For a long time I’m running goodie-two-shoes settlements and I love it. They’re not woe of non-violence people, they will shoot you if you come with raid, but then they will patch you up and release you back with gifts. They make artisinal food, drinks, and drugs and then sell and gift them to everyone, and they never ever commit any warcrimes. It makes me feel nice inside, knowing that my guys are making life on a rim slightly better.
I’ve never played this one, but I’ve heard a bunch of the music. Some bangers in there.
I did also try Limbus Company for a bit, that seems to continue the same story to some extent (shared world and some returning characters I think). It’s weird ass gacha game though and while it was cool I ended up losing interest after a while.
Lob corp’s trumpet osts r so simple yet so catchy… esp for 2nd trumpet, it rlly gives u the burst of energy and determination u need to fix the mess u caused…
I do love limbus tho and will always bring it up in barely-related conversations but yeah, it ain’t for everyone*… it is a continuation of l corp, although it occurs after the events of lor/library of ruina. The story’s only been getting better, but waiting for each canto is such a drag… (canto8 released in may and canto 9’s target release date is December…)
I have played through it, with the True Ending (without the extra scenes one). Jeez it was absolutely BRUTAL. Truly this was the hardest game for me, period, due to it’s relentless punishing and testing the human determination to push through adversity even if it seems impossible.
I recommend getting some good gear which has a high white resistance (I think that’s what you need for Censored?) and you can sorta easily get a high white resistance gear from Blue Star. That’s also an ALEPH, but imo it’s easier to work with that compared to Censored, but if he escapes you’re equally fucked as with Censored.
He does black damage im p sure ;-; thing is, in my run w censored (before I rewinded) my best black res gear was magic bullet… there were rare moments where my very best employee managed to do his work properly without going insane but it’s still not something I’m willing to go through again ;_;
Whenever he escaped I didn’t even hesitate to restart the day j try again, hes just horrible (bluestar’s legs are NOT worth the entire department dying, BUUUTTTTT I kinda wanna see it in action lol)
Tarkov (seriously it’s only the second game on here, please put me out of my misery)
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise. (Get out of here stalker)
No man’s sky
Factorio
Stardew valley
Rust
And last but certainly not least: project zombiod (this ones new to me, dammit how do I stop tripping, this is my fifth bleed in the last 15 minutes. )
Cities Skylines for me. I don’t play it often because I will get sucked in and come to at 3am, realizing that I’ve not eaten in 16 hours and my traffic isn’t any better.
Only game I know about is victoria (only played the latest) but is not in the time area you are looking for. Economic games are pretty few and I found nothing back when I were looking.
It’s unclear if you’re imagining that power is provided along the line or if these will need to be self-powered.
If you’re looking in New England specifically then the rolling stock of MTA Metro North or CT Rail might be of interest. Assuming the protagonists will have access to a power source. I think Hartford Line CT Rail uses both third rail and overhead power, so that might make for a point of discussion about them seeking out these specific units for their more flexible powering options and voltages.
I’ll take a look at those! I was imagining overhead wires but perhaps only in/near towns as resources are constrained (with the self propelled railcar using batteries when disconnected) but they’re building towards a full line eventually. Not sure how realistic that is
Do I understand the inquiry is for how to build a line-powered electric, single railcar by retrofitting? In terms of engineering complexity, starting with an EMU and cutting it down to a single railcar would work.
If not that, then a battery electric railcar would work as a base, since it would only need the line power equipment (eg pantograph, trolley pole) added, and disabling/removing the battery pack.
If not that, then a diesel railcar – or DMU and cut it down – and swap the diesel generator for line power equipment. The criteria is that for any self-propelled vehicle – rail or otherwise – having to reconstruct the propulsion mechanism is a big ask.
For that reason, the conversion of an unpowered railcar – like a passenger coach or a freight wagon – is way down the list, as any existing vehicle with propulsion makes for a better starting candidate.
So well before that, we would look to putting other land vehicles onto the rails. A motorcoach bus is a good candidate, but if hauling unpowered wagons is allowed again, a tractor-trailer cab (aka 18-wheeler) could be electrified and then tasked with pulling a consist of trailers converted with passenger seating.
I wish to reiterate that the effort to add a drivetrain to an unpowered vehicle is very high. Some vehicles might not even make this possible: imagine starting with a wellcar. There wouldn’t be any room to put the drive motors near the bogies, without cutting and modifying the frame. And then it would need an operator cab, overhead power equipment, all manner of electric wiring, and so on. And that would still only yield a freight self-propelled railcar. More work would be needed to bring this into passenger service, unless the passengers are fine riding on an open car.
This is really good information, thank you for explaining where the complexity really starts! I especially appreciate the heirachy of practicality. This is exactly what I was asking. So far it seems like there is a much wider range of options than I expected so I’ll think on what best fits the setting.
One other thing I wanted to mention is the complexity of supplying power to overhead lines. This is based off a thought experiment I had long ago, about whether a municipality could “grow into” an electric rail network, by initially underprovisioning the power system until more trains in service demanded that upgrade. My conclusion was that no, it doesn’t quite work like that. These are my observations.
The primary issue is one of raw power. That is, delivering kilowatts over wires that could be very long. We can consider Denver’s commute train operation, which specifies mainline speeds (>79 MPH), 25 kV AC power, and an output power of 620 HP (456 kW).
That 456 kW is the focus, since that’s generally what’s needed at either peak acceleration or at top speed. We should assume that overhead lines should not wreck themselves just because a train is running hard.
If there’s only one train on an overhead line segment, then the power requires is the same as one train’s draw, which is 456 kW here. The problem is that compared to what’s typically provisioned for a home (200 Amp, 240v service; aka 48 kW) or a light commercial business (400 Amp, 120/208Y service, aka 144 kW), this is a massive amount of power.
And even when a power company does supply a neighborhood of homes or a commercial district, they use oil-filled transformers that can be intentionally overloaded by some 30-50% for hours, on the premise that peak electric loads would die down afterwards and the transformer can cool down. Also, not every home or business uses anywhere near full power, so transformers are also undersized accordingly.
But for a single train, the need for that 456 kW is very real, very present, and if the overhead line is even 10 miles, that’s 8 minutes if the train passes through at 79 MPH. If only one train passes per hour, the average power is only 60 kW but I don’t think any transformer rated for 60 kW could survive an overload of 456 kW for 8 minutes and cool down for the next 52 minutes. That oil will have boiled by then.
So in reality, to provision power for just one train per hour, the transformer has to be rated for something closer to 200 kW. An entire suburban subdivision might total up to 200 kW depending on the time of day, and somehow the power company would need to supply this to wherever the railroad’s power conversion equipment is.
So in your story where different communities are working to rebuild tracks and electrify, the latter effort has some gargantuan hurdles. The nature of the electricity network precludes attaching a 200 kW transformer to any random point in the network. A residential neighborhood might be fed with a 7200v 600 Amp ring circuit, which also connects to adjacent neighborhoods. Attaching the transformer to this circuit would work, but it would singlehandedly be 5% of the ring capacity. And the ring has to be nearby the railroad’s power equipment. So stringing new high-voltage power lines toward the railroad is highly likely.
And this plan isn’t even great, because the train passing would cause a lot of issues for the neighborhoods’ electricity voltage stability. There’s also the problem of supplying 7200v (called “low voltage” in the industry) if the overhead lines are meant to be 25 kV. Converting voltage up at the consumer point is generally not a good idea for efficiency, so a realistic rail power system would need to attach to medium voltage (eg 36 kV) or high voltage wires. So now our transformer needs to be located somewhere near such wires, and also will cost more because of the high voltage rating. High voltage wires are only placed where they are by necessity, because they’re awfully dangerous otherwise. Some communities may be miles away from the high voltage lines that eventually power their homes.
In terms of technical requirements, this is rapidly getting out of hand, and I cannot see how a community smaller than say 50k-100k people would have the electricity resources and knowledge to build out an electric rail supply. And it only goes up as this piece of track gets more trains per hour.
If your story does wish to hew towards the almost-insane engineering for electric rail systems, it might be worth examining how Caltrain in the California Bay Area electrified their 50 mile corridor, between Silicon Valley and San Francisco. IIRC, they needed 10 power transforming stations along the route, with special engineering for each one of them.
Overall, this is why rural areas (and even semi-urban) don’t tend to have electrified rail, despite having electricity service for streetlights, homes, and retail. Because they really just can’t do it.
This is really good to know and quite disappointing. I try to keep things grounded and at least close to reality but had no idea of the limitations here. I’ll have to think on this and I might come back with questions if that’s okay.
I suspect the utopian emphasis on green power, hydro, solar, and wind, will further weaken this possibility? I haven’t thought much about what the grid looks like around these fringe communities (further out where the story takes place it’s basically gone and homesteads and villages have to be self sufficient) but these folks could be tied to the grid or striving for self suffiency but that would probably make it even harder to provide this kind of power reliably, even if someone was making tons of the necessary hardware because a train boom is happening.
Does the math change at all if they’re only trying to power a single electric bus converted to rail use? I’d planned on some kind of single vehicle, but I’m not sure what factors lead to such a significant draw.
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