Rail simplification with use of speed controller suggestion

[Rymac]

I was building a complicated rail path and putting in the logic to reverse the direction, and realized this doesn't need to be so messy. Say you have a rail path that goes forward, then turns right, then up, then left, for a say a tram or turbo lift to travel around the ship. For every direction change you would need 2 buttons and 2 rails to switch the direction. Not to mention the logic in between.

With rail speed controllers, its set by percentage, if i'm not mistaken. So with 4 activation modules, and 0 on, you get 0% speed, 1 on 50% speed, 2 on 100% speed, 3 on 150%, 4 on 200%... SO what if it went this way, by dividing it by 2, 0 on, would be -100%, 1 on -50%, 2 on 0%, 3 on 50%, and 4 on 100%. So essentially you could reverse an entire rail path by inverting the speed controller.

Say you just wanted it to flip directions on the press of a button, you can toggle between -100%, 0%, and 100%, rather then multiple rails changing direction. Not to mention if you logic breaks somewhere trying to figure out why it all stopped working... Then the button stuff can be more specific for changing paths.

This seems easier in my opinion. I would be interested to hear anyone else's take on it.
Thanks for reading!

 

[jstenholt]

Uh... that's not how speed controllers work, and your suggestion would make rails infinitely less intuitive.

Gonna give this one a solid "no."

 

[spaceEngineer]

hmm I kinda see what your saying this would simplify rail logic in some cases. Mostly not a fan tho having rails move things in the oposite direction that they are facing would be confusing. and weird to learn initially.

 

[jayman38]

It would allow those-in-the-know to create a two-way track with less logic. I approve with this change:
Allow speed controllers to work as now. Allow a "not" block to be slaved to a speed controller. When the slaved "not" block is activated, then simply reverse direction. This shouldn't break any existing designs, continues to allow 200% speed, and kinda-sorta makes sense conceptually.

 

[Rymac]

hmm I kinda see what your saying this would simplify rail logic in some cases. Mostly not a fan tho having rails move things in the oposite direction that they are facing would be confusing. and weird to learn initially.

Well the rails should probably flip in that case. So when the speed is negative they point the correct direction.