Understanding Rail Networks

[Simvalou 4]

Heya good people,

Sorry if this isn't posted in the right place but I'm seeking an explanation of the various rail networks & corresponding automata available to us in game. There's a fountain of information regarding this topic but my understanding is still foggy after searching and reading several threads. Specifically I want to know how many different train lines with unique automata we can have running in our cities.

To my knowledge we have by default;

- Passenger

- Freight

- Subway/El Rail

- Monorail

Then in addition with NAM we have the GLR/HSR & HRW stuff. From what I've read on the NAM faq I understand these to be reskins of existing networks. GLR being ground level El Rail and HSR being Monorail, with HRW being a shared network for passenger trains and HSR. So far so good, seems to still be only 4 unique trains but with additional options to connect and network. If that's the case then great, good to know. However when I see things like bullet train stations or the streetcars available on the STEX it gets a bit swimmy depending on what the mod's page/readme says. For example, "you may only have one GLR mod installed at a time" What does that mean in relation to subway/el rail? I am a confuse.

I get the concept of replacing the default/adding extra engines and cars into the mix. I currently enjoy an amtrak passenger line, freight with a bunch of extra engines and cars added, a green el rail train and default monorail with the UV map fix. That's 4 different lines with different trains but is that the limit?

Is it possible to have a single streetcar automata for GLR/Tram in road and still have a different Subway/El Rail automata separate from the streetcar line?

Can I have a bullet train type automata on the HSR line independent of the default monorail line & automata?

Apologies if this is otherwise common knowledge at this point but for someone just getting into SC4 and adding mods, a little clarification would be greatly appreciated.

 

TLDR; How many different trains can we have?

[matias93 7,535]

Five.

In terms of different automatas for rail networks, and discounting the possibility to have randomised sets in some cases (more on that later), you can have up to 5 different automatas, one for each type of train:

• Passenger (heavy) Rail
• Freight (heavy) Rail
• Subway
• Monorail (including all high speed rail mods)
• Light Rail (elevated rail and all tram and ground light rail mods, but not subway)

This might seem a little unintuitive, specially with Light Rail, because Maxis made the point of connecting subway and el-rail, but kept them as separate networks in the backend, and thus they have different automatas (the ones for subway are hard to see too, you can only find them on long and busy stretches of straight subway lines when in subway view, so they haven't got much attention by modders), and the latter modding has repurposed that network to be used in ways that aren't exactly the same: you wouldn't be taking a ride on a subway train on a tram stop in real life, starting from the fact that you would struggle to even hop in it without a huge platform:

(my friend in the photo is about 1.70 metres tall, as reference)

My approach when selecting light rail automatas is to basically handwave away such concerns and to look for something that looks relatively reasonable both over the elevated tracks and in narrow streets, because I'm using both those configurations in my game. Of course, I could decide to build a city without trams and to use a larger vehicle that would look awkward in small curves but not so much in the wider ones, but that's the kind of trade-offs that you have to consider.

Now, there's the option to have the game randomise both the locomotives and the cars, because the base game has two locomotives (diesel and steam) and the cars get randomised to look more realistic, and someone (I cannot remember who, sadly) discovered that this could be used with trains other than freight. Different automata mods for trains have the option to use the same models for all cars of the same type, or to let the game choose at random; IIRC, with passenger and freight trains you can choose independently locomotives and cars, while for monorail and light rail they all come packaged in the same livery (it would be very weird to see a metro train with the first car of another model, isn't it?). I have no idea about subway, because there are barely mods for it :(.

The key limitation here is that networks that are overrides of other networks will share their automatas: for the game engine, GLR is the same thing as El-Rail, and HSR is the same as Monorail, so it selects the same models for the trains. At most, you could have more than one different set being selected at random, but that sort of defeats the purpose: you would have the right trainsets half of the time, and the other half you would have tramways running on elevated tracks and light rail sets running on the streets.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,398]

9 hours ago, Simvalou said:

Heya good people,

Sorry if this isn't posted in the right place but I'm seeking an explanation of the various rail networks & corresponding automata available to us in game. There's a fountain of information regarding this topic but my understanding is still foggy after searching and reading several threads. Specifically I want to know how many different train lines with unique automata we can have running in our cities.

To my knowledge we have by default;

- Passenger

- Freight

- Subway/El Rail

- Monorail

Then in addition with NAM we have the GLR/HSR & HRW stuff. From what I've read on the NAM faq I understand these to be reskins of existing networks. GLR being ground level El Rail and HSR being Monorail, with HRW being a shared network for passenger trains and HSR. So far so good, seems to still be only 4 unique trains but with additional options to connect and network. If that's the case then great, good to know. However when I see things like bullet train stations or the streetcars available on the STEX it gets a bit swimmy depending on what the mod's page/readme says. For example, "you may only have one GLR mod installed at a time" What does that mean in relation to subway/el rail? I am a confuse.

I get the concept of replacing the default/adding extra engines and cars into the mix. I currently enjoy an amtrak passenger line, freight with a bunch of extra engines and cars added, a green el rail train and default monorail with the UV map fix. That's 4 different lines with different trains but is that the limit?

Is it possible to have a single streetcar automata for GLR/Tram in road and still have a different Subway/El Rail automata separate from the streetcar line?

Can I have a bullet train type automata on the HSR line independent of the default monorail line & automata?

Apologies if this is otherwise common knowledge at this point but for someone just getting into SC4 and adding mods, a little clarification would be greatly appreciated.

 

TLDR; How many different trains can we have?

The behavior of the automata is governed by the LUA code but we do not know if the LUA code present is the part that governs the automata or there is hidden code in the source code of SC4 that is not currently available.

However, we could do a trial within the NAM Team to see if we can change the behavior of the automata but currently it has a low priority in the NAM Team. So to do this experimentation will be a thing for the future.

[Simvalou 4]

I appreciate the replies and clarification. I didn't realize subway had its own automata, I figured it shared with el rail. The kid in me just wants more trains to play with, I suppose I'll have to make due using a meager five sets!

I'm off to cram a streetcar into a tram -> subway transition to witness it reach its final form.

Thanks for all you do!