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[Suggestion] New means of commute.  

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lnomsim
New Member
Joined: 11 months  ago
Posts: 3
11/09/2016 10:10 am  

After playing on some big maps, like Hyla's crescent and Azara's falls, I'd like to suggest new means of transportation.

These two maps are really big compared to the others (I didn't lpay the last one yet), and the colonies have the tendency to be spread, with some workplaces or housing facilities very far from each others.

For example, in Azara falls I had to build an apartment building in order to provide workers for a simple construction drone module in order to make the junction from the energy district to one of the three farming lands. It's not really that I mind, but colonists do, they would often complain they do not have access to some services or have to walk too far away to go working.

And this is worse in Hyla's crescent, since we have to extend the colony toward the artifactsome housing facilities or workplaces (like once again, geothermal power plants), are very far from the main colony.

Well that was longer than I was I thought.

Before I make these suggestions, I'd like to say, I realy like those big maps, the fact that the colony is not massed around the core, etc... But the fact that colonist would have to walk kilometers to reach their workplace, home, leisure, etc.. is weird.

So, here are my suggestions, add two or three other means of transportation :

  • Car tunnel : it could be bigger than the pedestrian one, like 1x2, with a right and left lane. I could help reach eccentric districts faster, but create pollution into the air system. (I also find weird that long tunnels with only farms could have bad air.)
  • Elevated Monorail : on big maps, it would help to join quickly  two opposed ends of the colony. It could be an end game means of transportation, expensive to build and use a lot of energy, like 4 or 5 by segment.
  • Air ships : terminals mor expensive to build and maintain than monorail stations, but would not require network infrastructure. They could transport colonist from any point of the colony to another, as long as they have a terminal. They could get in trouble during sandstorm, iceshard shower and creep spore attack.

Those are the basics suggestions, but since they all uses vehicles instead of our good old legs, I'd like to make balance suggestions too.

  • Creating and maintaining those vehicles would consume some nanite periodically.
  • Policies could be issued to promote the use of these transportation, at the cost of energy and nanite consumption. Or banning it in the case of a low nanite or energy balance.
  • All these new means of transportation wold have to be discovered in the research center.

I hope this suggestion was useful.


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SRombauts
Active Member
Joined: 11 months  ago
Posts: 19
11/09/2016 5:19 pm  

Not far into the game, but I really like this idea of transportation systems!

It can add a small layer of interest and complexity, especially in end game on bigger maps.

Unreal Engine 4 hacker, author of the Git Source Control Plugin

@SRombauts on Twitter


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pinback
Active Member
Joined: 11 months  ago
Posts: 12
12/09/2016 7:50 pm  

+1!


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bluesaka111
Eminent Member
Joined: 11 months  ago
Posts: 49
13/09/2016 7:22 am  

Airship? Why have to create a new one instead just modify the current Colony drop ship a little to do the job?


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lnomsim
New Member
Joined: 11 months  ago
Posts: 3
13/09/2016 12:36 pm  

By airship I do not necessarily means XX° century gaz balloon, it's future after all, I just mean aircraft.


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Subtactrics
Active Member
Joined: 10 months  ago
Posts: 5
07/10/2016 2:10 pm  

This.

+1 for monorail - very thematic with Total Recall, the Mars trilogy etc.

Totally recalling accidentally killing everyone... over and over again.


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Paul Tozour
Reputable Member
Joined: 1 year  ago
Posts: 270
07/10/2016 5:36 pm  

Thanks for the suggestions!  We've considered all of these possibilities at various points.

We'll see what happens during the beta -- it would be nice to add at least one of these, but we're starting work now on a big new feature that I'm super excited about but can't really talk about just yet 😉


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LadyAquanine735
Trusted Member
Joined: 8 months  ago
Posts: 99
19/11/2016 7:43 am  

The monorail idea seems like the best one.  It could be available to the public, nobody would need cars, and its routes are easy to customize or modify.  Based on what I've seen, the culture of the colony seems built on clean energy (or as clean as it gets with geoplants and zorium plants) and giving people easy access to their jobs by the shoe-leather express.  I heard about such concepts in futuristic city-building ideas that experts have been talking about in real life.  One way they wanted to cut down on pollution was to include easy-to-use public transportation.

On the other hand, the monorail would probably would have to be a maglev to save on power, and it might break down in shard storms or lightning strikes.  Plus, each train would need its own track, especially if it just went back and forth or traveled on a circuit.  


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Zarro
New Member
Joined: 8 months  ago
Posts: 4
09/12/2016 5:38 pm  

Two words: Pneumatic tubes.


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widget21
New Member
Joined: 8 months  ago
Posts: 2
10/12/2016 9:29 am  

I like the monorail Idea and was thinking the save thing. Maybe have the current Tubes Up-gradable to allow monorail to run across the top and that way people can upgrade just the route they want it to take with a double cost for a stop at the same tunnel location. 


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raddoni
Active Member
Joined: 7 months  ago
Posts: 11
20/12/2016 9:21 am  

Hoverboards. Future has Hoverboards!

Also, I suppose the reason for only walking mode is to make the game difficult and more playable. They could come up with a better key development concern for a space colonists than a walk to work commuting time... "I did not travel across the galaxy to walk to work for 20 min! I am done here! Get me up the spaceship!"


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LZIM
 LZIM
Eminent Member
Joined: 7 months  ago
Posts: 38
13/01/2017 6:09 am  

The idea being that this is first steps on a new planet.. dropping down a whole streetcar/rail system in the first few sols wouldn't be practical when you're starving and would require a serious layout design, materials and effort. But after a few tens of thousands of colonists are in place.. and there are far off places to move things too and fro.. I'd like to know what the system requirements are or would be to have the game run things in real-time (so you could see every colonists movements).

Pods and stations for pod storage and service fits in well with the current design without changing much if only adding diagonal sections for tunnels. Only have to consider how fast they could move in theory since nothing is shown real-time in terms of transportation. while keeping the system of airlocks and sections in place. Though it would be cool to see the airlocks in action in real-time and be able to follow their airflow and vacuums for super fast travelling pods and pressurized pedestrian traffic.


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Sci fi 101
Trusted Member
Joined: 5 months  ago
Posts: 53
17/03/2017 7:59 am  

I like the monorail or dualrail idea for a fast track system. Mass transit systems are built to relieve congestion, so makes sense as the colony expands to a higher level.

Don't the Bullet trains in Japan run on the maglev principle?

I remember watching some episodes of Babylon 5 where the transit system on Mars was tubularly enclosed and seemed to work on that same maglev principle. No atmosphere was in the tube, only the cyclindrical compartment for passengers had that for obvious reasons. They even had autobots repairing the damage done after a suicide bomb explosion that was triggered by an alien infected member of the Mars underground movement, Jack.

Edited: 4 months  ago

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