electric trains

[DrFaceless]

That would be cool

[zOldBulldog]

Very cool.

[JackGruff]

Cool, that would be.

[herkalurk]

As an old ottd player I'd love to see the ability to have a second recipe for trains and track to make them electric. The rails could be connected to the grid and draw power depending on train usage. Mainly because I don't like fuelling trains. Plus it would be cool to see electric trains.

I feel like it would be a large thing to add, since you would probably need another research object, plus different requirements for the track. You probably would need a new item that had a requirement for 1 train track and 2-4 copper wire. Then the train engine would have to convert to using all electric engines. It could be done, just not sure if it's worth it at this point in game development.

[Bauer]

As an old ottd player I'd love to see the ability to have a second recipe for trains and track to make them electric. The rails could be connected to the grid and draw power depending on train usage. Mainly because I don't like fuelling trains. Plus it would be cool to see electric trains.

I feel like it would be a large thing to add, since you would probably need another research object, plus different requirements for the track. You probably would need a new item that had a requirement for 1 train track and 2-4 copper wire. Then the train engine would have to convert to using all electric engines. It could be done, just not sure if it's worth it at this point in game development.

Replace the copper wires with wooden poles. That would be a better sink for wood compared to the usual "thermal recycling".

To make it attractive, the electric train would need to be supperior to uranium fuel driven regular trains, i.e. similar acceleration and engine wagons that both have cargo and engine function. Shorter trains with mega acceleration and deceleration would be very nice.

[Koub]

Sorry guys, but this will probably never happen. It has been suggested a lot of times, and the devs' answer has always been some kind of "No". Just search in the Ideas and Suggestions subforum for "Electric trains", and you'll see.
[Koub] Moved to "Not implemented".

[JangoBunBun]

TL;DR

More types of train cars and locomotives, especially electricity-powered trains.

What ?

Trains, trains, and more trains! Electric locomotives with accumulator cars, gun turret, laser turret, and flamethrower turret cars.

But specifically, what am I suggesting?

• 1. First off, electric locomotives. Same stats as the "normal" locomotive, but it runs off electricity stored in the locomotive or an accumulator car, and possibly if the locomotive is on a rail in the radius of a power pole it would pull power straight off the grid. If the train pulls into a station that's in the radius of a power pole, it will charge.
  
  2. I mentioned accumulator cars, these are pretty straight-forward, they provide bonus power to electric locomotives or laser turret wagons.
  
  3. That leads me to: Turret cars. We already have artillery wagons, so why not expand that to the other types of turrets? Gun Turret Wagons would have slots for ammo, and would get tech bonuses from gun turret research. Laser turrets would draw from their own internal power or accumulator cars, and would benefit from laser turret research, and flamethrower turret wagons would be loaded with liquid oil for fuel, or draw from a connected fluid wagon.

Why ?

Well, part of the reason I love factorio is because the game lets you set up complex train networks, but it doesn't give you many options for doing so. We have options for ore smelting. Electric furnaces take more power, and are bigger; but can be moduled and beaconed. Level 2 stone furnaces are smaller and don't take power, but you're forced to supply them with coal to run. We currently don't have that choice for train networks. The most choice we have is if we want a single-headed train or a doubled headed train, and if we want loops in our trail interchanges or not. By adding more train cars we have more depth to the rail mechanics.

[Koub]

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=50991&hilit=electric+trains
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=53160&hilit=electric+trains
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=54390&hilit=electric+trains
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=60069&hilit=electric+trains
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59481&hilit=electric+trains
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=61125&hilit=electric+trains
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59935&hilit=electric+trains

This is just for the electric train suggestions active in the last year or so, you can search back sinde the very beginning of the suggestions subforum.

I lack the time to do a search, but your other suggestions is almost as common. You should use it from time to time , upper right corner on the forum page.

[JangoBunBun]

I did a search just before posting and got a 404, did there happen to be any server issues around that time?

[Koub]

Sorry, can't tell. But overall, I have super karma, never got a 404 on this forum ^^.

[DarknessTheDemon]

TL;DR

Trains that works with electricity

What ?

Train that works with electricity, without fuel

Why ?

There will be a upgrade for the train, for those who preffer use only electricity.

[DaleStan]

You probably want one of
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/magu5026/ElectricTrain
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ElectricTrains

I haven't tried either of them, so I can't vouch for one over the other.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.

[bobingabout]

Due to the way the power grid works, from what I've been told, there will never be a locomotive added to the game that can draw power straight from the electric grid.

There also won't be multiple types of rail track because the checks of if it is on a rail or not has enough overhead without also checking to see the type of the rails ahead to see if it can travel over them.

[eradicator]

Due to the way the power grid works, from what I've been told, there will never be a locomotive added to the game that can draw power straight from the electric grid.

Yes. Due to performance cost of checking electic network availability on a moving object.

There also won't be multiple types of rail track because the checks of if it is on a rail or not has enough overhead without also checking to see the type of the rails ahead to see if it can travel over them.

As far as i remember Rsed only ever said that he removed the ability to add new rail types "because different type rail trains would still collide if they cross each other and share the same signals" or similar semi-nonsense reasons (nonsense because that is expected behavior and not a reason to disable the feature). I've never seen him state performance as a reason, and as i'm sure you remember this used to work in 0.14 and earlier.

[bobingabout]

I've never seen him state performance as a reason, and as i'm sure you remember this used to work in 0.14 and earlier.

I've had long talks in the discord source access channel with the devs, especially Rseding.
having "rail type" would need to be saved to the map, plus some other reasons like RAM usage, and additional run-time checks, and those kinds of things, which is why it was removed. Adding rail type back in is not a direction they want to go.

[eradicator]

I've never seen him state performance as a reason, and as i'm sure you remember this used to work in 0.14 and earlier.

I've had long talks in the discord source access channel with the devs, especially Rseding.
having "rail type" would need to be saved to the map, plus some other reasons like RAM usage, and additional run-time checks, and those kinds of things, which is why it was removed. Adding rail type back in is not a direction they want to go.

Not unexpected, but rail-category still exists as a prototype. If what you say is true i'd have expected that the whole prototype would be removed :). I didn't expect that feature to come back, just said that the reasons i never personally saw Rsed say anything about performance ^^.... back to thread.

[ondrii]

Electric Locomotives have performance issue because of moving train and checking it is still in range of electric poles?
The solution is simpler than you think.
Also it could be more CPU friendly than normal locomotives (more details at the end).
Add new type of rails - electric rail (or even use existing one) and do not take energy from electric poles but the rails should be as electric poles (to be more precise - rails have copper cable inside) and electric locomotives should take energy from such rails. There would be more ideas how to connect rails to electrical network - direct from electric poles or through train stop (so electric pole - train stop - electric rails).

What with CPU usage? Normal locomotives needs to count separately - they have different types of fuel and different level of consumption of it.
For electric locomotives it is easy like solar panels - number of running electric locomotives * energy consumption, just single calculation for all locomotives (within same electrical network).

SO ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES CAN BE LESS CPU KILLER than normal locomotives, just implement it in the right way.

[Optera]

What with CPU usage? Normal locomotives needs to count separately - they have different types of fuel and different level of consumption of it.
For electric locomotives it is easy like solar panels - number of running electric locomotives * energy consumption, just single calculation for all locomotives (within same electrical network).

SO ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES CAN BE LESS CPU KILLER than normal locomotives, just implement it in the right way.

That oversimplification is just terrible.
An idling locomotive would drain the same energy as one under full load.

Energy usage has to be calculated per train for 2 stages to be in line with current burner locomotives.
Accelerating, driving at speed cap: nominal energy consumption
any other state: no energy consumption

A realistic energy model for electric, and fuel burning, trains should have 4 states.
Accelerating: max energy consumption
Cruise Speed: nominal energy consumption
breaking: energy generation (electric only)
stopped/idling: minimal or no consumption (we don't have lighting, heating or air conditioning in freight trains, the few Watts a locomotive needs to keep its systems running are neglect able)

[bobingabout]

Add new type of rails - electric rail (or even use existing one) and do not take energy from electric poles but the rails should be as electric poles (to be more precise - rails have copper cable inside) and electric locomotives should take energy from such rails.

We've talked about this idea too. The devs I spoke to don't want to take that route either because... well, I've already said it earlier, "Additional overheard", having to add extra data to the save game, and do additional checks while the locomotive is in motion to see if it is still on a powered rail.

Believe me, I've the accumulator train was on the end of a long list of electric locomotive proposals that I went over with them, and all of them were ruled out for one reason or another.