izigame.me

Almost no work has been put into this dlc since it's release, so I'll do the same and almost repost my steam community post showing my experice with this dlc:
Trains ... trains, they are (like the enitre dlc) on paper, a pretty good idea. And honestly they are pretty good and useful. But there are sadly some problems.
The Good:
They are an incredible tool to extend your reach of your domes in the early to mid game, I've seen a lot of people use them like shuttles, but thats not their intended use (I think). They are best as an transport to and from a resource site, colonist will use the trains to get to work and thanks to the background calculation of surviving mars they don't even loose any productivity. You can have them travel for their entire workshift and they will still produce resources (Which I find hilarious)
They are cheap to setup
They can be completly constructed at either end ¹
Their assosiated tech is pretty good and makes them viable in the lategame (although not that useful)
They are calculated the same as passages e.g. your colonists will work (but not live) in a dome thats on the other side of the map and only suffer the "Not working in home dome" debuff
That sound pretty ok, maybe a bit stiff for 7€, but as long as I'm helping valuable and trustworthy comunity content creators means I'm fine with it. But sadly (And I have to say this truely saddens me) we didn't talk about
The bad:
The storage is not split up like any other storage in the game (WHY?!?) which sounds, on paper, like an interesting idea. But it is bad. They are constantly full which leads to the newest conversation with yourseld that I guess every player had: "Why isn't my rare metal beeing transported? I set everything up correctly. ... Oh it's full of fuel. Wait, this just gets used as a normal stoage if no other is nearby with a higher desired amount? Now thats ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid". Yes you heared correctly they will just fill your station up with whatever they feel like even above the desired amount. Fuel, Black cubes, metal, you name it. If you dont have storage with a lot of desired amount your train network will break. This leads to a lot of unessesary micro management, all out of the idea to not split resources (Honestly I see no fix for this, just remove it)
¹ Yes I lied, like the trailer. You do need a drone hub on range of every piece of track if you wanna keep it long term. The reason is easy: Stuff breaks, and you have to fix it. And that pretty quick otherwise your colonists will suffacate even tough it's still perfectly connected it's just missing a piece on the other end of the map and your train wont return until it's fixed, even with the return button (Why is that even there). So if you dont have a transporter and a commander ready to sprint out at any time you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Or just build drone hubs everywhere, but at that point you probably dont need trains
You can't actually build on the same hex as pipes since their pillars are in the way so I still end up with a line spagetti with any more then like 6 tains
But even that gets highly impractical since TRACKS CAN'T PASS OVER EACH OTHER, I meam you guys already destroyed the idea of a mars public transport system in the trailer (This is fine for the job it's supposed to do) and now this? If you haven't planned everything out, get ready for some redesigning
Destroying stations will destory the assosiated trains with it
Now from this we can already see a few issues. But all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. I've, to this point, tried to avoid the bugs and I will still try, but some will seep trough my soul. To this point most of my critisim was focused on questionable design flaws. But now we'll get into the meaty stuff. But before that I'd like to reiterate that I love Silva and LukeH and their mods have been always on point (I will go into the human aspect of this later). But lets firstly get into
The ugly:
If at some point the station is offline (Energy, repairs, meteor) means you colonist will just walk to the next staion and suffocate or die otherwise on the way.
(Sometimes, cant reproduce) the drones will not use the machine parts from itself to repair the station
The train are way to expensive
They are slow as hell (even with the upgrade tech) which has no relevance thanks to the calculation, except for the colonists, which can starve, freeze and suffocate on the track and regularly do so.
The new commander is useless, tracks are already cheap, the stations are easy to research and build (Just give him 2 lage stations since you have to destory the first station anyway most of the time
It doesn't blance the items inbetween the stations. If you have a desired amount of 10 in you input station and a desired amount of 5 in the output. And you have currently 8 stored, then it will move NOTHING. Thought you could skip the annoying resource shuffling between hubs in the early game? No, wrong dlc, it got even worse!
Drones will move resources back and forth between 2 stations in the same drone hub range
Colonists wont move to a better dome, if it's in range. All my scientists are currently doing a 4 hour commute + 2 hours waiting time. A train network that can only be topped by (insert county here). Even though they have the nicest smart homes there
You cant filter the colonists that can use the train (Not so bad, but needed)
Tracks can only connect directy to stations, so no manifolds, big train networks or any kind of nuance whatsoever
You can't destory broken tracks you have to repair them first
24 Colonists waiting in a staion is too little for bigger projects
You can't set the desired amount individualy, so if you wanna have 50 food stored in the station you better also store 50 electronics
In conclusion: I has a lot of problems and is currently a low of work to use effectively. Can I recommend it? I dont know, I tried to find an answer but I have no idea (which is the reason for this forum post). Do I regret buying it? No, definitly not. It's a good concept and has a lot of good uses it just needs a bit more polish and playtesting. Would I buy it again? Yes, if only to support Silvas and LukeHs amazing work.
I said I would go into the humans aspect: I dont know Silva or LukeH, I think this is their first commercial product, with a pricetag and a pricetag sets expectations, I think it's clear that not everybody likes the system. But I trust them to fix at least the mistakes, the design choices are on them. We don't know if they were rushed or pressued into making somthing they don't specificly wanted. Guys the gaming industry is a horrible employer, give them some slack, they have already shown greatness and just have to do it again.