I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind forbidding elevated rail on Arig. You'd only need it to move oil around, so at best it forces you to not build on the island you start on, at worst it forces you to disassemble a partially-built base on the starting island once the player realizes they can't transport oil to where they are.

Even if you couldn't place elevated rail pillars on sand it'd be useful! It would allow you to make bridges where islands are close together, or at least a little bit further apart than underground pipes can reach. Then once you research arig's foundation, you would be able to place pillars on foundation instead of having to make long paths of foundation between islands to place rail on. Not that I think you'd ever do that now, since you would already be on an island with oil by the time you research that? I guess if your oil depletes and you need to get more?

Elevated rails can be placed in the next update!

Yay!

Apologies for bumping an old thread but:

Is it intentional that placing elevated rail on the deep sand requires the rail support foundation tech from vulcanus/fulgora? It feels strange for elevated rails (and by extension, half of the islands on the planet) to be practically useless until that late.

It is intended, one of the design concepts of Arig is limiting the space to build so you need to explore and find a good island, unlocking the elevated rails help scaling the production up but is not necessary to finish the planet, before that update they were completely blocked

I see. Could you put this information in game, some how? There's no mention of that technology being required (to my knowledge; I may just be blind), so it honestly looked like a bug.

I'd also suggest making the requirement of that technology be a config option? It feels a tad too restrictive as it is, especially for an Arig start.