Friday Facts #378 - Trains on another level

[TheoMarque]

My boyfriend from above when he saw elevated trains on FFF said: Now I can play with you.
He have tons of fun for resolving my spaghetti train network into useful things.

But into the topic.

If you built supports for heave rail Bridges - maybe add new for power lines? Is awful to set landfill before put a electric poles. Maybe a function to snap electric network into rails? Not by default but built like semaphores.

Next request is fill a gap for unloading/loading stations.
Maybe this elevated improvement touch belts? I know, there are underground belts but sometimes spam chain of underground entrance/exit is not a betst way to do "external long network".

Just for fun - New achievement: "Something fishy" - die when exit from train over water body.

[FasterJump]

As we can’t walk on the bridges what happens if for example a train runs out of fuel on elevated tracks over water?

If you don't want to use landfill... Deconstruction using robots? You really don't want your trains to run out of fuel

[eable2]

This is really really great work, and I appreciate how hard this must have been to implement!

As excited as I am, I do have a small critique: Even though the ramp entities are huge, they still feel a little small and steep for how fast trains in Factorio can get. In the GIFs shown, it feels like the trains should be launching off of the rails. I don't think Factorio trains have upstop wheels!

My suggestion is therefore to force trains to slow down if they're going on a ramp. Or another idea, if you're feeling adventurous, would be to have another even huger ramp (2x size?) that lets trains go at full speed.

[MEOWMI]

Wow, it really keeps getting better! This looks beautiful both visually, but also so pleasing as an engine feature. Such a beautiful integration into the game!

[j_matya]

Can the player enter/exit the train when it's elevated or walk on the elevated tracks?
And can elevated trains collide with anything? like a spidertron for example

Player can exit/enter elevated trains fine. (It would be quite annoying otherwise)
They only collide with few entities, as stated in the fff (Big electric poles, robport, rocket silo)

How can you exit when train is over water?
Could we deadlock the game by being on a train that runs out of fuel over water, or is it "just" a death sentence?

Also, very good, cant wait for the elevated train-spaghetti.

[Hovel]

Can we walk on the bridges?

You can't. biters also can't walk it.

If you can't walk on the rail bridges, how will you build long bridges? Only by riding the train and having personal roboports? This seems a bit restricted.

I can understand you are trying to avoid biters to cross, but the engineer(s) should be able to walk it.

(edit typo)

[Sopenas]

Thank you. Now just tell how much expansion will cost

[Taneeda]

Can we walk on the bridges?

You can't. biters also can't walk it.

But why? Sounds funny to me when biters possibly could attack from my spaghetti bridges btw, awesome train news, HYPE TRAIN

[Jwebb]

Made an account just to comment this but this is incredible, very excited for the expansion!

[BrainlessTeddy]

Hooo shit. Ok I think I need to change the way I think about this expansion pack. But this changes everything about what I thought Factorio could be. Also really nice to hear that Quality, elevated rails and Space Age are all seperate mods.

[deer_buster]

So, I like what you're doing here. One thing I would like to see for the expansion. Diagonal belts please. The step diagonal belts look terrible, and I have always hated them.

[Brathahn]

spaghet.gif (11.79 MiB) Viewed 5576 times

[Peevester]

Will biters climb the ramps or attack the supports? Can they go over cliffs?

Going up instead of down is the right choice. I wouldn't mind seeing belts working this way too, undergroundies are kind of weird when you think about it, snaking up and down out of the ground every so many spaces. Having them go over instead of under is more in line with how we actually use conveyor belt in the real world. It would be really fun to have sorters and diverters, too.

EDIT: To explain the difference - a diverter works much like a splitter, only the secondary output runs at 90 degrees (or sometimes 45 degrees) to a continuing straight main line (think of how much space that would save). A sorter can be simulated as a bunch of splitters in sequence, but it's hard to make room for that in factorio. Maybe it's not so much an issue because mixed belts are so rarely a thing except in starter areas with multiple mining products in the same patch. Maybe a tile that works just like a splitter, except that instead of running parallel, one output is directly right or left, would scratch that itch for me.

[kirkbauer]

This is really exciting, thank you! I have two questions:

• What happens if you exit a train over water, or if a train runs out of fuel over water?

• Is an overwater train support the same entity as an overland train support? I'm wondering if the former takes more concrete to create

[Mskvaer]

OH!

FUCK!

YES!

Succintly put, my sentiment exactly

[Abarel]

As we can’t walk on the bridges what happens if for example a train runs out of fuel on elevated tracks over water?

Not sure if you could solve it by spidertron, jetpack or something similar, but you could drive a locomotive by hand (to ignore signals) to replenish fuel...

[Panzerknacker]

This is absolutely cool stuff, I love those complex crossings in the example screenshots. Unfortunately though I do have to be honest and make a few remarks about things that I would rather see different, hereby understanding the enourmous amount of work you put into this already. First, I don't like how you can rotate the support in 8 directions, that conflicts too much with the rest of the game imo. Why not make a universal (round?) support that the rail will attach to in a neat manner when laid over it? And it does not make sense that the ground footprint becomes different when the support is rotated, it's the same structure after all. This adds unneeded un-fun complexity IMO. Also, I don't like the look of the elevated rail itself. This looks more like a roller coaster track than something that can carry a badass couple-hundred-tons train that kills anything standing in it's path. I understand that you try to make the rail see-through but I'm affraid that having a multi-layer system in the game will require modification of the game engine anyway, like being able to hide the elevate rails by mouse-over or with a button somewhere like other games do also. Even with the see-through rails it seems still hard to see or build what's underneath there.

Still hats off guys keep up the good work this is gonna be one sick game.

[adam_bise]

Would an elevated artillery train be invulnerable?

[BattleFluffy]

This is awesome!
Can bitter attack the elevated train?
What happen if an elevated rail is destroyed and a train is driven off the end, does it just stop like with regular ground rail?

[Zap]

I had to pick up my jaw from the floor after I saw that first image and realized what I was about to witness