Friday Facts #378 - Trains on another level

[BicycleEater]

Third, I notice we can't support the half-diagonals, which is quite interesting. I understand why, it just seems an odd limitation

Wrong.

The rail support follows the style of the ramp, but with the difference that it can be rotated in 8 directions.

Ahhhh, yup, I'm dumb.
Fair enough.

[SnowZyDe]

For some reason it seems to me that next Friday Facts #379 they will show us electric trains.

[Violet_Scarelli]

What I'd really like to see is a rail support that's got a hollow base, so we can run tracks right on top of each other.

[bobucles]

Amazing FFF that sets expectations and then blows them out of the water. The factorio devs haven't run out of steam yet.

I wonder if there will be light fixtures that can go on elevated rails. No particular reason, but it'd probably look cool.

The big player issue will be trying to see underneath a messy overhead train layer. Games typically try to handle this by making some kind of opacity filter for the overhead stuff. The player walks underneath, or tries doing something with the mouse cursor, and the overhead stuff turns nearly transparent to make the ground level visible. Riftbreaker had an article on it some time back, forgot what the effect was called.

[Thebri]

I have to add to all of this voices.

I wanted that for the longest time!

Also we need a T-Shirt with some bridging on it!

[blazespinnaker]

While very cool and will be lots of fun to play with, I doubt it will be a panacea - especially for dense stuff, like city blocks close together.

With only two levels, there is only so much you can do.

I suspect the biggest over all impact that levels will have will be vastly simplifying trains and signaling. Some folks might use them for increased throughput but it will probably just be mostly for fun rather than necessity.

[SnowZyDe]

While very cool and will be lots of fun to play with, I doubt it will be a panacea - especially for dense stuff, like city blocks close together.

With only two levels, there is only so much you can do.

I suspect the biggest over all impact that levels will have will be vastly simplifying trains and signaling. Some folks might use them for increased throughput but it will probably just be mostly for fun rather than necessity.

it seems to me that there is nothing to wait for except getting pleasure from the game and the developers give us this pleasure.

[adam_bise]

The first thing I'm going to do is make a train waffle.

[robot256]

While very cool and will be lots of fun to play with, I doubt it will be a panacea - especially for dense stuff, like city blocks close together.

With only two levels, there is only so much you can do.

I suspect the biggest over all impact that levels will have will be vastly simplifying trains and signaling. Some folks might use them for increased throughput but it will probably just be mostly for fun rather than necessity.

There will be some interesting effects of having bridges appear later in the tech tree. If you already have a train network, you'll be able to upgrade existing junctions. I'm very much looking forward to bridging trains over my spaghetti bases.

For city blocks, there is a LOT you can do, for example have east-west rails on the ground and vertical rails on bridges. Or add elevated express lanes to existing rail grids on the ground, on a coarser grid. This will depend a lot on how the pathfinder behaves--will it be modified to prefer routes with fewer junctions or signal blocks? Or will trains only take the express bridges when the lower levels are too crowded?

[bobucles]

The train pathing system uses a cost system where trains try to find the fastest route. It's fairly robust on its own but obviously can not predict the future.

Train junctions suffer diminishing returns as lanes get added. Consider a train crossing 8 lanes of traffic, it's effectively blocking 8 lanes to move itself. Each new lane gives a train more power to block lanes, so even a gigantic intersection might only move the same level of traffic as a few straight lines. Elevated rail will fix this. Some trains can go high while others go low, and crossings can have trains cross without blocking each other. Big Rail planners are salivating.

[Svip]

A lot of posters were speculating about the accumulators isolated on the island, and how they were powering the radar. The answer is straightforward; they are powered. But how are they powered, one counters. I apologise if someone has already suggested this, but the most obvious answer is what's already possible in Factorio: The island is actually not that far from land, and power lines were there to power the accumulators, but were removed before the screenshot was taken. If you remove power supply to fully charged accumulators, they don't lose their charge, after all.

Why would they do that, you ask? One is a staging screenshot issue, where it wouldn't look too impressive if the island appeared just off the coast of mainland. Another is a hint of a new feature, as other have speculated. But rather than the rail supplying power, I have a different suggestion. I posit that when you disassemble a fully charged accumulator, it maintains its charge. And maybe it's possible to charge accumulators in an assembly line (similar to how it's possible in Dyson Sphere Program), thus allowing the player to place fully charge accumulators, which could be very useful in situations far away from base, and where relying on solar power is not good enough.

[morsk]

I posit that when you disassemble a fully charged accumulator, it maintains its charge. And maybe it's possible to charge accumulators in an assembly line (similar to how it's possible in Dyson Sphere Program), thus allowing the player to place fully charge accumulators, which could be very useful in situations far away from base, and where relying on solar power is not good enough.

This would not be worth implementing unless there are planets with no sunlight, or which have cave areas without sunlight. Solar panels are moderately wasteful of space, but still on the same order of magnitude as the accumulators, so there's not much gain in enabling accumulator-only builds by shipping them.

There'd probably also have to be no water, or else we'd just bring wires powered by nuclear. Or a transition to a cave surface where we aren't allowed to bring through wires, only items.

[mcdjfp]

Really excited about this update. When I think about the number of deaths due to trains this will prevent in my base.

[D99D99D99]

What if we could have elevated train stops, that unloaded into elevated logistical storage boxes? Given, we'd also need elevated inserters. Or do we? What if we could eventualy research Cargo Wagons that could interact with logistical robots?

[Svip]

I posit that when you disassemble a fully charged accumulator, it maintains its charge. And maybe it's possible to charge accumulators in an assembly line (similar to how it's possible in Dyson Sphere Program), thus allowing the player to place fully charge accumulators, which could be very useful in situations far away from base, and where relying on solar power is not good enough.

This would not be worth implementing unless there are planets with no sunlight, or which have cave areas without sunlight. Solar panels are moderately wasteful of space, but still on the same order of magnitude as the accumulators, so there's not much gain in enabling accumulator-only builds by shipping them.

There'd probably also have to be no water, or else we'd just bring wires powered by nuclear. Or a transition to a cave surface where we aren't allowed to bring through wires, only items.

Charged accumulators would definitely be more of a transitional technology on exploring new planets. If Space Exploration is any indication, some planets will have reduced efficiency for solar planets (due to atmosphere), or a day-night cycle that makes them almost useless. I doubt there will be any planet we cannot use nuclear power on, but that requires a base to have been set up. This makes charged accumulators a useful device when exploring a new planet.

[Locane]

Trains can get pretty fast, but take a while to accelerate up to full speed, so intersections really bog things down. The intersections that these ramps will enable will make dense train bases far faster and more efficient than is currently possible.

This is a bit like underground pipes or belts. Imagine trying to build without those? We've been building without underground trains all this time. Finally having them will be a game changer. It's not a perfect analogy, since trains can merge onto shared lines more cleanly than sushi belts, but not having a way to cross rails without stopping traffic has been a major constraint in what can be done with them.

Ah. I do use trains a bunch, but not as much as I see other mega-bases using them - like I've never had a problem with Too Many Trains trying to get through an intersection that I couldn't solve by simply building a second parallel rail. In fact I've only ever had to do that once, in all my thousands of hours playing, and that's in my current Space Exploration run.

I can see having separate Train Highways that speed across something being helpful, but I guess it just seems like a lot of dev and art effort that could have gone to adding new aliens or undoing the Quality debacle that Kovarex seems to think is fun.

I do like the updated Train graphics and functionality from the last post, to be clear, so I'm not just hating everything new like some kind of troll; it just feels to me personally like Wube bottled lightning with their game and only understand 75% of why it's fun and how it's used.

[pleegwat]

I doubt there will be any planet we cannot use nuclear power on, but that requires a base to have been set up.

One without surface water, perhaps?

[ryanalpasta]

Holy crap the graphics are Beautiful. When I scrolled to the first major 2-layer intersection my jaw literally dropped, the close up on the ramp was SO detailed too, dang my bases are gonna be Spaghet. So hyped for this expansion, I keep ranting to my wife about how the robots are gonna fly better now and she's just like "that sounds exciting?" =P

[TheRaph]

A question:

1. If I walk with my character on that upper-level train. Are I'm able to jump off? Or will that rail prevent me from doing so?
2. And in case i can jump off will I just go as if the rails ar laying on the floor or will I arrive some pixels down because in respect to pseudo 3D beeing above the ground?
3. In case of side rail will prevent me from falling down from the track. Can I jump at the End or at crossings (like in picture) were the side rails are paused.
4. If 3 is true, will there be an effect like in 2 on places were I can jump off?

What I'm intuitively would expect is: Entereing the upper-level trains on ramps should be possible. You should only able to hop off at places were no siderails are. An if doing so you should land somthing "down".

[Loewchen]

A question:

1. If I walk with my character on that upper-level train.

Assuming you mean upper level rail: You can't.