boskid wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 5:30 pm
When driving manually you would not be able to choose some directions since you can at most go left (holding left when crossing junction), straight (holding nothing) or right (holding right when crossing junction).
This would be an issue, but honestly a new S-bend would be well worth it. Please consider that there already exists a very similar problem today with some popular intersection designs where a curved rail between a curved rail and a straight rail is almost impossible to enter by manual driving unless you go very slowly. The solution is quite simple: don't design the junction like that.
With a new S-rail, the ambiguity would be easily resolved by offsetting the rail piece by 2 tiles.
In any case manual driving is less important nowadays with temporary waypoints.
Please understand that a new S-rail for narrow switchovers would be AMAZING for those few times when you actually need it due to space constraints (because of cliffs, or having to weave through spaghetti, and for custom scenarios like the Swiss cheese map or non-linear ribbon world), or making compact intersections where signals are difficult to fit, and it would be great simply for aesthetics too.
SupplyDepoo wrote: ↑Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:59 am
boskid wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 5:30 pm
When driving manually you would not be able to choose some directions since you can at most go left (holding left when crossing junction), straight (holding nothing) or right (holding right when crossing junction).
This would be an issue, but honestly a new S-bend would be well worth it. Please consider that there already exists a very similar problem today with some popular intersection designs where a curved rail between a curved rail and a straight rail is almost impossible to enter by manual driving unless you go very slowly. The solution is quite simple: don't design the junction like that.
I just want to emphasize this point because I just realized how similar these two issue really are: the curved rail vs S-rail ambiguity you speak of WOULD ONLY EXIST IN A 3+ DIRECTION SPLIT because if it was only a curved rail vs S-rail you would simply not press any keys for one of them and the train would continue on the straight(er) track. So the problem you describe is almost exactly the same as the existing problem with tightly spaced splits.
Since this is already a finnicky situation for manual driving and usually avoided, the S-rail would
in practice not introduce ambiguity very often.
Picture of what I'm talking about:
- tight-splits.png (72.37 KiB) Viewed 2173 times
In a situation like this a new S-rail starting on the same tile as the curved rail would introduce ambiguity for manual driving, but this would easily be resolved by offsetting the rail by one 2x2 tile and that is easily achievable given the
overall space savings that S-rails would bring compared to the fanning-out wavy curved rails currently needed for comparable splits.
Please don't let a minor edge case inconvenience be the death of the long-awaited S-rail (since at least
FFF #113 7 years ago!)!
You could also simply prevent the player from placing left curved rail and a left S-rail on top of each other like that and the rail planner would seamlessly respect this so most players wouldn't even realize they're being shielded from a manual-driving footgun, while veteran players wouldn't mind it anyway
because this configuration would be bad for fitting rail signals!
- no-signal-spots.png (393.78 KiB) Viewed 2169 times
As you can well imagine, the S-rail-on-curved-rail situation would be equally bad and undesirable.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
People complaining about the manual driving issue will be far outnumbered by people rejoicing over the new rail piece!
Haters could also make a mod to change manual driving or they could just not use S-rails and continue using only curved rails like they have been, whereas we currently have no way to mod this in. Remember that this would be an
additive change.