Rail-laying is really bad

[Malidictus]

I apologise for the click-bait title, but I don't really have a better way of putting this. The act of laying train rails in Satisfactory is incredibly clumsy and cumbersome for reasons that I really don't understand. The game already has a perfectly serviceable system for laying what amounts to bezier curves with limited incline and turn radius. Why does it seem like rails use a completely different system to everything else?

Here are a couple of decisions that I don't understand:

• Rail ends cannot be rotated when placing. This means I can't control the angle of a rail after a turn unless I manually lay out and measure that turn - and that really only works for 90-degree turns. If this were a conveyor belt, I would manually rotate the end to face my desired direction and rely on the game's Bezier curves to find the right path.
  
• Rail bend limits are different for placing a loose end vs. connecting to existing rail. When loose, the rail can make a 90 degree turn within the span of 24 meters (3 Foundations forward, 3 to the side). When connecting to existing rail, the shallowest turn span is 28 meters (4 Foundations forward, 4 foundations to the side). It makes no sense that the rail should be able to make different turns depending on what it connects to.
  
• Rail bends are calculated incorrectly for larger turns. Any turn much larger than 90 degrees has a high chance of claiming that it's too sharp, but only because the game chooses to cut the corner without cause. Rail can turn 90 degrees in a 4-foundation square, but asking it to make a 180 degree turn in an 8-foundation square (or really, any distance) produces a "bend too sharp" error. I know the rail CAN do it if it simply maintained an arc, but instead the game uses two very sharp angles and a straight line. This is with both ends connected to preexisting rails.

I typically like playing with rails in factory games, and just in general. I spent untold hours in Transport Tycoon and Locomotion. The amount of manual fidgety pixel-hunting I've had to do just to lay down a 90 degree bend in a piece of rail in Satisfactory, however, has just about killed my enthusiasm for the system. What's most frustrating, though, is that it feels like the rail system is SO close to being convenient and easy to use, if only it respected conveyor/pipe laying mechanics.

[Die Hand Gottes]

Originally posted by RemoteLeg:

...

The same way I do it I hate tracks that make snaking movements.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by RemoteLeg:

The solution I found was to lay one stretch of straight track, then skip the curve, then another set of straight track after-which I go back and insert the curved piece. Now my track runs true until the next curve.

The problem with that is it limits your curve radius. The tightest 90 degree turn a rail can make is within 3 foundations (specifically, between the middles of their outside edges). However, that only works if the rail connects to nothing. If you're trying to connect two straight pieces of rail, the game will claim "a too tight curve". You can still do it, but you'll need a larger curve radius.

That, incidentally, is one of THE most annoying bits of laying rail. Perfectly valid rail shapes become invalid if you're snapping to a preexisting rail. If you want to avoid wavy rails while still having tight curves, you can use foundations and start-stop at either the edges. Someone posted a tutorial video upthread with visual explanations.

Best case scenario, though, we get a proper rail-laying system which allows us to rotate unconnected rail edges and maintains consistency of curve radius.

[The Unwoken]

I agree that rails need some love.

[tommynocker001]

Originally posted by The Unwoken:

I agree that rails need some love.

It's almost universal that rails need TLC, 'cos all they currently get is anger and swearing! x)

[The Big Brzezinski]

Zooping rails is what we need, with mouse wheel adjusting the overall curve.

[The Unwoken]

And foundations to match, ie. better curving foundations to match the rail curve.

[Malidictus]

Well, I got down with sort of an intersection. Might as well share it, just for a bit of context on what I'm trying to do.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2892943103

What you're looking at is a double rail in over/under layout. On the left is a turnpike for a train station, specifically the train station input. That why there's only a single line - nothing's coming back that way. The station merges back with the rail farther behind the building.

On the right is the closest I could do to a U-turn. The two main are typically 8 meters apart, which is just about enough for a train. In order to allow the third U-turn rail through, they split an extra 8 meters (4 meters per rail), then return to their regular spacing.

Putting this together was an absolute pain in my ass, not to put too fine a point on it. Before I stripped the floating foundation "scaffolding, I had ostensibly a three-storey building to work off of. At least the rest of that line is either straight or 45 degrees.

[mmikeyy]

Can't agree more. Other games make it so much easier to lay tracks. I had a functional circuit with two tracks looping at both ends. I attempted to add signals and I kept getting 'signal loops into itself' errors. It seems that this can happen if tracks are too close to each other. I walked along miles of tracks and ensured that there was enough distance between them. I just couldn't get signals to work. Then I decided to install the railway set mods to ensure that I had nice regular spacing. My frustration level reached new heights. These mods provide a set of blueprints. It's literally impossible to connect a curved section to a straight section. The blueprints keep snapping in places that make absolutely no sense, and it's impossible to nudge them into alignment with each other. After 338 hours spent on that game, I think I'll give up soon. This is sucking all the fun out of this game.

[76561199181522831]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.