Friday Facts #377 - New new rails

[Zaflis]

https://imgur.com/a/4TEh7Md
Is it just me, or should there be a place for a railway signal here?

Yes the magenta rail should be cut with a signal, but the entire thing is invalid seeing the middle rail going right and left - colliding in the middle. Just showing the new debug layout.

I'm also wondering that you can't signal this thick stacker:
https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sy ... sbends.png
The solution should be to just skip every second one.

[0xE1]

The ribbon worlds will get a bit more breath room!

[TheKid0z]

This is a welcomed change. I’m still bitter about quality.
Some questions remain that I wish were addressed in the FFF

• What does a roundabout look like now?

• What does a U turn look like now

• An animation for how the new rail planner works?

• There were times when signal placement was not symmetric is it symmetric now?

Some improvements requested

• Like another user mentioned I think rails can be upgraded to concrete to enable train braking research. The research only applies to concrete rails

• Enable modding for rail/signal/train graphics. I’d love have trains that look different

• Bring back the idea of trains derailing that was teased in an ancient FFF. At least I’d like to see explosions when two trains collide (maybe mod access), a puff of blood when a player gets run over

• Also I don’t think anyone here would be mad if you broke saves. If breaking saves is going to happen in 2.1 I’d rather wish it happens when 2.0 is released. Honestly why bother keeping compatibility for such a big update. This is a chance for the developers to add features that were not possible before. Limiting yourselves I feel

[picklock]

Great news. That gives me a lot of new opportunities to build my railways in the future.

[Sopenas]

Now this is really great news. Now i keep my fingers crossed for rail bridges/tunnels.

[MrGuffels]

Best thing from the update: 32 range power poles

[thedoh]

Is no one going to mention the combinator-looking thing being put into a red chest?

I, for one, welcome our new rail overlords! Remember, folks, you can download older versions of Factorio so you can keep onto your older saves once they become unsupported.

[Mr. Tact]

OMG! Despite having a couple of thousand hours in Factorio, I haven't really played much since 1.0 was released. If this was put in the game today I would probably spend the next 12 hours playing Factorio.

[QGamer]

I'm excited about the change!

[JackTheSpades]

Another thrilling change. However the thing I'd wanna see more in terms of trains than "better rails" is "better trains".

My biggest grievance with trains is that they switch to manual mode when some part of them is destroyed which causes the entire train to just stop dead where it is. Meaning that if a train happens to run into an expansion party and gets slowed down enough for one part of it to be destroyed... then the whole cargo is probably lost.
Or worse.
Individual parts of the train remain on the tracks and deadlock the whole train system with no automated way of fixing this. For a game that is all about automating every minute detail, having your entire supply change deadlock with no way other than manually fixing it feels like a huge oversight.
Likewise, if any part of your track gets destroyed by random spitter attacks, it's game over.

Another thing is being able to change the name of a train station in the train schedule but keep the underlying conditions. There's nothing worse than having a complex wait condition and being unable to copy it over for a new train stop because you can't change the name of the station.

Things like Tier 2 trains and wagons could also be amazing.
An equipment grid for the locomotives to add shields, laser turrets and maybe even roboports for repairs. For wagons, being able to connect to the logistic network would be a dream come true. Currently it requires a rather convoluted setup of circuit conditions to read the train content and a constant combinator + requestor chest to achieve something similar... except it doesn't work quite as well because if the train leaves the station but still has to wait, the "read train content" signal switches to zero, which would cause the circuit to start infinitely loading your train with whatever is in the requestor chest. So in addition the inserter has to be hooked up to the "train in station" signal.

I recently build a new massive outpost and had to run my spidertrons back and forth rather than my faster train network. Because doing it manually I always forgot some items the logistic network could have remembered for me.

Lastly, train speed and breaking force seem like great candidates for more "peaceful" infinite research.
Playing on peaceful with no biters, mining productivity is the only real worthwhile research. Bot speed is great but at a certain point the gain becomes negligible given the cost so you're only left with mining prod.

[morsk]

Is no one going to mention the combinator-looking thing being put into a red chest?

It's hard to imagine a 3rd combinator, unless they want to make memory cells easier, or something like that. A unique ID would be useful. Long-range transmission without wires would be useful. Any type of optimization so they don't update needlessly would be useful at large scales.

[Omnifarious]

One thing I would love to see would be a rail planner that allowed you to plan long distance rails with multiple parallel tracks and the ability to separately (and/or together) route around trees, rocks, or cliffs. Personally, I really hate harming trees, and can't harm cliffs until I have cliff explosives (and I prefer not to anyway), but I could care less about rocks. And I also want two or possibly 4 parallel lines. The current option for tree, cliff and rock avoidance works for me, but it's really fiddly to manage multiple parallel lines.

Ideally, it might be nice to associate a cost for mowing down a tree, rock or cliff and have the planner act accordingly. Something like, an ordinary tile is 1 point, every tree is worth 4 points, a tile with a rock is 1 point, and a cliff tile is 20 points.

The people who talk the most seem to go for 'chunk aligned rail blueprints' and just stomp their way across the landscape with these. I really prefer a more organic look to my factories. I only use blueprints for intersections.

I love the changes you've describe in this FFF though. Thank you!

[adam_bise]

Is no one going to mention the combinator-looking thing being put into a red chest?

It's hard to imagine a 3rd combinator, unless they want to make memory cells easier, or something like that. A unique ID would be useful. Long-range transmission without wires would be useful. Any type of optimization so they don't update needlessly would be useful at large scales.

Bro what IS that? Definitely looks like a combinator, but a triangle?

Maybe a counter or a multiplexer?

So mysterious!!

[AntiElitz]

Is no one going to mention the combinator-looking thing being put into a red chest?

I, for one, welcome our new rail overlords! Remember, folks, you can download older versions of Factorio so you can keep onto your older saves once they become unsupported.

I'll totally boost that speculation train: Wireless signal combinator confirmed?

[ikarikeiji]

• What does a roundabout look like now?

I'd like to see this too.

My standard rail building method one I've not really seen elsewhere, but I just like it: 3 tracks, 2 spaces between each, middle rail reserved for 2-way manual use, signals on the inside of the outer rails (so trains drive on the left), with junctions being roundabouts for the automated (outer) tracks with basic turns inside for the manual middle rail. It ends up working out really nicely for signal positions too.

So naturally I'm curious to see if this design would still work with the new rails, or if it'd be totally broken.

That said, simply the ability to use the "half-diagonal" rails makes this a fantastic update in my view! And not one that I was at all expecting. After all I had previously read about all the trouble JBSS Bahn had when deciding to move from 45 degree geometry to 22.5 degree geometry. There's just so many combinations to consider now! So it's fascinating to see Factorio manage this.

• What does a U turn look like now

See viewtopic.php?p=591945#p591945 (old) vs viewtopic.php?p=591969#p591969 (new)

• An animation for how the new rail planner works?

I would imagine much the same as the old one? They only added new possibilities to it.

• There were times when signal placement was not symmetric is it symmetric now?

Given you still have to place signals in free spaces next to rails I don't think so.

I would quite like to see Factorio adopt Voxel Tycoon style signals. Namely that signals are just added to rails and do not take up any space themselves, but are drawn on the edge of the rail tile. This would allow signalling rails that had no gap between them, and should give you symmetric signals - and if we do get symmetric signals then I'd really like a display option to flip them to the other side of the rail, so you could choose whether you wanted trains to follow signals on their right (as is current) or on their left.

• Like another user mentioned I think rails can be upgraded to concrete to enable train braking research. The research only applies to concrete rails

I'd like to see mod support for multiple rail types that can control different speed limits and maximum braking force etc. I'd definitely play with a mod that added that. I don't think it'd be suitable for vanilla though.

• Enable modding for rail/signal/train graphics. I’d love have trains that look different

Isn't this already available? I know I've seen mods that give different looking trains, not sure about the rails or signals themselves but I would have thought any graphics could be changed. Though mod support for different lengths of train units (other than 6 tiles) would be sweet.

• Bring back the idea of trains derailing that was teased in an ancient FFF. At least I’d like to see explosions when two trains collide (maybe mod access), a puff of blood when a player gets run over

Yes, please! Trains really shouldn't just stop dead when they hit the end of the line or another train, whether or not they take damage... Train units that hit the end of the line should keep going and plough through whatever they hit, they should gradually slow as they drag along the ground and eventually come to a halt, after doing damage to (or destroying) everything in their path as well as themselves. They should start to spin round and move left and right a bit as well, mainly influenced by what they hit. And train units that hit another train unit should derail and do the same. The only exception should be if the train is going very slowly, e.g. for linking to another. I think it'd need to be paired with an automatic brake for manual driving though so that you didn't run the risk of destroying your train (and yourself) every time you manually drove to the end of a line.

No blood from running over players though, please and thank you.

• Also I don’t think anyone here would be mad if you broke saves. If breaking saves is going to happen in 2.1 I’d rather wish it happens when 2.0 is released. Honestly why bother keeping compatibility for such a big update. This is a chance for the developers to add features that were not possible before. Limiting yourselves I feel

Err, well, here's someone who would be.

The Factorio team have a great track record of not breaking saves, so as long as you can still download old versions, you can take very old saves and upgrade one by one through several key versions. Breaking 1.1 saves in 2.1 means you can upgrade 1.1 -> 2.0, fix whatever needs fixing (e.g. your rails), then upgrade 2.0 -> 2.1, whereas what you're suggesting is to not allow this at all: you'd upgrade 1.1 -> 2.0 and your rails would just disappear. I don't think anyone would enjoy that.

And I don't think they're limiting themselves by doing things the correct way. I don't really think there's any feature that simply cannot be done without at least "stepping-stone" compatibility, unless they want to make an entirely different game altogether.

[ikarikeiji]

One thing I would love to see would be a rail planner that allowed you to plan long distance rails with multiple parallel tracks and the ability to separately (and/or together) route around trees, rocks, or cliffs. Personally, I really hate harming trees, and can't harm cliffs until I have cliff explosives (and I prefer not to anyway), but I could care less about rocks. And I also want two or possibly 4 parallel lines. The current option for tree, cliff and rock avoidance works for me, but it's really fiddly to manage multiple parallel lines.

Ideally, it might be nice to associate a cost for mowing down a tree, rock or cliff and have the planner act accordingly. Something like, an ordinary tile is 1 point, every tree is worth 4 points, a tile with a rock is 1 point, and a cliff tile is 20 points.

The people who talk the most seem to go for 'chunk aligned rail blueprints' and just stomp their way across the landscape with these. I really prefer a more organic look to my factories. I only use blueprints for intersections.

I love the changes you've describe in this FFF though. Thank you!

Do you fancy multiplayer, because I think we'd get along very well ;)

I'd give a +1 to all of this: I don't mind going through one or two odd trees in the middle of nowhere, or rocks, but I like to avoid forests, and I almost never blow up cliffs even once I'm able to.

I'd also really like a global option (one that can be turned on and off at will, like "alt mode" or the personal roboport) to exclude cliffs from ever being marked for deconstruction by any means, not just the rail planner.

And speaking of deconstruction, can we please make it take some amount of time for robots to deconstruct things? Varying per entity type (with mod support of course) - and it should probably be similar to the time it takes to be "mined" by the player, with cliffs taking longer than anything. You could still spam your base with thousands of robots to get stuff done quickly - but it would just feel so much more "right" if a single bot couldn't just pocket an entire rocket silo or whatnot in a millisecond.

[steinio]

Is no one going to mention the combinator-looking thing being put into a red chest?

I, for one, welcome our new rail overlords! Remember, folks, you can download older versions of Factorio so you can keep onto your older saves once they become unsupported.

I'll totally boost that speculation train: Wireless signal combinator confirmed?

It's just the grabbing part of the inserter...

I assume modding rails will be harder too as a lot more graphics are needed.
Will we get more than one rail group then?

[kirkbauer]

What about gates? I have wasted some time in the past because I can't put a gate across a curved section of track so I had to rework things. I'm curious if this changes at all?

[Zenonas112]

What a wonderful update!! It would be awesome if we could get rail bridges and tunnels as well. Regardless looking forwards to a new update!!

[ChefOfRamen]

I was delighted to hear that big electric poles were extended… and then disappointed when I realised that with the larger turning circles I still won't be able to fit a roundabout in a single rail tile.