Cart and rail track system

Comments: 33

• 16 Sep, '21
  bcmpinc

  Instead of tracks, use a rope way conveyor. So carts can fly over your industrial area and also easily go up and down hill. Downhill transport can be gravity powered. Uphill transport would of course require an external power source.

• 17 Sep, '21
  desred3

  I think this could work for the Iron Teeth aesthetically, requiring fuel to use it. And adding to what bcmpinc said, maybe it could require more power the more carts you have.

• 17 Sep, '21
  Ncc1702

  rope way sounds ideal imo
  
  A powered building that move item strictly vertically like an elevator while ropes would always carry things downhill maybe 4 by 1 decline

• 20 Sep, '21
  Iter

  Nice idea.
  Or.. As an a water themed thing, Log driving - transporting logs/goods by river.

• 21 Sep, '21
  XeroJoy

  Or maybe make it a trebuchet/net system, so we can fire items from afar, potentially to the higher floors of buildings in addition to over long distances. Could require power to fire and only moves items.

• 22 Sep, '21
  Benjamin Twist

  i love the above idea of transporting items by floating them in the river. just how real beavers do
  
  maybe water transport for folk tails and rope ways or carts for iron teeth

• 24 Sep, '21
  MrDeaf

  The railway can be a rack railway (aka cog railway), cable car (like San Francisco), or wooden rollercoaster kind of design.
  
  If steam power is not desired, then the engine design can be something like a handcar, or have a beaver wheel sitting on top of a cart.

• 25 Sep, '21
  Enginerd

  If a single cart was implemented you can easily get around the existing AI by placing "transport" flags to define the cart's travel between flags, requiring a worker obviously. For multiple cart systems the game mechanics would shatter if you tried to place individual carts on a network yet not lose track of it's inventory. To get around this you can design a rail/network system with the building mechanics, and creating travel between buildings would be a spin-off of the power transmission mechanics; live inventory count until cycle completes (train arrives). This would add an entire new building tab to the game but loads of more content and all the dev's would need is some artwork and basic animation. Fair-play would be to require a worker at each station and just have the locomotive consume an insane amount of wood like the engines. If the network (rail/bldng) were not limited to district borders and acted independently after 1 station was built & station worker built the rail.......

• 03 Oct, '21
  Eager Beaver Merged

  Create maybe a steam engine train that use water as resource to run, and maybe a Rafting/Boating system for logistics and mass commute for Distribution center allowing farther settlements. Maybe Train for Iron teeth and Raft for Folktail.

• 03 Oct, '21
  Alex M Merged

  Realistically, a society as advanced as these beavers wouldn't keep carrying things around by hand (paw?) If they didn't have to. You should be able to build Porter Huts, a more expensive (probably researched) variant of the Haulers Hut. Porters use hand carts to carry four times more stuff than a normal beaver, further improving your efficiency.
  
  Another idea is to use rafts to transport supplies over water. Just because beavers can swim doesn't mean it's the most efficient way to get things done. A Dock could be built on the river bank, and employ a Rafter to carry large amounts (4x-8x) of cargo to another Dock. Rafters would ignore the road system (or require underwater roads) and are much faster than normal, but are obviously useless if the water dries up. IRL loggers transport lumber over water, so why not beavers?

• 05 Oct, '21
  pmduda Admin

  "Carts/Rafts" (suggested by Alex M on 2021-10-03), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

• 05 Oct, '21
  pmduda Admin

  "Locomotion & Rafting" (suggested by Eager Beaver on 2021-10-03), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

• 08 Oct, '21
  Max

  I think vertical lifts are must haves for both beaver factions, but I think the rails and carts should be unique to iron tails, while rope based transport like gondolas would fit the folk tails better. One-way rafts going downstream should be available for both factions, and should work by marking out "paths" for the raft to travel over the river. The raft is assembled upstream using logs, and is disassembled downstream to reclaim the logs, which would then be availible for use on location, or could be brought back to the building site to create a new raft. Two way rafts that use a rope to pull the raft in circular routes upstream downstream and across should be Folktails exclusive.

• 10 Oct, '21
  StealthyBeaver

  I really like the idea of the rails being reserved for the IronTeeth Faction, as it would give them a very unique gameplay mechanic that fits in perfectly with their more industrial style.

• 10 Oct, '21
  Zakkary Silva-Sampaio

  get idea for the ironteeth

• 15 Oct, '21
  KrautBeaver

  I would like small trains towed by pump wagons operated by a pair of beavers

• 23 Oct, '21
  mjevans

  Wooden rails and carts could also work. Or wheel-barrels. The wood versions might be consumable and require 'gears' and 'planks' to maintain and build. Possibly also a slope rather than stairs to traverse inclines. Greater efficiency over the same distances.
  
  This upgrade should also upgrade the carry capacity (noticeable) and speed haulers / ''trader'' beavers running items between cities.

• 03 Nov, '21
  ViniciusR

  Timberborn has a somewhat medieval style and is somewhat complicated, as the means of transport best suited to the style of the game are boats and trains, as it has a style more suited to the epoch and not as modern as cars and air transport. The means of transport would be used to facilitate the distribution of resources across the districts, for example, a train would take the work of about 10 beavers that transport the load to another district and take X time to do so, the use of means of transport would help in the better management of the beavers for their jobs INSIDE the district and not OUTSIDE them, as well as improving the handling of jobs and time spent in the day (related to the game). Let's go now to the transport explanation.

• 03 Nov, '21
  ViniciusR

  The boats could be produced by a shipyard and loaded in a port, for a route to be created there must be a port A and a port B, the route can also be edited in the port itself. The boats could be divided into level 1 and level 2 cargo boats, being able to carry more load as the level increases, being able to employ 1 beaver. Importantly, boats could only have routes in ports they can access. In relation to the train, it would be manufactured in a railway workshop and loaded at a railway station, in relation to the wagons, there would be three types of wagons, which carry water, food and basic resources, each type of wagon with its own customization. The rails would be used on platforms, slopes and inclines, and obviously on terrain. The locomotive would be powered by steam technology, being similar to the engine of iron teeth beavers, using water and trunks to operate. Its routes would be similar to the maritime route, having a station A and station B and being able to be edited in it.

• 02 Dec, '21
  Sandro

  I think carts & rails sound great, although they should definitely be "high level" technology. It would be great to eventually be able to build a little "rail network" across the map! It would really help building separate communities that are responsible for different duties. You could have a "food" district, a "logging" district, etc with trains distributing needed resources among districts.

• 05 Jan, '22
  benthevaporeon

  would be nice for bring large amounts of scrap metal across the map
  
  or water

• 18 Jan, '22
  Piper Merged

  My idea is you have a 1x2 cart that costs 4x gears and 20x planks. They have special rails and ways to go up/ down but do not cross with paths. One of them can hold 30 items and 3 beavers at one time.
  They have instant-build stations and if set carts might not stop. Normal stations hold 5 beavers and fright stations hold 60 items. You need a line manager to set lines, including: where to stop, what to pick up, for fright if it is to pickup or drop off what to drop off, who's on this route and who's on the route. Overall, it is quite complex and a bit confusing.

• 19 Jan, '22
  Gin Fuyou Admin

  "beaver bus!" (suggested by Piper on 2022-01-18), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

• 03 Feb, '22
  RainS'Tol

  Here is a Steam discussion similar to this.
  https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/discussions/1/

• 03 Feb, '22
  Gin Fuyou Admin

  RainS'Tol, this site takes priority

• 09 Mar, '22
  robottoast

  "22 Sep, '21
  Benjamin Twist
  i love the above idea of transporting items by floating them in the river. just how real beavers do
  
  maybe water transport for folk tails and rope ways or carts for iron teeth"
  
  this!!!

• 17 Sep, '22
  BlackNyasher

  Trains can work like we can connect buildings to the transport system (railroad for example), and instead of carrying things to the building - hauler brings stuff into the loading point (or even uses haulers post as drop-off point when it connected to the system) and as transport passes the destination building - building receives the item hauler dropped for it at the loading point (so it works almost like a teleport). Building also can use this system to transport goods it produced to the storage if it connected to the same system.

• 17 Sep, '22
  BlackNyasher

  So roughly it can be implemented like all the buildings, connected to the railroad, can move items from one building to another, and as train passes near the building - it receives all the stuff other buildings wanted to give it (so if we have plank factory and gear factory attached to the railroad - every time train passes the gear factory it receives planks from plank factory).
  
  If implement it not so roughly - train could have his own "inventory" he loads stuff into, and the size of his inventory depends on the number of carts attached to him, so train could work like a hauler.

• 17 Sep, '22
  BlackNyasher

  If it too complicate to implement we could simply assign for train manually what he gonna load and where: every cart can have one resource assigned to it and marked where it allowed to take this resource from - it will be filling itself at the marked point and unloading itself everywhere else. Like if we assigned cart to take planks from the storage - every time it passes gear factories it unloads itself into them, but not unloads into storage because it ordered opposite here.

• 17 Sep, '22
  BlackNyasher

  So to make THIS thing more complicate and somewhat the most realistic - we could "connect" buildings to hauler posts (which playing role of train station) which in their turn are connected to the train system - hauler post recording what resources connected buildings are requesting and as train passes trough - he unloads required stuff into hauler post and haulers bring stuff to the buildings. And as the train carts are assigned to resources - haulers check if connected buildings are producing said resources and if yes - they bring it to the hauler post to load it into the train next time it stops here (but until loaded into the train this resources can be taken by other beavers freely if it not forbidden by player, so hauler post also playing a role of storage-hub).

• 26 Sep, '22
  Lachlan

  Skylifts, Cable cars, Sky Gondolas - all awesome ideas!

• 06 Jan
  Arrowheadlock

  Something I considered and mentioned on the Discord is the idea of wooden minecarts. Build rail "paths" with metal and carts out of planks and gears, and you could just have a simple cart that a beaver could push to increase carrying capacity, as opposed to self-powered steam engines or more complicated means of transportation.

• 15 Jul
  Jaco3011

  I see a lot of ideas, but there are three types of railway systems that could be implemented
  a) carts
  b) streetcars
  c) trains
  
  a) single push-along carts, wooden tracks built as an upgrade to paths, 1 plank per path segment, no curves visually, as small turntables are used (yes, this is realistic). Elevation change, easy version: upgrading stairs. Elevation change, hard version: elevator and 2-tiles long slopes (walkable as a path too). No passenger transport.
  b) constant-length consists, practically no more than 3 cars, possibly single cars. Movement on dedicated, mostly one-way, tracks. Turns are R2, tracks can be joined any way user pleases. Elevation changes are at least 2 tiles long. Little to no block signalling.
  c) large radii, long elevation changes, block signalling, cars divided into passenger, low-side gondolas (for goods stored in piles), boxcars (for goods stored in storages) and tankers (for fluids). Engines require fuel and water.