Trains!

Trains would be awesome since coal age can do much with it. We do have a lot of stuph to do: 1. Transport between cities and points of interest. For those who play in coop mode its not this much problem, but in general rules it's required part of transportation. You are reaching steam trucks and cars far awhile of starting the game. So for distributed locations and parts of production such as mineshafts (and far away mineshafts) and woodcutting stations across the continent it's natural to have trains. 2. Passengers. It can help with getting faster from seaports to the center of the city and to the suburban places. For different reasons. 3. Trains were invented much earlier than cars and trucks, so it's also natural to have em in steam age. Rails we want! Rails we demand! Give us RAILZ! Please!

I'm voting for trains! They would be such an awesome addition! I really think they could work by using specialised zoning and a voting system to handle the voxel physics. Players would vote on station points (not the path), and the system would automatically calculate the optimal route with mandatory stops at fixed intervals to maintain stability. Once the government approves the "calculated" plan, designated railroad workers (who must hold this title to interact with the railroad) would install prefabricated track sections that "lock" the top rail block and the three blocks directly beneath it only, making them indestructible and fixed so the train has a solid foundation for pathfinding. The train would not activate until a complete circuit between two stations is finished and verified, which prevents physics glitches and makes it a true server-wide project where you must balance steam engine pollution or upgrade to a clean electric train! /Lanz

Trains would be a wonderful feature! Maybe they could be available on big worlds only, like 400x400, where you have to travel long distances. Trains will also allow us to make subways and so many other things. Think of an old train running with coal and an advanced train running with electricity. I simply love the idea.

This is still my number one most looked forward to feature. The interdependent large project like this between towns/countries, and just seeing the world more alive with trains is extremely exciting. I honestly come back to this feedback page as a whole to see updates on this post.

I think SA diesel 91 Class narrow gauge would fit perfectly for late stage game

Mining carts, and later development into trains, would definitely bring me back to this wonderful game. I also think all the carrying vehicles need a nerf; it just feels too overpowered to have tens of cubic meters of soil and/or stone in a wheelbarrow.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/F74M4KqdQt4

Driverless passenger trains with set schedules could combine someone else’s post of “cultural tourism” with votes boosting culture and also providing an easier method to purchase things like clothing, quick 1 stack of fuel, nails, mortar, and prolly the biggest one, food. The more I think about it, the best way of doing freight trains is combine it with another post of intermodal tractor trailers and container ships. Make contract boards permit a person to have permissions to “pickup” the trailer with the truck, but not to enter int’s contents. Better yet, make them pay a fee to allow the permission and will be returned to the delivery person plus delivery fee upon arrival. This “container” is really just a mobile stockpile without access except to those intended to have it. The crane could use some love by being able to have “transfer stations” or “intermodal facilities” by being able to transfer containers from container vessels (max of 4 containers) to trucks (max of 1 container) or to trains (max of 2 or 3 containers (scalable to levels?) containers would serve to make contactable services… which factor in transportation costs already to the shipper and actually incentivizes trade when a lot of people price match over insane distances. This also creates an actually beneficial advantage to having trains and now game mechanic incentivized commercial hubs like rail-truck, rail to ship, ship to truck or all three in one. I know a lot of folks want to actually drive trains and want different car types, but I think automated trains are how they’d be the most practical. The containers could simply be the size of a normal plain stockpile, but each vehicle type can carry more or less of them. This doesn’t replace trucks, or roads being built, or makes something not necessary anymore but actually creates an environment where we could see trains.

Just throwing this out: What if you had different cars available for the trains, such as ore cars that hold ores, logging cars for wood, passenger cars for hauling people (with inbuilt billing of course) and the list goes on!

Considering the scale of the game map, I think the best case for trains in Eco would be something like narrow gauge - the earliest tiers could have simple push-carts, then move to horse traction, then steam locomotives, and eventually diesels, perhaps with different tiers of steam locomotive which could take smaller turns, or operate at higher speeds. This would be a lower-emission transportation network than cars, while not mandating being built near a shoreline, and potentially could hook into factories as a bulk loading/unloading system.

Could also consider doing Draisines. it would be a good starting step. Draisines come in all sizes, but generally pretty small compared to proper trains. Bicycle powered draisine could be the first step, can be made in wood or metal. Depending on which tier/technology you want to introduce them in. Then perhaps have a small early industrial steam engine as the first proper train which can haul a variety of wagons to the users liking. like Cargo, passenger, liquids, foods. but keep it small at 2-3 wagons. From there it could move up to bigger draisines with cabins and diesel motor power. that would pull smaller open carts but at faster speeds and more torque to go up sloped ramps easilier. It doesnt need to be a big train. This would fit the eco world size surprisingly well, whilst also offer a better transport capacity than trucks. all in all, keeping it small and more technological advanced than a steam train.

And here we go again. Anyone remember trains being #1 voted on the original devboard years ago? Developers, if you are reading this, please keep in mind that it's about far more than just higher volume transport. This is about capturing one of the most iconic and perhaps significant elements of the industrial revolution. Sure, a semi-truck can also fulfill the player's desire for higher volume transport. And yes, full scale trains are not exactly practical on the default world size. But why then do people keep requesting them? A bigger truck will never appeal to the same degree as an iconic and majestic locomotive. Quite honestly I'm willing to bet that people would prefer the challenge of constructing an expensive and fixed position railway, as opposed to yet another highway. Some parallels with real world progression simply cannot be ignored in a game about emerging and evolving societies. The locomotive, and by extension railroads, are no different in this regard. I fully understand that the potential benefit versus time required to implement the feature, opposed to other potentially more useful features does not add up to a positive gain. It is understandable why it has been pushed back into a long term feature. However keep in mind the massive support this feature has had over the years. People want their trains, even if it is in a basic capacity at first.

Or even Mine Carts!

Trains are used for long distance, high capacity transportation. I can understand the need to move a lot of good, but distance in Eco is very limited. They could work on large worlds, but I don't see them to be relevant on medium to small worlds.

This is part of our Eco Tree, but not coming soon, marking as in review so it's clear it's considered already.

Choo choo!

Cars should be smaller fast transportation of goods, trains should be slow(er) but have high transfer amount, expessially regarding weight. They specifically fill a need for large bulk transfer of good, from say a mine to a smelting plant. Or from farms to bakeries. Maybe make it so you have limited variety of goods that can be transported by train (special cars like silo car, ore car, lumber car, etc) but they have maximum throughput compared to other vehicles. Could tier it with steam engine and then electric/diesel engine as well.

I think trains will be useful only if the transport capabilites of other land travel is reduced.

I'd love to see trains. There have been several cycles where I've had to transport large loads of cargo around the map. Trains with large cargo capacity would be amazing.

+Minecarts?

They actually had it planned a while ago, I don't know why they didn't do them but my suspicion is the lack of convenience. I like trains, I'd love to see them in the game, but idk what they'd be used for, that can't be handled better by other vehicles. In the real world they are used to move large amounts of goods from industry and moving people between cities. It's not really often you need to move so much goods a really long distance that it isn't easier to just use a cart etc. I can see a bit of a usecase for moving people between cities, but I don't know if the chunkloader could handle it xD

YES! That i want to say!