Planes, trains and automobiles....

[marginoferror]

I agree that railways in adverse terrain should be harder to build.

One very practical advantage to trains with multiple cars is that the driver could be isolated from the passengers. That's mostly an organizational feature, but it means that you can leave the passenger car unlocked without leaving the engine car unlocked.

Stations are not an absolute requirement. There are various tricks you can use to operate trains even without stations and with only very brief sections of double tracks to allow trains to pass one another. In the example in Cambodia, the bamboo trains there are actually completely disassembled and removed from the tracks in order to let a train move in the opposite direction. Custom is that the train with the most passengers "wins" and doesn't have to disassemble, but that the passengers of that train have to help disassemble the train of the "loser".

You are correct that steam engines require water. However, it would be absurd to make players use the "water" available in the game to drive a steam engine. The game is completely arbitrary in what things that logically require water actually require the water resource, and the rates for gathering "water" are absurd at any rate. Water in the game should be considered a balancing tool used arbitrarily by the programmers rather than a realistic feature. I would probably let trains run just with coal, at least unless water as a resource is completely redesigned.

[LordLemos]

And the great from it is that someone could get faster and bring faster what is needed from other city. I think that will be not so hard to add the train. So what you guys think? This is a better ideia ?

[joo]

I also like the idea of trains - they would make for a very immersive game experience, but would take some thought and programming to implement, so probably not at the moment.

The train station should be a building in the location, in which the trains arrive and depart (but these events should be visible in the main location). To make a train, you first have to build the engine, then add on carriages, each a separate project. Each carriage and the engine appears as a separate vehicle, with its own lock and door. A train can only travel to neighboring locations if the road is of type "Railroad" (all the upgrade stages have to have been gone through first), and if there is a station in that town. Initially you could have primitive "cargo carriages" which are open at the top and act as containers, but then passenger carriages can hold people as well as resources.

[ceselb]

The thing would also cost a lot of iron or steel. I'm sure many could afford it, but I'm hesitant when much of the road system is in such a bad shape as it is.

Having another means of transport would not really be a good enough motivation. If possible I would like it to have some other advantage as well.

[Chris]

How about a train being an automated transportation service between two towns? It runs on a regular schedule. For example, maybe a train will wait for five hours in a town before going to the other town. If a train has one or more unlocked cars, it would allow people to travel quickly without having a motor vehicle. A region connected by rail would develop faster than a region with only roads because you wouldn't have to be wealthy to travel quickly through the rail region. Maybe there should be two different kinds of cars, public (can't be locked) and private. Anyone could build a new car at any time and attach it to the train while it is in town.

Even if the train isn't automated, it would still have the advantage of separating the engine from the passenger/cargo areas. Giving a ride to a stranger wouldn't be risky because he/she is traveling in the car. With multiple cars, a lot of businesses could be served by a single train driver. A party at one end could have a key to a private car. It would put its goods into the car. When the train goes to another town, the other party -- a regular trading partner -- also has a key. It would remove the goods and put its own goods ino the car.

[Tiamo]

I think railway track should be built independent of road quality, as an alternative to roadbuilding, not as a further development. IRL there are lots of railways without a highway on the same route. Railways once were a better way to disclose remote places than roads were (when there were no motorized vehicles and highways).

The enormous carriage capacity of a train would be the main reason to choose building track insted of roads. Railways are perfect for bulk transport, and transport of large amounts of people at once (like in wars).

Certainly early railway development (with simple steam engine locs, pulling just one or two wagons) should not be superior to cars. Automated trains are about ten steps too far, if you could build them at once. That would only be possible if tracks would be electrified, with modern electronics and detection systems. Cantr technology is far away from that level yet.

For maintaining the privacy of cargo i would suggest lockable containers with a label attached, not lockable wagons. That way the investment for having cargo transported is much lower. Just tell the driver where to unload the container, and maybe travel on the same train yourself, in the passenger wagon.

[Gran]

Cantr technology is far away from that level yet.

Technological development in Cantr doesn't necessarily makes sense or follows a common sense pattern.
We do have eletronic equipments like radios for communication and motorized vehicles based on internal combustion and even an helicopter engine, still we can't manipulate gunpowder.
In RL, eletric trains were first used in 1837, so I don't see a big deal about technology. The thing is that we don't generate energy in-game (yeah, radios don't need it) so a fuelless vehicle with such capacities would greatly unbalance everything.

Steam engines can also be created, as the use of water in-game is much more symbolic than everything else. With that 400g of water from a well you can make about 60kg of bricks.

However, I like the idea of having the engine separeted of the passengers, I was thinking in it these days (make it possible on buses maybe) and I do like the idea of a new way of transportation in cantr.

We just need more programmers.

[g1asswa1ker]

Canals?!?

[uorygl]

Canals?!?

Heck, we could stand to have rivers. Say that they can be traversed by boats, and you must build a bridge over them in order to cross by road. The wider the river, the bigger the allowed boats are, and the bigger a bridge would have to be. A low bridge blocks big boats. Then a canal would just be an artificial river.

Of course, adding rivers would probably make Cantr's messed-up geography even more messed-up.

[Piscator]

It shouldn't be too difficult to have rivers as a special kind of road parallel to the regular ones. Bridges and the like would make the issue a good deal more complicated.

[Doug R.]

Rivers already exist in the DB, they're just invisible.

[EchoMan]

They do, but not for all islands apparently.

[viktor]

there are hidden canals in a number of ports, i can list a few on the well known english islands
stanchi hills north, stanchi hills south, olipifirovash west, olipifirovash, doryiskom, djorf hills south, djorf, krif.

it is the best explanation in game for people to be able to go between the ocean and lakes or ocean and bay for one, thrugh these cities. we can just say, the rivers/canals are too small to see on the map like the roads

[DylPickle]

Rivers would be most useful in primitive areas as a source of pre-automotive in-land travel.
They'd hopefully be limited to certain locations as a geographic feature, and in direction of flow. (Quickly get a few towns over, but would probably have to walk back.)

It'd be awesome to have those on some of the gigantic continents (I refuse to call huge landmasses islands).

[g1asswa1ker]

Do we know for sure that there isn't cantr continents?