Want a little realism in your trains?
TLDR: A train with an engine to wagon ratio approaching 1:1 is still fairly quick, but now you can have a train with a more realistic ratio of 1:10 or 1:20 and it will accelerate and stop at believable speeds. Also cargo wagons are 4x bigger and fuel is more efficient for balance.
Ever thought Factorio's trains were a little silly, zipping to and fro with just one or two wagons attached at a time? Ever seen a real train like that? Me neither. I like my trains to look like actual trains, with one or maybe two engines, and a good 10 or 20 or even 30 wagons per each engine. Now THAT'S a train.
This is much more accurate to real life, where you might have 1-6 engines towing 20-200 wagons. However, such a train might take upwards of 5 or 10 minutes to reach its top speed of 40-60 mph. This mod doesn't go quite that far, but it still takes a good minute or two to reach those kinds of speeds with higher ratios.
Wait, what's the difference?
The difference between this mod and the original is that the original bogs down so hard so quick that long trains get locked up completely, effectively unable to move--you are forced to keep to a relatively low ratio if you want your trains to actually move.
The goal that I had in mind was twofold:
1: A train engine by itself should still start up and stop fairly quick and have a high top speed, so that you can still reasonably use an engine to get around, especially for long distances.
2: A train with a ratio of 10-20 wagons per each engine should start up and stop as slowly as you might expect a real train to start and stop.
In comparison, this mod's stats have been carefully balanced to make the train by itself feel quick and zippy, but the wagons feel genuinely heavy, with each one noticeably slowing down the acceleration (and to a lesser extent the top speed) of the train, with diminishing returns for each additional wagon. To be specific, I balanced it around trains with 1 engine and 12 wagons (that's what I use), such that it accelerates at roughly the speed I would expect a real train to leave a cargo station--and then I sped it up by about 4x from there, because there is such thing as too much realism. It is still a game after all.
Exact changes:
(and reasoning)
Top Speed:
1.5x so that an engine by itself can still zip around long distance nice and quick
Weight:
Engines: 4x
Wagons: 8x
This is primarily what makes the acceleration more realistic. Having wagons heavier than engines alters the behavior slightly to lean harder into my two goals
Beware, moving trains are even more deadly!
Health:
All: 3x
So they aren't instantly obliterated in the event of a crash (increased weight == increased impact damage), but not ridiculously tough versus actual attacks.
Braking Force
Engines: 3x
Wagons: 0.1x
This is technically unrealistic since real wagons have brakes too, but this is one of the key changes that makes a long train feel heavy while a short train still feels quick. Also, the brakes are intentionally weaker than they really ought to be, so that the "upgrade braking force" technology in-game is genuinely useful. You will need a large amount of empty space to come to a stop from speed, initially.
Friction:
Engines: Set to 0.01, almost zero.
Wagons: Significantly reduced from vanilla to 0.5
This is effectively how I control the top speed. An engine by itself hardly notices the speed, but each additional wagon adds more and more drag, reducing your top speed until 10-15 wagons gets a top speed of around 40-60mph (according to my speedometer mod)
Wagon Capacity:
4x to compensate for how much slower they are, and to make a trainload actually feel like a large amount of material instead of one huge wagon having the same inventory space as one tiny steel chest. This means each wagon carries 8k ore.
Fluid wagons are unchanged because they already hold a lot of liquid even in vanilla.
Fuel efficiency:
This is increased 4x in order to make trains not consume absurd amounts of fuel at their increased power consumption and with how long it takes to get around.
Original Mod:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/slow_and_steady
Uploaded with permission.