Factorio Forums

TL;DR

You should be able to build rails directly over cliffs to transition from ground rails to elevated rails.

What?

There should be some way to transition from a ground rail on the "upper" side of cliffs to an elevated rail on the "lower" side. The least invasive approach would probably be to add a new transition piece: You could even make this piece a specialization of the rail ramp for when it gets place over cliffs if you're concerned about the possibility of having cheaper access to elevated rails.
This raises some questions:

• What happens when you try to build elevated rails over a cliff from the higher side?
  
  I think the best answer is to make it so that it's still possible to have elevated rails completely ignore cliffs, but alternatively:
  - It's possible to build a rail ramp overhanging the edge of the cliff
  - You can't. Currently, both sides of a cliff block ground rails—I don't think changing it so that one side blocks ground rails and the other blocks elevated rails is that absurd.

  

  11-03-2024, 01-22-14.png (653.96 KiB) Viewed 434 times

• The transition piece I'm proposing would be an S-bend when the track is going left/right, but would be a straight track when going up/down. What happens if you try to blueprint and rotate it?
  
  Two options:
  - You can't.
  - The track adjusts itself. I did develop an algorithm to do this which is very fast no matter the size of the blueprint, quite convincingly follows the original track profile, and is i think reversible. This is one of the results it gave:

  

  11-03-2024, 03-53-22.png (277.58 KiB) Viewed 434 times

  I can provide a C++ implementation if requested.

Why?

Fulgora as it is now is frustrating in my opinion. The production chain is very neat, but I also was hoping that the gameplay would involve much more of a smattering of micro-factories all working together. There is a bit of that, but the cliffs serve, in my opinion, to make simply setting up on the largest islands you can find to be a much more viable strategy. Take, for instance, this island: This is pretty much the only way to fit two stations on the island because of how big the ramps are and the fact that the cliffs block where they can be placed. I don't even think three stations is possible at all. However, say that my proposal was implemented. Suddenly this would be possible: I think the ability to use smaller islands like this would make Fulgora much more fun and much less frustrating, and it would probably make other planets more interesting as well.

A small tweak to the idea even opens up opportunities for a far more interesting Nauvis start; perhaps elevated rail supports can be researched before production science, while ramps are still locked behind it, giving players even more interesting ways to use cliffs.

Reference:

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=108952&p=615263#p615263

viewtopic.php?f=71&t=111388&p=603855

There would be some tricky stuff to figure out regarding how already-elevated rails would go over a cliff.