In this update I've added several new rail cars to make the Train system much more interesting and useful!
Previously players only had access to Minecarts, which could hold a decent amount of goods but for very high throughput, players had to spam them everywhere which created lots of traffic jams. But now, you can research Freight Rail Cars and unlock 3 new units:
- Hopper Car - holds 100 units of any 'Loose Bulk' goods. This includes grain, stones, ores, flour, and basic crops. (the same filter as what the Chutes have)
- Tank Car - holds 100 units of any Fluid. This includes water, milk, fruit juice, etc. (the same filter as Fluid Pipes)
- Boxcar - holds 40 units of any item, including packed goods.
There's a few catches to these higher-capacity cars. They are larger than minecarts, each taking up 2 block units. Also they can only be loaded and unloaded at Train Stations - Minecart loaders will have no effect. So that means they must be pulled by a Locomotive. But, they should be extremely useful for moving large quantities of items across long distance especially for specialized goods.
To balance things out, the Minecarts now only accept Loose Bulk goods. So they are still useful for simple transport unprocessed materials, but won't be good for the 'last mile' deliver to markets and such. Note that this might be a disruptive change, so I added a new game rule 'Restrict Minecart Inventory' that will default to OFF for any games created before this update. It will default to ON for any newly created games. You can of course change this any time in the Editor / Edit Rules page.
Moving and rotating trains has been made much easier too. And there's now a button right on the Locomotives to add a new car to the back of the train.
There's also a new cosmetic change: The "Gourmet Foods Store" is now simply called the Tavern. And it has updated art too:
Here's the full patch notes:
Features / Improvements:
- Added Boxcar, which is a 2-length rail car that holds 40 items
- Added Tank Car, which is a 2-length rail car that holds 100 units of fluid
- Added Hopper Car, which is a 2-length rail car that holds 100 units of loose bulk goods (same filter as Chute: ores, crystals, grain, flour, fertilizer, etc)
- Boxcar, Tank Car, and Hopper Car all occupy 2 blocks and can only be loaded / unloaded at a Train Stop.
- Added new research “Freight Cars”, which unlocks Boxcar, Tank Car, and Hopper Car.
- Added button on Steam Locomotives to directly attach railcars to the end of the train
- Move and rotation tools now work on entire trains
- Added new Global Rule: Restrict Minecart Inventory. Default is ON, which adds a “Loose Bulk” top-level filter restriction to all Minecarts. Note that for any legacy maps the Default for this new rule is OFF (meaning minecarts can still load any item) to prevent interfering with current builds.
- Newly attached train cars will follow existing track lines
- “Gourmet Foods” store is now called “Tavern” and its building model has been updated
- Total inventory slot capacity is displayed and not just item count
- Campaign map 2 added a new victory condition requiring Base Level 4. This is to help guide players towards the base upgrade which is required for other buildings.
- Tooltip for Research will indicate which worker units are unlocked by it
- Steam Locomotive only outputs smoke particles if consuming fuel
- ‘Rollable’ filter (items that can be transported in Chutes) has been renamed to ‘Loose Bulk’
Balance Changes
- Increased maximum rail car speed on Magic Rails by 25%
- Eggs, Ethers, and Mana Crystals (charged or depleted) are no longer considered Rollable / Loose Bulk (meaning they can no longer be placed in a Chute, or in a Hopper car)
- Filters on minecarts and rail cars will override any train-level filters. Previously the filter effects were merged.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug: Move Tool was unlinking rail cars and stopping worker unit behavior on selection, not on move confirmation.
- Fixed bug: When moving a Steam Locomotive, its potential new position could be blocked by current position
- Set default OSX rendering path back to Metal, with fallback OpenGLCore, instead of the other way around. OpenGLCore default was causing performance issues for many OSX players. If OSX players encounter display issues (missing world items) due to this change, they can specify a launch option of ‘-force-glcore’
- Fixed bug: attached minecarts (with no Engine) were treating first minecart’s filter as a train-level filter
- Fixed bug: hitting the ‘Go’ button on a rail car or train would not cause it to move if the game was paused
Enjoy! And as always, feel free to join in the discussion on the Discord server: https://discord.gg/factorytown