to me, honestly).

Besides, streamlining the railway placement by removing the curved rails and adding a new type of rail isn't exactly undoing the work already done. The electrified rails would serve a different purpose, after all.

Allow the locomotive to run on barrels with the same liquid, but since you can store so few barrels - compared to just the liquid - it's not a viable long term option. Moreover, like the battery car and the electric locomotive, allow the diesel locomotive to use diesel from an adjacent fluid tank, if it contains diesel.

Well that sounds a whole bunch more annoying than "I chop down some trees and slam that into the train", don't you think?

Well yes, but this is partly why diesel locomotives are a big decision to make, since they require a certain kind of fuel. We could allow 'diesel canisters', I suppose, that are easy to carry around and basically fills up the train in the same way holding down a repair kit does on the vehicles/buildings. Which may be a better solution than barrels, but of course, that'd also mean you'd always need to carry around diesel canisters in case of it running out.

But I am OK with diesel engines requiring a little more preparation than steam engines. To me, honestly, it's part of the reason the railway part of Factorio is quite boring, because railways are so simple. There are no real consequences for bad decision making.

[dood]

Another thing, I'm personally not a fan of obsolescence and tiers.
Ideally, all your tools should remain useful throughout the entire game and "iron pickaxe" situations should be minimized.

It's not really worth it to make an "early game train" whose only function is being abandoned for the late game variant you stick with.
That kind of thing doesn't make the late game more interesting, it only means you have another "burner mining drill", another "iron chest" as dead weight in your menu.

[Svip]

Another thing, I'm personally not a fan of obsolescence and tiers.
Ideally, all your tools should remain useful throughout the entire game and "iron pickaxe" situations should be minimized.

It's not really worth it to make an "early game train" whose only function is being abandoned for the late game variant you stick with.
That kind of thing doesn't make the late game more interesting, it only means you have another "burner mining drill", another "iron chest" as dead weight in your menu.

That's a fair point. Particularly because Factorio doesn't have a way to recycle items (which would be nice) as a way to get rid of dead weight items.

However, that being said, the steam locomotives would not become obsolete necessary, but rather focused on smaller distance jobs, where diesel fuel might be too hard to provide, or electrifying rails aren't worth the expense (both in time and resources).

Furthermore, Factorio is full of tiers. Steam turbines are an upgrade to steam engines, and the nuclear power grid is an upgrade to the simple water boilers. There are advances to the way oil is being refined (of course this does not produce dead weight in your inventory). One more chain of tiers doesn't really do that much different in a game full of them.

The game already has an steel axe as an upgrade to the iron axe. And where the old boilers, the old axe and the burner inserters all effectively become obsolete, the steam locomotives can still have their uses, since they usually operate far away from your main base, compare to your inserters and electricity production, which is usually pretty close, and therefore upgrading is less inconvenient than upgrading your railways.

[bobucles]

That's a fair point. Particularly because Factorio doesn't have a way to recycle items (which would be nice) as a way to get rid of dead weight items.

A good way to avoid obsolescence is to throw the unused items into recipes. As long as an item has ONE future recipe, it doesn't become obsolete. So.

Locomotive: change recipe from

Code: Select all

10GC, 20Engine, 30 steel

to

Code: Select all

10GC, 10Engine, 10 burner inserter, 40 steel

Ta daa! Now burner inserters never become obsolete because you always need more trains. The new recipe costs 10 less iron than before, which is basically a rounding error. No biggie.

Too many recycling recipes would be messy, but it might be fun to have a centrifuge recipe that crushes stone furnaces back into stone. Just because centrifuges are cool. Alternatively:

Code: Select all

Engine:
1 steel, 1 gear, 1 stone furnace

And now stone furnaces are no longer obsolete.

It honestly takes very few changes to make a "perfect" production tree where every single recipe has a continual use and nothing becomes obsolete. I think it'd be a wonderful way to polish off the last bits of Factorio.

[Svip]

That's a good alternative. My thinking of recycling items would be that all items[1] could be recycled, and it would produce their immediate recipe though with each component halved rounded down, and all liquids lost.

So, if you recycled a heat exchanger, you'd get 50 copper plates, 5 pipes and 5 steel plates. Or a stone furnace, you'd get 2 stones.

The idea is to generalise it, so it doesn't become a recipe, thus a lot more items in the menus, but rather a machine that recycles stuff, and yields into its own built in chest, that is part of the robot network. So you can throw stuff out, have it recycled, and have its ingredients put back into your network.

And recycling any item takes 10 times as long as it takes to produce it, and it cannot be done by hand.

But now we are getting off-topic, as we were talking about locomotives.

[1] Only items that are constructed from other items. This excludes basic resources, liquids and items that are made in furnaces, such as iron plates.

[dood]

Code: Select all

Engine:
1 steel, 1 gear, 1 stone furnace

And now stone furnaces are no longer obsolete.

Being a dead end recipe is not the same as obsolescence.
Obsolescence means you have a blatantly superior option on basically every level and no reason to pick the inferior one.
This recipe changes nothing about the fact that you don't actually build stone furnaces because you moved on to steel/electric ones, it only made the engine recipe more annoying.

[Hedning1390]

I think electrified rail could work if it wasn't compatible at all with regular rail. Ie an electric locomotive hitting regular rail will stop dead as if hitting a dead end.

However my concern is that there is no important difference between electrified and burner locomotives. Different torque/top speed isn't going to change how you play with trains. The change would simply be the removal of the little fuel insertion chest/belts, right?

[bobucles]

Code: Select all

Engine:
1 steel, 1 gear, 1 stone furnace

And now stone furnaces are no longer obsolete.

Being a dead end recipe is not the same as obsolescence.
Obsolescence means you have a blatantly superior option on basically every level and no reason to pick the inferior one.
This recipe changes nothing about the fact that you don't actually build stone furnaces because you moved on to steel/electric ones, it only made the engine recipe more annoying.

Being a dead end recipe is a very important aspect of items becoming obsolete. If an item has future recipe potential then its permanent place in the game world doesn't matter. An old assembler 1 gets consumed and reused to produce tier 2's and tier3's. Who cares if your factory can't be nit pickingly micro optimized by using assembler 1's? That kind of balance is stupid anyway. Let the old options get reclaimed, recycled and disappear.

When an item can't be used again, it turns into inventory clutter. Stone furnaces are a perfect example of something that becomes truly obsolete. Once the steel furnace production begins there's no reason to ever go back to stone furnaces. It has some limited use for making new boilers but ultimately the number of leftover furnaces far exceeds the number of boilers you will typically need. You can't even automate getting rid of them. The only permanent solution to get rid of excess stone furnaces is to put them in a chest and shoot it.

That's what it means when an item is obsolete.

[dood]

Who cares if your factory can't be nit pickingly micro optimized by using assembler 1's? That kind of balance is stupid anyway.

I do.
I like actual options, not just the illusion of options.
Ideally, all tiers of assemblers, miners and smelters would have their unique use that might open up a different playstyle.
Ideally, this game hands you nothing but tools that remain relevant throughout the entirety of its progression.
Because that's just more interesting to me than a list of 20 options of which I only end up using 5.

[bobingabout]

I think electrified rail could work if it wasn't compatible at all with regular rail.

According to the devs, Electrified rail will never happen.

Why were multiple rail types removed?
The train had to check if the track it was running on matched the type of rail it was supposed to run on, adding extra checks, this was removed to increase performance.

Why will there never be electrified rail?
It's just another piece of data the rail has to hold, and be checked, which 90% of the time will be ignored anyway. (Also devs said there will only ever be 1 type of locomotive in the base game, they have no plans for electric trains)

[jchardin64]

Here's my thoughts on trains:

--Steam locomotive is available when you first research rail. It's really cheap (1 boiler + 1 steam engine + a few gears and steel). It has about 60% of the acceleration and top speed of the diesel loco. It's fuelled with wood, coal, etc. AND water (so you need a pump).

--Diesel locomotive is researched after a separate tech that takes blue science. Components and performance are unchanged. It's filled with either heavy or light oil using a pump. (I don't see a need to add a whole new fluid that's only going to be used for one purpose).

--Both locos have somewhat higher fuel consumption than they currently do. So given 3 stacks of coal, a steam train would be empty in around 5-ish minutes (water lasts the same time), while a diesel with 25,000 light oil (most efficient fuel) would be empty in 7 or 8. This is to make the fuel type more of an important factor. Right now the fuel consumption of trains is a rounding error compared with the resources they carry.

Regarding obsolescence:

I get that once you've researched the diesel loco your steamers become somewhat obsolete. However, in another sense, they're also consuming another obsolete item (boilers + engines) which most players stop using once they have solar/nuclear.

The steam engine would still be useful for certain "low-volume" jobs, like topping off the ammo supply on remote outposts or delivering uranium cells from where they're made to several distant reactors. (I call it "the mother of all anachronisms")

Also, if you're low on oil (and who hasn't been, at some point in their life?) you might choose to stay with the steam trains for a while until you claim some new oil patches.

[Jap2.0]

a diesel with 25,000 light oil (most efficient fuel) would be empty in 7 or 8.

Do you realize how much oil that is?

[Rjskeet]

Hmm I like the ideas but really electric trains wouldn't really be good because you would just stress the game, the player and, not to mention the power grid of any factory. however splitting diesel and steam trains and have them limited to certain fuels would be nice. Like the steam train would only use low heat burnable items such as coal, wood and wood items. While diesels could use any fuel and therefore achieve any speed. You wouldn't need any liquid fuel honestly you could just use solid fuel blocks and save a lot of hassle. And also steam engines should have the draw back of only being able to pull a certain number of freight cars, while diesels should be able to link together and pull a lot more.

[Svip]

While I may not necessarily agree with the developers on the technical issues, in particular, I believe it is possible to solve without performance hits (other games solve similar issues without much trouble), I do respect the developers' design decision not to split the locomotive into different types, and/or having electrified rail. As an aspiring game designer myself, I recognise and support games not being designed by committee, and I am only sharing my idea because I personally believe it would be a worthwhile addition to the existing game.

Speaking of which, I don't see the need to split the current locomotive into two, if it's just going to be effectively the same locomotive where one of them supports more fuel types. That's an unnecessary hassle. If there are to be more than one locomotive, those available must be A) significantly different and B) not compatible (in terms of fuel) with one another. They must be able to use the same railways.

And therefore, I believe, simply splitting the current locomotive into a steam and a diesel engine simply adds more overhead without any benefit. My original idea is that diesel and electrified locomotives are viable alternatives to one another. Together, they are the 'tier 2' locomotive. Factorio doesn't really have paths through its progression, and most parts of one's factory takes one path. You can argue that solar panels for electricity is an 'optional path', but it's as optional as never using express conveyor belts. Yes, you can launch the satellite in the end, but it's going to be tedious.

However, diesel and electric locomotives can be used at the same time, or just one of each, depending on what resources the player has available. In an oil rich map, diesel engines will be the prime choice, because while costly, they are easier to get running. But with less oil, electric locomotives may be a viable choice for certain routes. Or if your electricity grid is over-performing, adding a few electric locomotives won't do much difference.

Indeed, electric locomotives are supposed to be a drain your power grid. In the same way diesel locomotives are supposed to be a drain on your oil production. With the current locomotive, you can effectively run trains on the cheap, since you can always opt for a non-significant resource, such as coal, which loses its significance as your base moves on to other ways of burning.

And indeed, that's why the steam locomotive in my idea won't necessarily lose its charm, as - unlike its electric and diesel counterparts - can always be run on the cheap. You spend extra on the two other locomotives for acceleration, top speed and torque.

[thereaverofdarkness]

What do you mean by 'overhead'?

Game performance.
Iterating through every single piece of rail, also possibly adding a new "electrified rail" entity after they just cleaned up rails and got rid of curved ones.
It came up before but got shot down due to something like that.

I don't follow. The game already iterates through the rail segments (likely using a much more efficient method than checking every piece) to determine pathways that trains can take. The code is already done; the performance impact is already upon us. Why, then, would adding this functionality cause even a detectable dip in performance?

[Zavian]

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59481&p=355589#p355589