Railways and Ribbon Worlds

[Cutesune]

What's the general consensus on how to structure your railway in a ribbon-world?

I've been thinking about it before committing to a long playthrough and seems like every time I think about it I end up with a different answer, each with pros cons and potential pitfalls. Any veterans want to weigh in with their solution?

I understand that the railway is essentially one long artery, which means you don't want lines intersecting; at all if possible, as this'll force trains to slow down and yield. To that end a few possibilities stand out:

* Eastbound lane top, Westbound lane bottom: The upshot of this approach is that trains departing a station will immediatly exit onto the outbound lane instead of re-joining the inbound lane. On the other hand lane switching means traversing from one side of the ribbon to the other, and the 'optimal exit' assumes that I've been able to structure the factory so that most entrances are on logical sides relative to where they are needed.

* Parallel tracks one side of the ribbon: In this set up, one track always exits onto factory facilities, the other is essentially a return lane. Enough distance is given between the tracks that an extra lane can be pulled off for switching between inbound/outbound without disrupting the flow. Downside of this approach is that the tracks are still quite widely spaced, consuming a fair chunk of the ribbon's total width (About 15-20%), though the space between rails can be used for auxillary functions like solar arrays, and drills and stuff can be placed there safely.

* 'Standard' tracks: Like might be used in conventional open-terrain play. This has a tighter footprint, but trains must cross the other lane when changing direction, which could cause a backlog in the mid to late game.


What's your thoughts, who else has played a ribbon world game and what pitfalls did you encounter/solutions did you use?

[Fel]

I don't do much ribbon world since I enjoy making ridiculously spaced builds but for the few times I use those world types I tend to go for the first option since it nearly eliminates intersections (you still get "in" and "out" branching but you never have a train that has to cross the other side's rail, potentially stopping trains while doing so).

It does tend to make the stations a bit trickier to place if you need to access it from both rails but if you plan things well you can handle a lot of train traffic without much slowing down, which is even more important in this world type since you really need trains for everything.

[zOldBulldog]

I have not played ribbon world and to be honest I do not know how wide they are. But my typical rail design is linear so it should be easily adapted.

What I normally use is a 4-lane rail system. 2 in each direction, with turnarounds every 5 or so chunks between the inner lanes and a dummy stop (a stop named with a space) on those inner lanes.

This pushes high speed trains to the outer lanes, occasional shifts to the inner lanes when a slow train is entering the tracks, and trains shifting to the inner lanes for direction changes. Trains never cross tracks and they rarely slow down.

Is space is tighter you could do a similar design with 2 eastbound on top and 2 westbound on bottom and stations (and turnarounds) in north/south directions between them.

If extremely tight, reduce to one lane each way, but that would have a noticeable throughput reduction as trains will have to slowdown for merges.

[THE kilroy]

Ribbon world wont effect the number of lane crossings as much as the ordering of facilities. So for example, you probably want green curcuit near smelters and rockets far from smelters, this is the same for 2d worlds but it becomes more apparent the skinnier the world is.

Ive tried the ways youve mentioned, but think of the ingredients web, no matter how you lay things out there are inheritant crosses.

Just make sure you have more than 1 rail in each direction as relying on a single rail can cause serious problems. On a ribbon world a deadlock can become hard to get to to fix.