Immersiveengineering: [Suggestion] Cable Carts

Created on 21 Apr 2017 · 2Comments · Source: BluSunrize/ImmersiveEngineering

An idea I had for item transport via cables, the gist of it is basically hanging minecarts.

To be more specific, I was thinking you could have a 'station' block (or maybe a small multiblock?) with relays, similar to the other cable networks. Every station and relay would be able to store a single cart, with the type of cart determining how many stacks of items can be stored as well as how fast the cart will 'move' between relays.
Cart movement would technically be instantaneous between hops, but a relay/station that recieves a cart will have a delay before being allowed to move the cart forward, calculated based on the intervening cable's length (this should probably be stored in the relay/station to avoid having to calculate it every time, as well as info on the cable's angle for a later purpose) This way, you can avoid needing to rely on entities for the actual mechanics while still allowing animations to happen by generating a visual entity that moves along the cable's path when a relay/station moves a cart forward.
Relays/stations would allow connecting any cable to them, with hemp and steel only allowing slower 'self-propelling' carts to move through them (with steel providing a 2x speed boost) while the 'electrical' cables allow both self-propelled (1.5x speed boost) and the faster 'electric' carts. (Maybe seperate self-propelled and electric relays, to make things simpler?)

As for routing, carts will always naturally prefer the cable with the lowest angle, only using the next-highest when the lower one is full. Special types of relays could allow manual or redstone selection of priority routes, or sorting of carts based on their dyed color, with the Routing Station being a multiblock that allows sorting based on cart inventory.

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