What I Learned From Being One of Devoted's Most Prolific Builders of Railroads and Railroad Infastructure

Hey everyone, many of you have interacted with me at one point or another. I've been a part of the civ genre since Civcraft 2.0 and have probably played every major server in that time frame. I held positions in several governments and private organizations, and played from a variety of political and economic ideologies. There is one thing though that has always interested me more than any other aspect of the game: rails and transportation. I'm far from the only one. From Sentisten's super-cool destination selector to Terminus's automated transit system, there has been no shortage of badass rail projects on civ servers. Having spent the vast majority of my time underground working on these systems, and having been prodded by friends to help with current and planned projects, I've instead decided to "open-source" the things I have learned during my time as an e-engineer.

1. Y Level. I've participated in building rails at a variety of y levels. My personal preference has always been to build at bedrock, but there are legitimate advantages to other y levels, and even ground level or viaduct style rails. Building at bedrock has the advantage that your rails cannot be removed by breaking the block under them. On servers where rails are expensive, or theft is an issue, this means you have to spend half as many reinforcement materials when building your line. For a cross-map line, that's huge savings. There is a drawback that lava pools tend to be at this y level and are difficult to clear. If you need to build fast, you might consider building above y 11 because you'll bridge over these pools without having to drain them. Another shortfall, one I didn't realize until Devoted 3, was that having tunnels at bedrock enables grief to be placed at bedrock which makes it impossible to place acid blocks under it and instead you have to break it all by hand. For this reason, I recommend building rails at y1 and placing a reinforced trackbed on the floor of the tunnel. It's more expensive, but it can look nice, and will save you trouble later on. One more note on y levels: for segregated local metro systems that don't tie into international rails, I recommend picking a significantly higher y level. Personally, I find the lowest spot in the city and subtract 10-20 blocks so that everything can be level, and stations are quicker and easier to access than the deep lines of international travel. This is especially good if your cart TPs get stolen a lot.

2. Tunnel Dimensions. I've seen a lot of 1x2 tunnels in my time, and I want to punch newfriends every time I see them. Tunnels with a height of two will give you suffocation damage if you jump out of the cart along the route. It also makes it easier for griefers to place blocks while traveling in a minecart that will overlap the rail. I recommend a minimum height of 3 and a minimum width that varies depending on the number of rails, but always includes one block of free space on either side of the tunnel. Since two rail lines can share the block of air between them, it makes sense to keep rails running in the same tunnel until the last possible moment before they must branch off to go to their own destinations. Of course you have to weigh this against the directness of the route, but if they're generally running the same direction, keep them in the same tunnel. This was particularly visible in MTA 3D where we had a westbound and northbound tunnel directly outside the station wide enough to accomodate 8 tracks each. It also cuts down on land use, though depending on your nation's laws, I recommend reserving a range of y levels exclusively for infastructure.

3. Stops and Stations. There have been more station designs on civ servers than I can count, and each has its advantages and shortcomings. I'm always adjusting my build stratagies, and stations that I thought were cutting edge when they were built, strike me as total shit today. A personal pet peeve of mine is stations that terminate all lines as if they are the only city in the world. Travelers have to get out of their carts whether or not they are at their destination. Sure, many will still have to transfer, but if you build only passthrough lines the system becomes more efficent, and possibly more AFKable, for everyone. You can employ a variety of stopping mechanisms. I've seen slope based stoppers increase in number, but I prefer a flat stopper consisting of an unpowered powered rail, a regular rail then a detector rail and a string of powered rail to get a cart back up to speed. These don't requiere a button to be pushed and can be bypassed with a poor man's macro (heavy object on your up arrow key) making it easy to go get some tendies while you're rolling along to your final destination.

4. Signage. Depending on the number of lines in your station, you may benefit from signage. MTA 3D contained a LOT of lines, though running them through the same tunnels made it look like way less on the world map. In order to navigate our station, we had a departures board that listed all the cities along our lines, the travel time to each city, and the platform from which that particular rail left. We duplicated these signs in a similar format directly on the station platforms for the benefit of travelers who are already on the line arriving from another city. This design was actually fairly widespread. Smaller stations may be able to cut down on the necessary signage. Also, please sign your exits. It may seem like common knowledge to you, but other users may never have visited your city before.

5. Powered Rails. You'll want to place your powered rails far enough apart that a cart without a rider will come to stop, but close enough together that carts maintain max speed. There are mods to measure this, but personally, I just place powered rails on choords ending in 00 25 50 and 75. Place them too close together and you'll be running the length of your line on foot.

6. Diagonals. Diagonals suck. This is a block game and diagonal tunnels look odd, and are a much bigger dig than a straight tunnel. Having said that, you should endeavor to take the most direct path possible. As for powered rails, they end up creating a little bump out due to the need for a straight track (the powered rail). Make all these bumps face the same direction and "nest" inside each other so it doesn't end up looking weird when you add a third rail to the tunnel.

7. Cart TPs. There will always be some asshole who steals your carts. There is no way around it. You have to choose between replacing carts all the time, or an expensive alternative. That's your choice. There are two things you can do to minimize this annoyance. You can recess the cart into the wall and surround it with reinforced blocks leaving a hole just big enough to look though and click the cart. This ensures that if a player breaks the cart, the reinforced blocks will still keep them too far away to pick it up (this can be defeated). If you are really pissed at your local cart thieves, you can build a 2 deep DRO lined pit with a bastion under it and put the cart in it. They have to jump in to get the cart, and if they break it, the only way out is to break their way out (this can also be defeated if the thieves are determined enough). Lastly, by using a half slab rather than a solid block above the cart, you can prevent the cart from giving suffocation damage.

8. Rider Counts. You may be interested in knowing how many people actually use your rails. Snitches may or may not work for this, but I recommend an alternative approach anyway. Use a detector rail wired to a dropper hidden behind the wall. Fill it up with a stack of items. Every rider that passes will dispense one item, and ridercount = 64 - items left.

9. Lighting. It's not a necessity, but it helps those players (usually newfriends who we'd like to retain) who may not have gammabright installed. Torches are ugly and I have a personal vendetta against them, but you guys can light things however you want. Someone else can write a manifesto about lighting.

10. Namelayer Groups. I recommend putting your rails on a group that you feel comfortable giving out access to. You will be asked** for access every now and then, and there will be times when you want to enlist the help of people outside your immediate group to work on the rails.

If you find this helpful, I'm glad. If you disagree on some of the points, I'd love to discuss it.