The Minecart Conundrum!

[BruteMan]

DJ,

I have been watching and catching up on a lot of your P19 dev streams and I caught you talking about minecarts and why so many skips them or super highway etc. I took up the challenge I have run a game into T2 ores (can’t even unlock basic till your into T2) with the goal to have a minecart world…. Your dev stream you stated you didn’t understand why more people don’t use them as they are great I’m 20 hours in now and here’s my thoughts on the matter.

With the effort to use minecarts as a primary system of transportation of ores its late and I mean late game I’m playing standard difficulty its not rapid and not Greg just somewhere in the middle taking my time as I always do. But saying so it’s a pain to not just head down that transport pipe path or the cargo lifts both of which you get much earlier in the research cycle (including matter movers) and materials wise to craft a 500-vertical block deep cargo lift in materials alone vs a 500-vertical block minecart track…

We’re talking a moderate difference in material costs meanwhile the learning curve to understand how to build the cart system is to me probably the steepest curve with learning how to cargo lift being of medium difficulty to figure out and pipes being the easiest as it is the most common sense thing to figure out plunk it down point it and it works) so there’s that the main investment of time granted the track is a one-time setup if done right and it lasts most of not the entire game but the real challenge I’m finding is do I stay with trying to not take the carrot on the stick and just build a few hundred pipes or a few cargo lifts and by that time you have established a mode of transport that’s easy to expand on with low initial investment.

So, breaking it down cargo lifts to drop 500 meters of rails were talking iron bars by this time you’re easily cranking out 100’s into rails etc. whatever its iron.

Dropping 500 meters of pipe it’s a bit heftier in costs but still not as heavy in T2 costs the same 500 block drop were talking 12,500 crystals 1500 Titanium& Nickle 2500 tin

To do it with minecart rails 16 gold bars + 16 alloyed (16 Titanium + 16 Nickle) x 4 (64) gets you 25 tracks (after you crafted 25 belts etc. T1 processes, but this all adds to the amounts of steps you have to go thru just to make 25 rails) you’re going to need 600 track parts just for your 500 block climb based on a 5x5 hole climb as corners are not sloped and this isn’t considering the costs of booster rails etc. you would need to hand bomb roughly 1500 T2 Bars worth of ore of each (because you’re commenting that you really want to see us to use these carts to get the T2 ores right why would I build a minecart system if I have a cargo lift or pipes already in place so I’d be a hand bombing it)

Then comes the costs of the mine carts themselves to get enough throughput on the ores were talking a few hundred carts I’m only guessing here but throughput of a basic cargo lift is 300 ores in a couple mins of travel to get a similar throughput in mine carts over 500 depth and I haven’t timed it I will if I ever finish my first minecart shaft but id hazard a guess id need probably 250 minecarts traveling the system to have a similar throughput. (1600 Nickle plates 1000 Copper and 32,000 T2 ores of alloyed)

You consider the time investment its larger for those that are not rushing the game time isn’t really a big deal so look at the complication of crafting the different parts …

Cargo lifts mostly crafted at the station with materials on hand with the GAC rail assembler pumping out rails from iron.

Pipes singular crafted at crafting station with a stamper plant pumping out the plates and clock maker cranking out clocks.

The minecarts system Harden your bars into blocks then alloy them then craft them into only after you make a pile of belts and another pile of iron bars and craft them into rails this process consumes a fair amount of power and is the slower of the 3 systems to process.

These are my observations of a moderate what you’d call a normal player I’m not a noob I’m well into 600 hours of playing FCE and I think you’ve made a great game and its all been money well spent on all the DLC etc. as I’ve mostly enjoyed all 600 of those hours on record. Although even at 600 hours I’m still learning new ways of doing things the patches keep it fresh and interesting and I’m not a rusher to end game as I take my time and try and learn all the ins and outs of a system as I implement it into the factory. (Snail’s pace compared to what a lot of players crank through in a play session)

Suggestions on the minecarts system while its nice to wave a magic wand or claim to know the solution to everything no one does and these may or may not be the right suggestions but take them for what they are as feedback as you requested.

I think a GAC or an easier way to craft rails the steps you need to take to get your first minecarts system just setup is daunting comparted to the other options which I think is why more people take the “easier route”

Minecarts some form of balance either make the basic system more early unlock with T1 ores and make them slower then they are now but cheaper in T1 gets players playing with them more as its something you can do pre-cold caves to fart around with and encourage learning the minecart system.

Or an example in game tutorial once you unlock minecarts that kind of walks you thru a simple setup ghosting image put here put there like you do at the start with the belts and hopper and beam for coal automation.

Anyway, I’m going to continue on in P18 with this minecart world and I may revisit and revise some or most or all of this but I thought I’d put down what I think on the reasons players just skip minecarts. right now, while they are neat to play with but you almost never use them because the other options are just easier to setup and “plug and play” and by the time you have enough automation setup for T2 and could do minecarts easily the player is thinking "meh!" after thought cause you've already automated with some other system.

[Chris]

Wiki says rails only need 1 organic rock:
http://fortresscrafte.wikia.com/wiki/Track_Straight

But this was the point i sayd, it is not for me. Because i had only ~25 Rocks and going in search and getting like 10 tooks looong time for me (and the diffircuzlt to get eaten by a worm ^^)

The cart is indeed is a joke.

I thought, it is for herizontal transport of mines, that are empty and now you need a longer way to the shaft. Ging direct to Bulk Minecarts.

Do you have a link to dev stream videos? At steam videos i find nothing.

[Demerzel]

You don't need rocks anymore.

http://fcedb.com/

[Silv]

Ooh, didn't know about fcedb. That's very cool.

[stub]

I built a minecart world. It worked quite nice once running, with a single track servicing everything all the way down to about -900. Resources didn't worry me, as guns, batteries and vacuum hoppers got heaps of organic rock (and that is no longer an issue either). The huge problem is they only ascend or descend diagonally, and there is no QOL helper to dig diagonal shafts or lay the track. It is a mind numbing amount of clicking. I'll be trying the spiral track building mod if I decide to do it again.

[steveman0]

Did you check out the freight carts mod? It has several improvements and majorly boosted logistics functionality and DJ has shown interest in having me merge it into vanilla in the future. Maybe some of your concerns would be addressed by it?

[BruteMan]

Thanks for all the responces... far as the link to the videos hes on you tube all his live cast sessions are saved there just lookup Projector Games (DJ really should add FCE or fortresscraft evolved to his stream titles as youtube search for the game title hardly flags any of his dev stream videos)

I am aware of the mods and just to be clear i am not having any problems with my world as i said above im playing P18 I see hes further adjusted some things in P19 just wanting to finish this world on P18 and then i'll move into 19 its just a time sink which i have plenty of.

The responce was more to about 15 - 30 mins of him talking about minecarts and how the system is really really good but doesnt understand why more dont use it instead everyones dropping 3 or 4 cargolifts or superhighways of transport pipes. (he also caught a bug at the same time with the lighting and visual effects of minecarts which was never bug reported most likely because the general audience do not even try out minecarts to see the bug)

[Azlo]

Originally posted by stub:

I built a minecart world. It worked quite nice once running, with a single track servicing everything all the way down to about -900. Resources didn't worry me, as guns, batteries and vacuum hoppers got heaps of organic rock (and that is no longer an issue either). The huge problem is they only ascend or descend diagonally, and there is no QOL helper to dig diagonal shafts or lay the track. It is a mind numbing amount of clicking. I'll be trying the spiral track building mod if I decide to do it again.

This. Minecarts are really cool for horizontal transports, but it become a pain when when building it vertically.

There's a mod that build them automatically with booster and all though, but it would be cool if it was vanilla.

[BruteMan]

One other thing i think i didnt touch on is also the simplicity of the other systems pipes support superbuild you can lay them down fast and get a system up and running fairly quickly and cargolifts selfplace their rails just add power minecarts without a mod do not do any of these things and require alot of hand placement by the player. then even with the mods out there you need to keep stocked with the exact parts of track so your still babysitting it.

[stub]

Originally posted by steveman0:

Did you check out the freight carts mod? It has several improvements and majorly boosted logistics functionality and DJ has shown interest in having me merge it into vanilla in the future. Maybe some of your concerns would be addressed by it?

The other big problem with vanilla minecart worlds I found is that your smelters need to be combined and you lose all stocking control, or you would need a massive filter setup to separate the ores. I do think your freight carts would be good in vanilla, perhaps even as a major feature of the forthcoming Adventure Pack DLC. Without it, the carts are limited and really only useful for decicated extractor -> lift transport routes.

I only got as far as lithium and the slowest rails with freight carts, but it felt pretty good. It definitely prefers to work with mass storage though (which I didn't have), as you would have to set a hopper to want 3-400 ore to get enough carts in flight, or manually dedicate carts to a particular station.

[steveman0]

Why would you mix smelters ever? The only case where that makes sense is if you are using them with ESMS controlling the input so output bottlenecking is not an issue.

Ore freighters were definitely designed more with FF tier ore transit in mind. Well after you can handle MS based stations everywhere. I only included lower tier ones to see what people could do. The above mentioned use of ESMS with them does work wonderfully though.

[DjArcas]

Note : The rails are expensive as they can have infinite throughput. What's really needed is a way of using a central backbone and splitting carts sideways based on rules (empty, carrying BLAH, etc)

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by steveman0:

Why would you mix smelters ever?though.

Cuz he has a single loop for all ores, instead of 3 tracks to 3 cargo lifts, at a guess.

[Dainsleif]

I have a proposal for improving the minecart. I like KISS so you add 2 station:

- Filtered Output Station: Same interface as Logistic Falcor, MS output, you select the object that minecart can dump in this station.

- Filtered Input Station: Works just like the MS Stocking Port, you select an item and a qty. The port disables itself if the qty of item in the carts on that rail track is above the set point.

I think it relatively easy to implement since it use the same logic and UI of existing machine.

Maybe it's too powerful I don't know, but it would be a lot of fun!

I haven't checked the freight mod, so maybe my idea is the similar.

[Dainsleif]

As for the infinite throughput, I always found that silly. Have you ever tryed to see the cpu increase of doing "collision" in the Unity code or to force a max of one cart per cube? It would also make the higher tier of cart relevant and force a more interesting track layout.

[Silv]

Your proposal is indeed (roughly) a subset of what the freight mod does. Freight mod tries to balance demand for a good and supply, only moving if there's more demand than supply (and I suspect it also takes into account goods currently in transit).