- Joined
- Dec 23, 2014
- Messages
- 110
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- 39
First, 45-degree rail wedges. these will allow easy change in direction and make things such as monorail cars for traversing large bases more of a thing.
Second, a "junction rail" block of some sort, basically placed at the end of a section of rail, and when two rail sections ending in junctions on separate entities are placed flush with one another, the junctions would connect and form one contiguous rail segment. To prevent alignment issues, the two connecting entities would have to be either A) docked to one another, or B) both docked to the same entity. I.E. Platform A is rail-docked to Station B, when Platform A's rails are aligned with and adjacent to the rails on Station B they will allow transition from one to the other. Similarly, if Platform C's rails line up with Platform A and is also docked to Station B, those would connect as well. This would allow (among other things) the building of rotating rail platforms used to move a docked entity's direction, or to switch tracks. Note that while we can already do this with the CW/CCW rotator blocks, it would be difficult to do so with a parallel rail system, which leads me to my next point:
Third, make it so that rail dockers facing the same direction fire as a group (for now until docking beams are discontinued), and make it so that an entity can dock on two or more rails simultaneously if the rails line up with the rail dockers. Of course, when docked in this fashion a multi-rail entity would not be able to move unless all of the rails they are docked to line up parallel along their direction of travel. In addition to not having to make sure ships have a single, central docking hardpoint, it could also benefit by having the mass of each separate rail pool together to determine whether the docked entity suffers a mass penalty.
More as I think of them. I think all three of these ideas have been mentioned before, but they are worth reiterating upon.
EDIT: Also imho, rails need to go faster! A catapult launch deck isn't really going to be all that useful if the fighters are moving at a snail's pace. From what I understand having a rail speed controller makes the rail's max speed double that of the default setting, but even then it's slow as heck.
I vote for making max rail speed equal to the server max speed setting, or at least at 50% or something, that way you can have a system where you undock at a good fraction of the server's max speed... great way to get a boost to get off planets, or to get clear of the mothership or station, and you can use speed controllers for when you need to slow things down.
Second, a "junction rail" block of some sort, basically placed at the end of a section of rail, and when two rail sections ending in junctions on separate entities are placed flush with one another, the junctions would connect and form one contiguous rail segment. To prevent alignment issues, the two connecting entities would have to be either A) docked to one another, or B) both docked to the same entity. I.E. Platform A is rail-docked to Station B, when Platform A's rails are aligned with and adjacent to the rails on Station B they will allow transition from one to the other. Similarly, if Platform C's rails line up with Platform A and is also docked to Station B, those would connect as well. This would allow (among other things) the building of rotating rail platforms used to move a docked entity's direction, or to switch tracks. Note that while we can already do this with the CW/CCW rotator blocks, it would be difficult to do so with a parallel rail system, which leads me to my next point:
Third, make it so that rail dockers facing the same direction fire as a group (for now until docking beams are discontinued), and make it so that an entity can dock on two or more rails simultaneously if the rails line up with the rail dockers. Of course, when docked in this fashion a multi-rail entity would not be able to move unless all of the rails they are docked to line up parallel along their direction of travel. In addition to not having to make sure ships have a single, central docking hardpoint, it could also benefit by having the mass of each separate rail pool together to determine whether the docked entity suffers a mass penalty.
More as I think of them. I think all three of these ideas have been mentioned before, but they are worth reiterating upon.
EDIT: Also imho, rails need to go faster! A catapult launch deck isn't really going to be all that useful if the fighters are moving at a snail's pace. From what I understand having a rail speed controller makes the rail's max speed double that of the default setting, but even then it's slow as heck.
I vote for making max rail speed equal to the server max speed setting, or at least at 50% or something, that way you can have a system where you undock at a good fraction of the server's max speed... great way to get a boost to get off planets, or to get clear of the mothership or station, and you can use speed controllers for when you need to slow things down.
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