How Is Railcraft Useful in FTB Beyond?

[Wightwraith]

Don't let the title throw you off and get the wrong idea.
Railcraft has always been among my top favorite mods, but when thinking efficiency, other methods come to mind that are less expensive to obtain, more efficient, and way faster. If I wanted to get a bulk of items from point "A" to point "B", it would make sense to just plop down a dimensional transceiver and call it a day just like that. If not long distance or transporting items/fluids inter-dimensionally (ie nether to overworld), and the distance was short from point "A" to "B", then I'd just place enderio conduits/itemducts/etc.

If I wanted to move myself from point "A" to "B", I can easily craft a means of teleportation via RF tools.

I've always loved railcraft since 1.4.6 and I wanted to find uses for it that can make a excellent impact on my world that won't compromise efficiency (or having better methods of doing x and y task).

Can anyone name some suggestions that I can utilize? Things that can last into endgame and not have to sadly retire/rip out my rail network and forget about it. I hate to compromise such a fun mod to be replaced. Is there anything I can use in conjunction with this mod with such circumstances? What is something railcraft does that other mods cant do now?

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The only thing Railcraft does that no other mod can do is the rails, which are themselves obsolete with the advent of Tesseract-like blocks and teleporters.

You can use a Steam Boiler to run some things if you like, it's not the most efficient but it is fairly trivial to set up. I think the new Thermal Expansion steam dynamo has an upgrade to specifically make it work with piped in steam for a significant increase in RF production that might be viable.

The liquid tanks, while horridly inefficient for footprint considerations, are an amusing and aesthetic way of storing mass quantities of liquids.

 

[Pyure]

The problem with a rails-oriented mod isn't really the mod itself but the packs its in. As the OP noted, virtually everything you can accomplish with RC logistics can be done "better" with other mods. This makes a fair amount of sense: if we could make tubes/tesseracts that transported goods (of virtually unlimited size and quanity) instantaneously and free of energy costs in real life, we wouldn't use trains here either.

To get the best experience out of Railcraft, one would have to play a pack that excludes the majority of the friendly mods we're accustomed to, or tiers things such that you're forced to use RC for a given amount of time before you "graduate" to tubes, tesseracts, etc.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The problem with a rails-oriented mod isn't really the mod itself but the packs its in. As the OP noted, virtually everything you can accomplish with RC logistics can be done "better" with other mods. This makes a fair amount of sense: if we could make tubes/tesseracts that transported goods (of virtually unlimited size and quanity) instantaneously and free of energy costs in real life, we wouldn't use trains here either.

To get the best experience out of Railcraft, one would have to play a pack that excludes the majority of the friendly mods we're accustomed to, or tiers things such that you're forced to use RC for a given amount of time before you "graduate" to tubes, tesseracts, etc.

I wouldn't say tubes are the problem in and of themselves. After all, RC worked quite well alongside RP2 and BC3. Tubes/pipes are inherently short-ranged solutions, not more than a couple of chunks or so. Trains were the long-ranged transportation solution of that era.

It's specifically the tesseract-like or teleportation systems which make Railcraft functionally obsolete. However, many modern tech mods include some form of at least player teleportation within their system.

Having said that, here's some uses I had for rails:

* Vertical rails to go up and down your mineshaft to y less than 10 branch mines to haul stuff. This gives you a drop-off point at your Y level then send the cart off up the wall to deposit at your sorting center
* Alternate to this is the incline that goes down and using a rail cart instead of stairs to make the trip faster. May require lots of powered rails to maintain speed going uphill.
* Reinforced Rails. Especially for your nether-rail systems. Because Ghasts suck. Plus they go faster without having a risk of derailing.
* Wye Rails. Because intersections are a thing and look cool.
* Throughput of the carts can be pretty ridiculous for transportation of bulk goods. Especially multiple cart trains.

 

[Pyure]

I wouldn't say tubes are the problem in and of themselves. After all, RC worked quite well alongside RP2 and BC3. Tubes/pipes are inherently short-ranged solutions, not more than a couple of chunks or so. Trains were the long-ranged transportation solution of that era.

Yep, although, to each their own. I might counter-argue that I've never really had a base where my assets were far enough apart to warrant a train, while at the same time not so far apart that even rails would be silly (dozens of kilometers).

That's subjective of course: there's gonna be some players who keep multiple bases in the same dimension kilometers apart.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Wye Rails are complete and utter pain in the reproductive organs. They never want to place to default the correct way, and tend not to stay flipped if you hit them with the crowbar. You'll want to manually update to the latest version of RC. The one in FTB Beyond is lagging a bit, because RC just released.

Lots of things seem to be back, multiblocks don't seem to be amongst them yet.

Now, unlike Pyure, I have done the long distance base component's, by moving my ore processing out of render distance, I had to run a long rail out to it, which required mid-line fueling, which required it's own train, and then I started running more than one train down the line...

1.10 lacks quite a lot of the older version features yet, but power, item, and fluid transport all work. You can use minecarts to haul fluids around, or use them to automatically process ores and then have them dumped into your storage system of choice. Minecart sorting is surprisingly easy, and works pretty well.

Useful trick I find, is to use reinforced rails on up slopes to make trains run up them better. Still need a 2:1 slope though in order to not have a properly sized train sink back to the bottom.

 

[Pyure]

Now, unlike Pyure, I have done the long distance base component's, by moving my ore processing out of render distance, I had to run a long rail out to it, which required mid-line fueling, which required it's own train, and then I started running more than one train down the line...

Hmm, this notion actually tickles my fancy. I'm now tempted to do something similar one day, although I hate that i'm primarily doing it for what is essentially OOC reasons (lag/cpu)

 

[KingTriaxx]

In my case it's because I'm using Mekanism Ore Processing, and that's hard on the frames. The lag was getting pretty bad until I moved them out of the base. That said, I had always wanted to play with the intention of doing specific things in specific biomes. But then I went mad and turned on Highlands Large Biomes. Two things not to be combined by normal, sane people.

 

[Emerald_Chicken]

In my last FTB Infinity, I relied upon Railcraft and its Villager Detector to sort villagers I would spawn with other mods. You can make some really complex sorting systems with it: Railcraft allows you to grab entities and drop them off at designated spots. It works with other mobs and NPCs too. You can use conveyor belts from IE or vector plates from Dark Utils, but mobs will sometimes try to wander upstream, so that method is not quite efficient when you want to transporting them over huge swaths of land.

So yeah: when it comes to moving mobs and entities over longer distances - Railcraft is still your go to mod.