Better than Powered Carts!

[hordekips]

Notch said he will improve the powered minecarts since he has made them pretty much useless by adding boosters it *might* be in the 1.8 update

[Triskelli]

Just returning to this idea for a brief addition,

Why not add a way to make rails from steel bars, that's cheaper and produces more than the current rail recipe? It could also fix the awkward 6:16 iron-rail ratio and allow rails to be melted back down.

[grimper12341]

Blah I want this ingame so bad D:

Powered rails could still have a use too, by making them a requirement to get up hills.

[EvanT]

There is more broken in the railway system than just the powered cart.

• Effective automatic transportation needs a taxi layout. (Carts can not be send to a destination without huge redstone "computing" which is much more expensive than a taxi layout)
• cost to usefulness factor of booster rails is to low. (in vMC)
• There are only forks which have there base at the root (going left or right one can not go straight or right). So a strait main line can not be build and riding the workaround path is like a roller-coaster.
• In my opinion the booster rails were added to avoid the necessary changes to the powered-cart. But one could argue that booster-rails are just up the tech-tree. They are more expensive but provide higher speed and don't need to be fueled with finite ressources.
• the whole using entity-collision-detection to move carts is just wrong design. Snapping them together like a magnet connection would be much better. To balance this a connect/disconnect-station/rail might be a way to go and of course a cart limit.

And BTW related.

• A turntable should be able to turn a cart sitting on a rail (untested but a previous poster said they do not affect the cart's orientation)
• There is no practical (Battosay has provided a challenging solution) way to unload a storage-minecart. (But I guess that is on the horizon)

[Rugaard]

actually i don't think powered carts would affect the usage of boosters much other than if they are used for long distance travel, the way i mine carts and tracks is that i use boosters mostly for automated systems and powered carts to travel from one base to another, i would prefer to use a powered cart to do so rather than using up lots of gold for 3 boosters at every 20 or 30 tiles and that can be very expensive since i often build outposts roughly 200 or more tiles away

also Ive noticed that powered carts when you power them they move in the direction you are facing

[Triskelli]

There is more broken in the railway system than just the powered cart.

-excellent points-

Personally, I'd love to see a revamped rail-system that works something like Locomotion or Transport Tycoon:



This game works a lot like RollerCoaster Tycoon (One of Notch's inspirations for Minecraft) in that tracks are laid out on a grid. Junctions are made by building two tracks over the same area. It wouldn't be the easiest thing to implement, but at least there's a basis for a revamped transport system.

[Stormweaver]

I must admit, the same code using for putting a second half block in the same tile is something I expected to see more of in MC...and still haven't. And doing something like 'place a second x to gain y functionality' would improve the flow of building some things a lot more than just adding another crafting recipe for something - be irritating to make a mistake though.

Being fair to notch, he 'did' fix a few issues with minecarts fairly recently, but at the same time I doubt he'll relook at them for a long while, for the same reason - the whole 'don't fix what isn't broken/has already been fixed recently i think' thing.

I'm pretty sure if someone did an extensive overhaul of the minecart system and put it all in a mod, it'd be more than appreciated; can't say I've seen one though.

[KriiEiter]

I must admit, the same code using for putting a second half block in the same tile is something I expected to see more of in MC...and still haven't. And doing something like 'place a second x to gain y functionality' would improve the flow of building some things a lot more than just adding another crafting recipe for something - be irritating to make a mistake though.

Being fair to notch, he 'did' fix a few issues with minecarts fairly recently, but at the same time I doubt he'll relook at them for a long while, for the same reason - the whole 'don't fix what isn't broken/has already been fixed recently i think' thing.

I'm pretty sure if someone did an extensive overhaul of the minecart system and put it all in a mod, it'd be more than appreciated; can't say I've seen one though.

There's been a ton for Bukkit SMP servers, especially before boosters came out. There was/is a lot of pretty decent ones, but like I said, for Bukkit.

[gmac3000]

I don't think a horizontal drilling machine is that useful, it probably won't be able to mine any faster than you can with a steel pickaxe, and for the powered minecart/locomotive to work there would have to be rails put down for it to move forward on. If it could lay the rails itself, it would probably be overpowered.

I definitely think powered minecarts are broken, and should be fixed or removed, however I think with the inclusion of rivers and oceans in 1.8, boats are probably going be a lot more useful, so a boat that includes storage (maybe a steamboat even) would be of more value at this stage.

Can you change the direction of a powered minecart by making it run over a powered rail with a block in front of it?

It wouldn't be overpowered if you had to feed it coal, give it rails, and it can only hold a certain amount of items

[Triskelli]

There's been a ton for Bukkit SMP servers, especially before boosters came out. There was/is a lot of pretty decent ones, but like I said, for Bukkit.

Bingo:

[KriiEiter]

There's been a ton for Bukkit SMP servers, especially before boosters came out. There was/is a lot of pretty decent ones, but like I said, for Bukkit.

Bingo:

-Video-

That's quite awesome, but I'd never have the patience to do something like that...

[Deepsniper]

See carts are connectable somehow....

[Triskelli]

See carts are connectable somehow....

Not in game, the video I linked is of a Bukkit plugin. Apparently it was easier than the modder thought it would be, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle for a good programmer to convert it to SSP.

[Deepsniper]

Well I know that Just was commenting on the fact that everyone thinks that carts aren't connectable yet this guy here just did it with a simple bukkit plugin. So maybe it would be possible with the age of steel maybe. All we would need is a good programmer which I am not...

[KriiEiter]

Well I know that Just was commenting on the fact that everyone thinks that carts aren't connectable yet this guy here just did it with a simple bukkit plugin. So maybe it would be possible with the age of steel maybe. All we would need is a good programmer which I am not...

I don't see the use of this unless we get a stronger powered minecart to attach to the front/back (if you could have it only face one direction then cut power to one, and apply power to the other, this would change the direction.)

[Praetorex]

perhaps Steve learns how to upgrade the existing powered minecart somewhere in the age of steel.

[grimper12341]

I don't see the use of this unless we get a stronger powered minecart to attach to the front/back

Actually if carts can connect then there is no need for a stronger powered minecart. It would simply be done the same way as real life freight trains: more cargo = more locomotives.



You could attach 2 powered minecarts at the front of the train, or 1 at the front and 1 at the back, or even more if necessary depending on how big the hills are and how many storage/empty carts you have.

Only reason that doesn't work at the moment is because carts tend to bounce off or pass through each other, but connected carts would fix that :3 (hopefully)

[Triskelli]

Mainly out of boredom, I went ahead and whipped up a potential Locomotive model.



No texture yet, but you do what you have to. This has ~20 cubes to render, and is supposed to run on the tracks we have now. What do you all think?

[BinoAl]

Mainly out of boredom, I went ahead and whipped up a potential Locomotive model.



No texture yet, but you do what you have to. This has ~20 cubes to render, and is supposed to run on the tracks we have now. What do you all think?

Haha, that actually looks pretty good :D

[Triskelli]

Haha, that actually looks pretty good :D

Thanks! It's based a bit on this sketch:

Spoiler

Show

Anyways, I've added a poll to this topic! Vote on how you think on how the minecart system can be fixed!

[BinoAl]

I voted B, but it wasn't really too specific in what i think would work. I think that minecarts should be able to connect to each other, but there should also be some sort of reliable engine. Booster tracks can get expensive pretty fast, so a coal powered train that could pull storage/regular minecarts would be the best option, imo

[grimper12341]

Coal carts are reliable if connected though >.<

You just need a lot of them.

And considering what flowers says about reward for effort, if he's only gonna pick 1 thing (not saying he's considering this atm ofc) then we would be much better off with connected carts than just a more powerful one.

You could attach 2 powered minecarts at the front of the train, or 1 at the front and 1 at the back, or even more if necessary depending on how big the hills are and how many storage/empty carts you have.

Only reason that doesn't work at the moment is because carts tend to bounce off or pass through each other, but connected carts would fix that :3 (hopefully)

[Triskelli]

Hmm.

Does anyone know what Flowerchild uses to make his in-game models? While this all rests on a really big if, I'd still like to get something productive and useful out of this thread. Show Flower that it's not just the scum of the earth trawling the Suggestions Forums.

[Damion Rayne]

Hey Trisk, any idea if it would be possible to connect minecarts together?

[Triskelli]

Hey Trisk, any idea if it would be possible to connect minecarts together?

While I'm not a programmer in any sense of the word, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible. I'm not the one you need to be asking though!

(Yeesh, one year learning Java in Comp. Sci, and you think I'd learn how to decompile some code.)