A theme friendly way to do powered rails.

[link12313]

Minecarts with towing tracks would be handy on the surface for the bulk movement of goods between towns. Think a endless loop of carts with hoppers at every station. You put items in and they fall into the hopper in the other town. And if we ever get logic pins we could tell the cart what hopper to drop the item into. By logic pins I mean little bits that jut out the side of the cart and touch a mechanical linkage on the station side. If the bits match the hopper opens. But for that to work we would first need a chunkloader item.

[Hal13]

i like the minecart or even better locomotive idea, but i think chunkloading the vast distances on many servers would become a problem and as such these should be more a solution for shorter distances imo.

with the existence of translocators there would be an explanation for something similar to minecrafts enderchest: perhaps a linked pair of chests, that share the same inventory? or chutes running into translocators and being connected that way?

[link12313]

6 hours ago, Hal13 said:

i like the minecart or even better locomotive idea, but i think chunkloading the vast distances on many servers would become a problem and as such these should be more a solution for shorter distances imo.

with the existence of translocators there would be an explanation for something similar to minecrafts enderchest: perhaps a linked pair of chests, that share the same inventory? or chutes running into translocators and being connected that way?

A chunkloader cart would also work. it could be fed temporal gears to keep it balanced.

[Hal13]

The problem is: restarting the server will break the cart (most likely it will have the same issues as chunkloaders in minecraft) and many VS servers turn off automatically when there is no player online.
With quite likely thousands of blocks between player made towns, the cart will be on its way for quite some time, therefore it will happen quite regularly that some poor player needs to walk along all the rails to restart the chunkloading carts.
Of course chunkloading carts could simulate a player being online, but that'll mean time will pass while no one is online, meaning foods will spoil, seasons might change, etc.

Modded MC has shown more than once, even if a small number of chunkloaders is no big deal, at some point it starts lagging massively.

Maybe a translocator station for carts could solve some problems?
Instead of needing to be fed temporal gears constantly the cart could have chunkloading capabilities for only a few minutes (let's say 25% of an ingame day?) after being sent along the tracks, and the station at the translocator would teleport it to the station on its other side for the cost of 1 gear? that way it can travel far, wouldn't cause many issues, shouldn't stop if it gets unloaded for a short time, should still be balanced, would work without major costs for short distances...