Danger Will Robinson, Danger!!! 0.17 Trains

[zOldBulldog]

I just discovered a nasty quirk of 0.17 that was not quite so extreme in 0.16.

- I was happily driving my 1-4-1 arty train manually.
- Missed a split and ended up driving up the station where my 1-2 train was sitting, fully loaded with supplies to build a 480MW nuclear power plant.
- As soon as I saw I hit the brakes.

But nope... it took a very long time to stop AND instead of causing some damage... it completely pulverized the 2 wagons, locomotive and all the cargo in the blink of an eye. The train I was in didn't even get a scratch.

Bug? Or intentional new "let's annoy the players" mechanic?

Needless to say I am miffed. At the current stage of my game it still takes a long time to build those supplies.

[TruePikachu]

This was still the case in 0.16.

Citation: friend completely destroyed a copper train with the artillery train. Without using artillery.

[SirSmuggler]

And the moral of the story is of course, don't drive trains manualy! It's blody dangerous!

[zOldBulldog]

And the moral of the story is of course, don't drive trains manualy! It's blody dangerous!

I never had such problems before 0.17. At most I would do 10-20% damage to the loco/wagon I hit. Especially while manually driving something as small as a 1-4-1 train.

Or are Artillery wagons uniquely heavy? If so, I can see people putting a few of those wagons to their "unprotected" trains, so that they can smash through behemoths with impunity.

[boran_blok]

artillery trains are afaik 2x as heavy, so you were driving a 1-8-1 in terms of mass.

[BlakeMW]

This is the weight of different train components:

Locomotive: 2000
Wagon: 1000
Fluid Wagon: 1000
Artillery: 4000

Once trains get a total mass of over about 10000 they start to become quite dangerous to other trains, depending on their speed. At 11000 they can one-shot Behemoth Biters. A train with a total mass of 20000 doesn't need to be going anywhere near top speed to be murderous to other trains.

Even though the Artillery Wagon is uniquely heavy, it's not uniquely durable. In fact it's as weak as a normal wagon. That doesn't actually matter since trains do damage based on their velocity and total weight, it doesn't matter what's at the front. Also they don't take damage when they one-shot something so it doesn't matter terribly much how durable the thing at the front is, unless the train actually halts in biter territory, then the difference between 600 and 1000 hp isn't much.

Incidentally, a Tank with Rocket Fuel or Nuclear fuel is also capable of simply obliterating trains it runs into, plowing through a locomotive and several wagons before running out of kinetic energy (unlike Trains, the Tank DOES slow down when it hits things).

[mrvn]

The thing I don't get is why the ramming train doesn't take damage proportional to the weight of the thing it rams into and the sum of both entities speed.

[Zavian]

The thing I don't get is why the ramming train doesn't take damage proportional to the weight of the thing it rams into and the sum of both entities speed.

Probably because trains being stranded on the tracks because their locomotive died, (or alternatively vanishing because everything died), just isn't a fun mechanic.

[Koub]

If the game mechanic is : damage what you have rammed into proportionally to your speed (or square your speed), then a non moving train does 0 damage. I'm not saying it's realistic, but that would explain the "yout train takes almost no damage when you ram into things, while you destroy what you ram into".

[zOldBulldog]

Well, I think this just gave us the secret to make trains that can travel through biter territory with impunity.

1) Make all trains large enough, and run them on rocket fuel (which since 0.17 you can, quite early).

2) If you prefer smaller trains, add some Artillery wagons.

3) Stop driving manually... Controls are quite twitchy and this makes trains too destructive to risk it.

4) To be safe, have some bots with repair kits at your stations, so that they can fix splitter damage while the train loads/unloads.

Gets even more interesting, my standard trains all run rocket fuel and are:

1-4-2-4-1 single direction: 16k = behemoth immune.

1-4-1 single direction: 8k = add 1 arty wagon at the rear (1-4-1-A?) = 12k = behemoth immune. The arty wagon can even fall on the curve of stations since it doesn't load unload, it is there just for mass.

1-4-1 arty train = 20k = brutal.

1-2 train = 4k = paper, better not run it through enemy territory.

Holy tamales! With this if you use 1-4-2-4-1, 1-4-1-A and 1-4-1 arty trains, you can easily use walled bases or even small factories (each with their own nuclear reactor) and totally unpowered and undefended rail between them!

Man, this really opens a lot of interesting possibilities.

[bman212121]

Driving trains around manually with automatic trains on the line has always been a sketchy proposition. I've had the opposite happen where I stop a manual train into a section and the automatic one assumes it had the right of way and plows into the side of my manual train.

Just to make sure you're aware, .17 now includes a nice mechanic to make it so that you really never should have to drive a train manually again. When you click on the train you are in, it will bring up the schedule menu with a minimap. If you Control + Click on any track in that minimap, the train will automatically setup a stop to that location, and drive itself there. There is no need to even have a single station or schedule on a train, you can simply use that mechanic to drive trains around, and then they will respect the signals and other automatic trains.

I actually purposefully put a single stop on transport trains, so that after they do the manual waypoint, they will automatically return back to their original location. You can just keep the menu up and flip the train from automatic to manual while the 5 second timer is counting down, get out of the train, do what you want to do, get back into the train then flip the train back to auto. The train will take you back to it's starting point and you won't even have to tell it to go there. That keeps the trains from just sitting around on the tracks in case someone wants a quick taxi. You can even just flip open the map to where you taxi trains are sitting and tell them to come pick you up, all without needing a to place a train stop and setup a schedule. Then give you 5 seconds to hop on, and will take you back to their starting location. No more leaving abandoned trains or cars all over the map, as you can just call them again so there's no reason to have to leave them sitting somewhere if it's going to be a while until you need it again.

[csduff]

I do something similar with a personal transport train. It has one station on its list, at my main base. When I use it to get to a location, if I want it to stick around until I'm done, I just make the wait condition 5 seconds and "Player is Present". Unless it is a short journey, you should have plenty of time to input this into the schedule before it arrives at your stop. This way, I can just hop in when I'm done and it immediately takes me home. No mucking about trying to toggle the tiny auto/manual slider.

[bman212121]

That's neat csduff! I was wondering if there was a simple way to change that, and that sounds like an even better solution.

[csduff]

Yeah, when I found the player present option I realized that it would be handy.

I've also put another station in my transport train's schedule that I place all over the place that are disabled by default, but they enable by use of a gate and wall section wired to the station. It is like a pressure pad that enables the station and deploys the train to me. This trick helps by not having to locate and call the train manually to me to get back to my main station.

[zOldBulldog]

Yeah, when I found the player present option I realized that it would be handy.

I've also put another station in my transport train's schedule that I place all over the place that are disabled by default, but they enable by use of a gate and wall section wired to the station. It is like a pressure pad that enables the station and deploys the train to me. This trick helps by not having to locate and call the train manually to me to get back to my main station.

That one sounds really cool. It beats having to worry about where you left your personal train. I am going to have to copy it.

[bman212121]

Yea, I'm definitely going to be playing around with that and see if I can get it setup. That sounds awesome!

[TruePikachu]

Just want to set something straight here:

(unlike Trains, the Tank DOES slow down when it hits things).

I've tested this, it's false; trains do slow down when they hit things. I tested using a large number of penned-in same-force behemeth biters, the destruction was less than impressive since the train only got through a handful before getting stopped.

[zOldBulldog]

Just want to set something straight here:

(unlike Trains, the Tank DOES slow down when it hits things).

I've tested this, it's false; trains do slow down when they hit things. I tested using a large number of penned-in same-force behemeth biters, the destruction was less than impressive since the train only got through a handful before getting stopped.

How many kg train?

[TruePikachu]

Just want to set something straight here:

(unlike Trains, the Tank DOES slow down when it hits things).

I've tested this, it's false; trains do slow down when they hit things. I tested using a large number of penned-in same-force behemeth biters, the destruction was less than impressive since the train only got through a handful before getting stopped.

How many kg train?

Going by grainy map-view screenshots (blame Steam), it looks like it was a 4-6-4 with turrets, making it 40000 weight units (kg?). Checking through Discord logs, it went through 29 behomeths, which was a "super underwhelming result for my test setup" but yielded interesting results in that "apparently my repair bots are happy enough to repari behometh biters if they get damaged".

[BlakeMW]

Just want to set something straight here:

(unlike Trains, the Tank DOES slow down when it hits things).

I've tested this, it's false; trains do slow down when they hit things. I tested using a large number of penned-in same-force behemeth biters, the destruction was less than impressive since the train only got through a handful before getting stopped.

Actually my experience is it's inconsistent: sometimes trains do slow down, sometimes (usually) they don't. Since I don't know how to reproduce the case where they do slow down I ignore it, as the case where they don't slow down is much more common.

My best guess is perhaps trains can "overspeed", that is the kinetic energy the train has built up, can be higher than that required for its maximum speed, as long as the train is overspeeding it can plow through biters without slowing down as the reduction in its kinetic energy doesn't reduce its speed, but if runs into sufficiently many biters within a few frames the energy drops below that required for top speed and it slows down/halts.

In the scenario you have, assuming you have a save, watching at a slow game speed does the train slow down each time it hits a biter, or does it abruptly halt after first plowing through several biters without slowing down?