Steam trains

[uusfiyeyh]

Besides boats and ships, trains (I mean "real" trains with realistic 1:1 scale, not minecarts) should be added to the game. Because they can be useful when carrying resources (using wagons/railcar) from different climate zones and can reduce considerably the amount of time you spend walking from, for example, the jungle to the arctic.

Also, it can open a lot of new possibilities on servers. Because you can start your own transport system, and move resources or even people and sell goods.

As a reference, I recommend taking a look at the Minecraft mod called: Immersive Trains.

PD: Sorry if is a duplicated topic, but at least I didn't find a post about trains.

[EreticKB]

99.9% of players can't mine enough ore, let alone produce enough steel, to make ONE realistic railway engine through all their worlds. For exampe: fullplate armor is about 20-30kg of steel, realistic railway engine is about 30000 kg of steel at least. Are you sure you want realistic trains with 1 to 1 scale?

[Melfice]

While I wouldn't be opposed to that scale of vehicles, it feels impractical.

Either because of the material requirements, or because the size is just too big to navigate with in a blocky world.
The extreme elevation differences in the terrain alone would require terraforming at an incredible scale. And that's a problem with Immersive Trains as well.

That terraforming issue isn't eliminated by sticking to a 1x1 minecart scale, it's negated enough.

[uusfiyeyh]

4 hours ago, EreticKB said:

99.9% of players can't mine enough ore, let alone produce enough steel, to make ONE realistic railway engine through all their worlds. For exampe: fullplate armor is about 20-30kg of steel, realistic railway engine is about 30000 kg of steel at least. Are you sure you want realistic trains with 1 to 1 scale?

It's true. However, VintageStory is not known by its easy gameplay (Minecraft or Stardew Valley). Also, we don't need trains at the start nor the real quantity of steel needed to build one in real life.

I imagine them as a late gameplay objective where you could, previously, build machines that automatically gather resources and let you build complex machines or whatever, so you will have a reason to build a train to move those goods. In addition, It can be useful on a server, since you can connect different towns.

[uusfiyeyh]

4 hours ago, Melfice said:

While I wouldn't be opposed to that scale of vehicles, it feels impractical.

Either because of the material requirements, or because the size is just too big to navigate with in a blocky world.
The extreme elevation differences in the terrain alone would require terraforming at an incredible scale. And that's a problem with Immersive Trains as well.

That terraforming issue isn't eliminated by sticking to a 1x1 minecart scale, it's negated enough.

I think that if they add trains, there should be a Tunnel Boring Machine Wagon that helps to mitigate the problem of terraforming.

[uusfiyeyh]

1 minute ago, uusfiyeyh said:

I think that if they add trains, there should be a Tunnel Boring Machine Wagon that helps to mitigate the problem of terraforming.

Or at least dynamite.

[Maelstrom]

Consider that steam technology is end game mechanics on the roadmap.  The devs (all one and a half of them) have a lot of work to go before the game is ready for steam implementation.  I expect that oceans, rivers and water content will be added to the game long before steam technology is.  Until then we can dream and discuss.

[EreticKB]

21 hours ago, uusfiyeyh said:

It's true. However, VintageStory is not known by its easy gameplay (Minecraft or Stardew Valley). Also, we don't need trains at the start nor the real quantity of steel needed to build one in real life.

I imagine them as a late gameplay objective where you could, previously, build machines that automatically gather resources and let you build complex machines or whatever, so you will have a reason to build a train to move those goods. In addition, It can be useful on a server, since you can connect different towns.

About 300-400 REAL hours (m.b. more) of gameplay per one railway engine is TOO MANY time, really.

Edited August 8, 2022 by EreticKB

[Bombel]

I imagined trains in VS similar to minecraft but modular and all the modules would be similar in size to the minecraft's minecart. So you have the engine cart together with the coal cart and then you can add your carts to transport ressources or people. Later they can simulate the weight and the tractive force of the train. And for example if you need to go up the mountain with many carts you would add a second engine. There's a mod(wip) similar to this idea: Rust and Railroads.

Also, remember that our Seraph would be building those trains on his own with primitive technology. So the model of the engine and the cart would be rough and simple, it won't be a shiny factory new locomotive.

But I don't think that VS team will add trains into the game in the near future. They first need to create a reason to transport a lot of ressources over vast distances(sparcely generated villages would be one). Certainly first they will add horses, carriages and boats with hopefully generated rivers.

[Maelstrom]

There's already a reason to add trains.  That far off iron mine (and any other ore mines nearby).  Have you ever mined out an iron deposit and then spent three or four trips lugging all the iron chunks back home for processing?  It's pretty bad when that trek is 1,000+ blocks, one way.

[daretmavi]

Horse railway could be the first one.

No need for steam, we just need the horse and the ability to build a moving vehicle (and track off course). 

[Lisandro17]

I really hope that wehen this games reaches the point of adding trains it makes them as the minecraft mod "Immersive railroading".

This mod had two key features: the rail building system that let´s you build curves and climbs vevry smooth that integrate very well with the trains and terrain. Second: the scale system, allowing you to make 1/8 1/4 1/2 and 1:1 scale trains with different resources requirements.

I understand that to reach a point where is worth and viable to make this trains you would need some kind of machine or tool to mine and proces more resources faster, wich means we should go throug a "tech update" before reaching the "transport update" (if you ask me I would go with the "bagger" route)

The immersive engineering mods had lots of steampunk machines from wich vintage story could take ideas and inspirations and seeing what they done in the archives I think the VS team could make the coolest machines and stempunk tehcnologies. However I do not support "infinite resources" mining machines, resources should be depleted forcing you to move to new mining sites and it should be in syncrony with natural resoruce generation, same vanilla resources from the same place, just a better faster way to extract  them from the ground.

Anyway I think that the way the game is today it would make 1/4 scale trains perfectly viable and achivebable. Whenever I played immersive railroading in minecraft it always felt so unseful because you could find every resource needed in a radius of 500 blocks, however that´s not the case with vintage story, I have paths going 5 thousand blocks on my solo world. I think that´s the reason why this game can really take this train mechanic to it´s best. I would rather spend 100 hours bulding a railway for a cool train than spending them on building a stone path.

I just really really hope that this doesn´t end up being a sofisticated version of the minecraft´s vanilla minecarts. Vintage story deserves better and immersive railroading showed us how a realistic train should look in a blocky world, and it was beautiful.

The devs are doing a great job and I pray that they can keep up with the good work they are doing. Cheers!

[OBAMFSpike]

On 8/7/2022 at 1:09 PM, EreticKB said:

99.9% of players can't mine enough ore, let alone produce enough steel, to make ONE realistic railway engine through all their worlds. For exampe: fullplate armor is about 20-30kg of steel, realistic railway engine is about 30000 kg of steel at least. Are you sure you want realistic trains with 1 to 1 scale?

I absolutely love the idea and the numbers. Lets do it!

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Lisandro17 said:

I just really really hope that this doesn´t end up being a sofisticated version of the minecraft´s vanilla minecarts.

Honestly, that's about what I would expect for trains in Vintage Story. Something like those mini-trains you find at zoos or amusement parks rather than a full-size locomotive, with the player needing to forge multiple parts to build the engine/cars and then supply the train with fuel in order to run it.

[Lisandro17]

13 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Honestly, that's about what I would expect for trains in Vintage Story. Something like those mini-trains you find at zoos or amusement parks rather than a full-size locomotive, with the player needing to forge multiple parts to build the engine/cars and then supply the train with fuel in order to run it.

If you want a mini train just go with the scaled down 1/4 version, much cheaper and fuel efficient, the 1:1 trains would be an incredible thing to have in multiplayer civilization servers.
If you just make it a minecart it will be boring to obtain and operate, I want to ride an actual steam train that took lots of resources and forging to build, not a box on wheels.

We have to remember that especilly in VS the hustle of making a hard thing it´s what gives it value. Realisticly you wouldn´t make more than one train for your world, it´s too expensive, you would just make more rails and drive the same train everywhere, making it more realistic would give you an aestethic reason to use it rather than exclusivley for its functionality.