Trains

[EchoMan]

I like the idea of stations etc but here is a simple alternative. Railways are a road upgrade, after highway. Trains are just like any vehicle but can only travel on roads that have been upgraded to Railways. Easy!

Then you lose the best part of the suggestion, the option to "roam" freely.

Also, how would carriages be implemented? Would the simple be an extension of the train? Otherwise how do they get attached and detached?

How they will be implemented is up to the ProgD. Hopefully in a way so that they work within the game.

[Joshuamonkey]

The idea is like this: someone builds a terminal in a particular place, then someone else builds a station (either intermediate or terminal) on another site. Only then, from any of those places you can build railways that connect the stations.

This is how my idea would work also. You would have to have a set destination in order to start building rails.
So I still think that you should be able to go to any connected station.

I wouldn't like to see implemented a system in which anyone can drive a train from any point of the island to any other point on the island without any player intervention.

It's basically the same as a project or traveling in a vehicle, except that the destination can be farther (and more efficient). That's the main advantage of this suggestion.

Worse, a train carries many passengers. Not all passengers go to the same place; some passengers leave the train before others. If there is no predefined path by which the train travels the system loses its meaning.

This really applies no matter how it's implemented, and this is something that they can work out for themselves for the most part (the same way that multiple people in a vehicle work out where they're going). What would be nice for the train, however, is a specific lock for the driver's part of the train, which means only the people in that part of the train can direct it (so you don't have to worry about crazy passengers).

The train cars should definitely be lockable (If you put the resources and time into making it, you should be able to lock it.) This way you can safely put resources in there. If you want to freely allow people to come on board, all you have to do is unlock it. This way you could choose to use one train car for resources and another for people, or something like that.

[Tosti]

How I imagen a train in cantr.

A station is build in city 1, the road is upgraded to expressway/railway (railway is build next to original way), a station is build in city 2.

You enter a station in city 1, there you can see two types of vehicles. Which have to be build inside the station, they are named by the builder, and have a key.

1= Train locomotive. It can carry 2 persons, and a lot of charcoal to fuel the locomotive. Once inside you can chose the available station to go to.
2= Train cars. They can be filled with a lot of stuff, or people. But can’t move by themselves. They need to be locked on a train locomotive to move.
(you can lock on as many train cars on one locomotive, but it will decrease traveling time)

So if you are for example alone, you first fill your train car with allot of goodies, and lock it on your train locomotive, you get out of your train car, and jump in your locomotive, choose a station, and off you go.

An other example, your friend has a locomotive, and you only have a train car, you will lock your train car on your friends locomotive, he needs to confirm this in the locomotive, to allow you to lock on, and off you go.

My opinion is that the railroad should connect to the road, to keep interactivity high, I'm not for the other idea to connect distant city's to each other, you should make allot of effort to do that, with building stations in between first,
maybe, if an station is build in city 3, you can choose in city 1 to go directly to city 3 without stopping in city 2.

[Joshuamonkey]

My opinion is that the railroad should connect to the road, to keep interactivity high, I'm not for the other idea to connect distant city's to each other, you should make allot of effort to do that, with building stations in between first,
maybe, if an station is build in city 3, you can choose in city 1 to go directly to city 3 without stopping in city 2.

If this were the case, then it may be hard for trains to travel to towns that are far away distance wise, even if it's only one road away. It would take a lot of effort to build trains and rails, for a slower vehicle! It's a very similar concept to why trains were/are used in real life. They travel relatively slow, but go directly to the destination. If they had to travel along the normal roads at a slower pace, then there would be practically no point to building a train except to show off! You'd be better off building a bus..

An other example, your friend has a locomotive, and you only have a train car, you will lock your train car on your friends locomotive, he needs to confirm this in the locomotive, to allow you to lock on, and off you go.

I like this idea.

[Tosti]

Joshuamonkey, you are totaly right. it should be an alternative way to travel, instead of another upgrade to show off.
best to connect big populated places to get more interaction...

An other example, your friend has a locomotive, and you only have a train car, you will lock your train car on your friends locomotive, he needs to confirm this in the locomotive, to allow you to lock on, and off you go.

I like this idea.

Characters could become professional machinists

[SekoETC]

I haven't read the whole topic but a railroad seems like a good way to allow new employees of questionable trustability to transport resources without having to worry about having to search for them all over the island, since the trains would be limited to certain tracks.

[dryn]

I haven't read the whole topic but a railroad seems like a good way to allow new employees of questionable trustability to transport resources without having to worry about having to search for them all over the island, since the trains would be limited to certain tracks.

Along this line you could also have locks at the station, allowing you to block off, or allow certain tracks. After all a train station isn't like a carpark - it is highly organised transport and it should be fairly easy to stop a train from going along certain junctions with the flick of a switch.

So in the situation that SekoETC talks about you could call up on the radio to give people a 'pass' along certain routes and not others. It would also allow governments to stop large cargos in order to take tax or bandits to highjack cargoes etc.

[Joshuamonkey]

Along this line you could also have locks at the station, allowing you to block off, or allow certain tracks. After all a train station isn't like a carpark - it is highly organised transport and it should be fairly easy to stop a train from going along certain junctions with the flick of a switch.

As long as the train can still arrive in town and turn around, I think this make sense, though to be honest it doesn't seem very necessary, more like an annoyance, especially with how rare trains are going to be I would expect.

Is this accepted?

[Piscator]

I think we need to spend more time with the details before we accept this.

Building lines between stations of any distance directly doesn't feel very satisfactory for example. Apart from the issue that it would be easy for two chars of the same player who never met before to start a railway construction project between opposite ends of Fu (a CRB of course, but still another thing to monitor), we might also get a visual mess in stations on the larger islands when one station connects to several dozen of other stations.
More importantly, this would also make it impossible for empire B to disrupt trade between its northern neighbor A and its southern neighbor C. Goods would teleport (with a time delay) from A to C without B being able to have an influence whatsoever.
On the technical side, determining the length of a track might also be difficult. Just checking linear distance and presence on the same island might be insatisfactory if both stations are on opposite sides of a huge bay for example.

I think I rather agree with the people who want to compose a railway line of several snippets connected by track switches. Those would not necessary have to follow existing roads, but could be constructed between stations within a certain distance. In this case it would also be highly advisable to allow several tracks between the same towns for local and regional traffic (depending on which location the switch for this track is set to, if at all) and have a emergency stop option that definitely makes a train stop in the next town to avoid running in a perpetual circle.

[Joshuamonkey]

I think I rather agree with the people who want to compose a railway line of several snippets connected by track switches. Those would not necessary have to follow existing roads, but could be constructed between stations within a certain distance. In this case it would also be highly advisable to allow several tracks between the same towns for local and regional traffic (depending on which location the switch for this track is set to, if at all) and have a emergency stop option that definitely makes a train stop in the next town to avoid running in a perpetual circle.

This sounds like a good solution to me, though I'm still worrying about towns that are next to each other yet far away. As long as the maximum distance is farther than the largest distance between two towns, that it should be fine, and should prevent people from making a train from Blojt to Doryiskom or something like that.
This would still allow A to go directly to C, but I don't see why building a train shouldn't be a good way to get to C without going through B.

So:

• In order for a train to travel a long distance, we would just connect station to station until it can connect to the destination (which rhymes ). There would be a reasonable limit to how far apart two directly connected stations can be.
• A train could choose to go to any connected station, unless one of the stations it passes through has been set to not allow trains to go through.
• There would be a key for the train control area and different keys for each train car.
• Additional train cars can be added.
• There would be an emergency stop option which would stop the train at the next town.

[Piscator]

but I don't see why building a train shouldn't be a good way to get to C without going through B.

If you can simply drive around B this should of course be possible (even though it would take you longer). But let's assume B borders to the ocean to the east and west and A and C are competely isolated from each other. Wouldn't it be strange if A could build a railway track to C through Bs territory, without B being able to do something about it?

A train could choose to go to any connected station, unless one of the stations it passes through has been set to not allow trains to go through

This would mean that you would be able to see the whole railway network when you pick a destination, which doesn't seem like knowledge a character should be supposed to have.

What I had in mind was to have a switch for each track at every station that could be used to auto-refer incoming trains to another track. Your character would for example leave A City on the second track to B-ington. There, incoming trains on this track would, according to the switch setting, be relayed to the first track to C-ville, where the train would be relayed to D-polis where it would stop, since no relay destination was set. This system would require the driver of the train to know exactly which track will lead him where and trust the personel of the intermediary stations not to randomly switch settings.
Actually, since a train would have the option to stop manually at the next station, switch settings could even be the only way to direct a train. In the worst case the driver would have to step out, change the switch himself and continue his journey.

This method would require cooperation and organisation on an supraregional level, which is exactly what we want in this game. It also sounds much more interesting than just picking a destination.

[Joshuamonkey]

Wouldn't it be strange if A could build a railway track to C through Bs territory, without B being able to do something about it?

It wouldn't need to go through B, however. The rails possibly would pass close to town B, but likely not through the actual town, and you could always build around it. If they really want to pick a fight with A or C they'll just have to go to their town. The alternative would be forcing trains to travel on normal roads, or making special cases.

What I had in mind was to have a switch for each track at every station that could be used to auto-refer incoming trains to another track.

I like this. And I think that the train driver should be able to stop and turn around at a station.

[Piscator]

It wouldn't need to go through B, however. The rails possibly would pass close to town B, but likely not through the actual town, and you could always build around it. If they really want to pick a fight with A or C they'll just have to go to their town. The alternative would be forcing trains to travel on normal roads, or making special cases.

Well, it seems unfair to allow railroad workers to roam the world freely and deny saboteurs or bandits the same right. Either the space between towns should be acessible for everyone or for none. I mean, people could lay tracks a stone's throw away from your town and you wouldn't be able to go and stop them since an invisible barrier would confine you to the town square.
And going to the origins of the tracks might not be a viable option since those might be in the heart of the other empire.

This is of course mainly a problem with tracks of unlimited length. With a maximum track length of 50-100 pixels, the occasional skipped town wouldn't be as problematic.

[Doug R.]

Can we assume that the concept of a train is accepted, and move this to accepted?

[Piscator]

I guess we can, but since we can't implement the concept of a train, we might as well flesh it out a bit first.