Changing Toyland to futuristic space colony

[XeryusTC]

Since it's vacuum, it can't be sucked. What about MagLev inside a vacuum tube? No friction at all!

Thats a good idea, and let those trains run at mach 8 too...

I think it would be really cool if we had some kind of wires you could lay for a digital matter stream in a later stadium of the game, just to keep it sci-fi.

[Red*Star]

Thats a good idea, and let those trains run at mach 8 too...

As long as the acceleration is smaller than what is "unpleasing" for the passengers we can travel near lightspeed in vacuum if we have no friction. We would just have to remember to avoid curves and to add relativistic time dilation functions to TTDPatch .


No, but travelling on moon, where's no atmosphere, so it's easy to have vacuum everywhere, means we can have very energy-efficient maglevs or monorails or tubes or whatyouwant.

Personally I would find glass tubes cool, but I fear that won't be possible in TTD because its insufficient transparency capabilities:

[White Rabbit]

I'd also like to see trains on actual rail tracks, however. It would be nice if you had automated heavy freight trains dragging..er...moon rocks from mines to factories on the surface of the moon, rather than in tubes.

[Flamelord]

So we could have a heavy-but-slow convential rail system that carries a lot, a maglev system that moves fairly quickly, but carries less (probably best for passengers), and a really light and fast type (hover or particle transmission) that carries very little, but moves very quickly (goods or such that has to move fast?).

Possibilites for each type:

Type One:

Convential Rail
Heavy Monorail

Type Two:

Maglev
Hover Trains

Type Three:

Particle Transmission (Hard to draw)
Evacuated Maglev Tube
Tube Trains

[Red*Star]

Because of the low gravity on moon conventional rail won't work. In curves the trains either have to slow down or must weigh 6 times as much as on earth to not derail/overturn.

The low gravity will also cause problems with weelspin of the train wheels when the train accelerates.

Ok, we said to use heavy trains on conventional rail, but nevertheless it's unrealistic, I think.

PS: Is it possible by the TTDPatch engine to have two sprites on one track ground tile that are in the same time in front of a train and behind it? (Would be an issue for the tube trains.)

[DaleStan]

You cannot make it something six times as heavy without also making it six times as massive.

Making a train six times as massive solves exactly nothing. Sure, the train now has six times the normal force, but it also has six times the inertia, meaning six times as much force is required to accelerate it at the same rate, and six times as much centrifugal force on the turns.

OT: That does not qualify as a useful update comment, Red*Star. See the LocalStyleGuide page.

[Red*Star]

Yeah, you're right. [But only in the first approximation. When the forces get nonlinear, you can't predict anything.] Seems simple school physics has been blasted away by quantum mechanics in my head.
But it's /still/ unrealistic. Maybe we should add some glue to the rails to prevent the trains from derailing.

OT: That does not qualify as a useful update comment, Red*Star. See the LocalStyleGuide page.

Sorry?

[Patchman]

Just rationalize that the curves are banked appropriately...

[Flamelord]

Or, we could just stick with heavy monorail for the first type, since heavy conventional is not doable.

Type One:

Heavy Monorail

Type Two:

Maglev
Hover Trains

Type Three:

Particle Transmission (Hard to draw)
Evacuated Maglev Tube
Tube Trains

Hover trains are probably impractical, but there's always the twist that you wouldn't really know whether they are or not. For the third type, I would suggest something like an oversized version of the particle transmission system, for visibility. Or we could come up with another third type of rail that doesn't require a tube of any sort.

[Killer 11]

good work keep it going and when you finnish i can use my battlecruiser grf for it and then atleast it won't looks so out of place.

[lws1984]

I like MaglevTube, seems most feasible/realistic/already saw it in Popular Science

OT: Every time I see "tube trains" I can't help but think about London!

[VIPStephan]

Ok, speaking of asteroid-like maps/games: If each "island" is supposed to be an asteroid then it should be made impossible to build bridges from one asteroid to another (through "space") since they would move in real life. And this way the transport methods would get a whole different weight since ships and rockets would become much more necessary and trains and cars just play a role for "intra asteroid" transport....

Looking forward to this. Keep up the great work.

[White Rabbit]

Yes...so is this supposed to take place on the Moon or in an asteroid field? The moon's lakes are all empty and full of dust..they don't show black space and stars. Instead of empty holes in the moon, just have lakes as...really, really deep canyons, and even then it wouldn't be realistic because there aren't many of those on the Moon.

[cpt_jack]

Hi

My idea was that it takes place on a group of asteroids just because i didn't like the lava/stuff on the mars conversion, and i thought it would be cool if we could have spaceships leaving from space docks.

But since we can have spaceships instead of the aircraft anyway, i don't mind what we do.

Red star I LOVE the tude design for trains, and white rabbit i like the idea of no tracks and we just have large frieght engines pulling cargo.


OK, how about this

Rail tracks = Hover trains, slow and large. there carriages hovers to, and i like the idea of only having a simple graphic for the tracks so that you can hardly see them, to make it look like it doesn't use tracks and it can go anyway, of course it can't really so we would need to see something.

monorail = a better looking monorail i want to use red stars idea for maglev trains traveling on a sort of monorail but in a tube, so i think a more si-fi looking monorail would be a good first step before that

maglev = as i said, red stars idea pictured above somewhere, trains wouldn't be able to carry huge amounts of cargo because of limited space, but able to reach speeds of over 600mph and with a very high hp so they do it straight away. (i'm thinking 600mph just because any faster and we wont be able to see them very well)


so is that a good idea or a bad idea?

[Flamelord]

So, we have:

-Hover Trains (1)
-Tubed Monorail Trains (2)
-Tubed Maglev (3)

I thought we decided that the tubed trains were impractical. As redstar said above, they don't look so good because they are mostly obscured by the tube. I'd rather have us use an open advanced monorail (which would actually be a monorail - maglev (see TransRapid). I think that for type three, we should deviate more from the standard and go with the transmission tubes for the ultralight-and-fast type. It would add interest, and wouldn't require a tube.

I'd love to see someone come up with a sensible tube junction.

[VIPStephan]

That's a great idea! But it covers only the "rail" transport. And I'd still suggest to limit this kind of transport to each asteroid only. And for transporting goods from one asteroid to another spaceships (replacing ships - carry a big amount of cargo, kinda slow speed) or space shuttles (="airplanes" - only passengers and/or a small amount of goods transportable, but with high speed) would be necessary.

So, to say it in a nutshell:

• spaceships
  • can only load/unload in space docks (="harbour")
  • can only travel in space between asteroids (="sea")
  • travel at comparably low speed (slightly slower than mag lev(?))
  • can carry huge amounts of cargo and any cargo except of passengers
• space shuttles
  • can load/unload at spaceports (="airport")
  • can travel everywhere (space and asteroids)
  • travel at high speed (equal or higher than fastest mag lev)
  • can only transport low amounts of passengers and/or special goods

would me my idea about adding some variety to the transport methods. I kinda like that

Who's with me?

[Villem]

I think ships should be huge space "barges", can carry huge amounts of cargo, while aircraft should be spacecraft, can carry less than the barges, but are faster, and cost less.

While trucks & busses could be shuttles..

[DaleStan]

spaceships
[*] can only travel in space between asteroids (="sea")
[*] travel at comparably low speed (slightly slower than mag lev(?))

So, 127 mph (the (current?) maximum speed for a ship) is "slightly slower" than maglev?

[cpt_jack]

That's a great idea! But it covers only the "rail" transport. And I'd still suggest to limit this kind of transport to each asteroid only.

VIPStephan do you mean that rail tracks can't cross space/sea? i think this is a good idea, but how would it work?

I havn't tried yet but i'm sure there is a way to turn off bridges, or should we just limit the length of them?

I don't think there is anyway to stop people from raising land out of space, unless we just make it cost a huge amount.


In earlier pictures you will see i made dirt tracks for the roads to show that moon buggies had been driving on them, do we like that idea or would hover vehicles on roads look better?



p.s. i could do with some help coding this or if you have any picturesyou can send them to me here jack@pincushion.biz

[DaleStan]

So, 127 mph (the (current?) maximum speed for a ship) is "slightly slower" than maglev?

Except, of course, that that's 127 kph/79 mph, not 127 mph.