Yet another Friday with unprecedented changes being announced. Absolutely insane.
Ha! Thinking forward, no idea how you will top these past few weeks posts' but I have no doubt you will!
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As mentioned, the Hopper/Funnel unloader and corresponding Silo loader would be exciting to see included as new entities if possible (And requisite elevated station.) All that is missing now is elevated foot/traffic bridges. Also elevated conveyor belts!
Electric poles with supports above water would be awesome if possible. Also electric poles or wires somehow integrated/given their own supports.
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Visual control.
A big concern for many, myself included is obfuscated view due to the new bridge entities. If not already added, please reconsider supporting an 'xray'/reveal-behind ability alt-like hotkey to make elevated entities hidden/transparent and click through, for operation on items behind. I often have this issue already trying to access inserters/etc behind horizontal trains.
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fly wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2023 12:27 pm
Regarding the visual aspect, as a few others have already mentioned, it resembles more of a rollercoaster than a real railroad. I'd be happier to see the ramp made even longer.
Re rollercoster feel: I agree, but mainly due to them using wooden ties. I think instead metal girders/steel ties would help a lot with making some of us take the tracks more seriously?
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Something I'd like to see is speed integration. Each rail entity is given max speed ratings and turns/ramps are lower so when pathing a route, would preemptively slow to meet speed limit -- just like preemptively slows before signals.
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Panzerknacker wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2023 1:19 pm
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.
I concur. They should have the same 4x4 hitbox. Counter argument: Otherwise add more granular hitboxes to other entities. Reason: its the only one in the game with an unusual hitbox. There are plenty of others that could use more refinement but dont. If we open this box, others should be reassessed.
And actually, I'm surprised there are so many iterations of elevated supports. It seems unnecessary since these could have been one or two sprites at most, one or two main rail base support sprites (just like the ramps) for rail with a rotating attachment top sprite to fit each rotation of the rails would suffice. This way they would all also have the same footprint.
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Peevester wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2023 1:37 pm
A trestle instead of a center support is a cool idea, since a lot of the time you're running parallel tracks anyway, and it would let you run a continuous belt (or pavement) under the train, instead of having to weave around supports every once in a while.
This sounds like a great idea. Would be really cool to have a bi-level system with two way traffic split between the top and bottom. Or would the space be open for use with anything - like belts/pipes etc?
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Could locomotives provide bidirectionally push/pull?
Seconded. This would make complete sense.
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FuryoftheStars wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 5:33 am
blazespinnaker wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:58 am
There can also be optional based realism, for example inventory. Probably a mod, but given the lazy bastard achievement, I believe an option which severely restricted inventory (eg, carrying around a stack of oil refineries? whaaat?) would have been a cool idea. Along with that though should come some kind of early placement robots. Would make speed running more interesting as well.
You don't know how badly I've wanted to do something like this. But for me, I'd want to take it to the point were everything had a "volume", that way you couldn't carry some of these around in your backpack, car trunk, or even cargo wagon (being able to fit another cargo wagon (or locomotive) inside of a cargo wagon? Let alone dozens?), but then you'd need a way to construct (and deconstruct) these on site via builders (which we don't get until well after oil) out of their base components.
Thats exciting to think about. The only solution I can imagine is if something like the equipment-gantry (
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/equipment-gantry) was actually able to place the final active entity.
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I'm all for locking this behind the expansion. They clearly stated how long it took to develop. What if all the train enthusiasts and of those who also didn't care as much about the other aspects of the game decided to skip the expansion if this was included for free? I'd say that would have been a missed opportunity.
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I feel Wube has given us so much already, its greedy to ask for more after what we've seen presented... though humbly, it would be cool to see a few additions/changes.