Rails Revamped

This Minecraft mod brings some love to rails and attempts to catch up with other means of transport in the game. It adds one new rail block, improves various aspects of existing rails, and slightly improves the overall balance of transportation. All the features are vanilla-friendly, but if you don't like one, you are free to disable it.

Important note: before creating a world, please look at the "Recommendations" chapter at the end of this document.

Features

Balanced recipes

_{disable by removing data pack rails-revamped:fair_rail_prices}

Rail recipes are reworked to make rails just a bit cheaper. For Redstone rails, more Redstone Dust is required in exchange for Iron. The new recipes are also more consistent.

In the chart above, you can see the comparison of recipes without and with the rebalance enabled. Under every recipe, there is a summary of resources required for every rail.

For more information about this decision, see the last chapter – "Motivation".

Rail intersections

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Regular rails can now be used to create crossings using the new intersection shape. Worried about collisions? – scroll down to the next feature.

Interruption Rail

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The Interruption Rail is a new rail block that stops any minecart and releases it, keeping its original momentum. It's a directional rail that always releases minecarts in its direction.

The rail features great redstone compatibility. If chained, Interruption Rails can be powered together to release minecarts at the same time. Minecarts also drive up to the front rail of the chain to leave space for other minecarts. This allows for very easy creation of queues. With a comparator, one can extract the number of minecarts in such chain. An example queue mechanism is shown above.

As seen above, combined with a detector rail, it can form a nice priority junction. Of course, there are many other ways to make a safe intersection using Interruption Rails.

Powered Rail strength

_{disable by setting game rule rails-revamped:powered_rail_strength to false}

Powered Rails now respect the signal strength of powering Redstone Dust. The smaller the strength, the slower will minecarts travel. This may come very useful in some Redstone contraptions or automated "farms".

Copper Minecart

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While this mod focuses on rails, during the early game, players often lack iron or prefer not to use it up for minecarts. To make rail transport more accessible (see the last chapter – "Motivation"), I decided to introduce Copper Minecarts as a cheaper alternative.

Of course, just like the already existing copper stuff, Copper Minecarts oxidize over time; each stage of oxidation takes from one to three hours. You can scrap the oxidation using an axe and prevent it by waxing with a honeycomb. As can be seen above, with every level of oxidation, the Copper Minecart gets slower (on non-powered rails).

While their default speed is equal, even a waxed Copper Minecart is still not as good as an Iron Minecart: they are not stable. This is explained in depth in the next chapter.

The mod also renames the regular Minecart to Iron Minecart.

Stable minecart speed

_{disable by setting game rule rails-revamped:stable_iron_minecart_speed to false;
also control with game rule rails-revamped:stable_copper_minecart_speed}

In vanilla Minecraft, empty minecarts quickly lose speed by themselves on non-powered rails, as opposed to mounted minecarts or ones with blocks. While it is an interesting property, it often turns out very annoying when trying to make a rail that can transport both empty minecarts and full ones. Therefore, the mod moves the mechanic to the new cheaper Copper Minecarts, while removing it from Iron Minecarts. With separate game rules for both types of minecart, the functionality can be selectively enabled or disabled in another configuration.

Mounted minecart detection

_{disable by setting game rule rails-revamped:detector_rail_mount_comparator to false}

Minecraft already allows for detecting chest contents using a detector rail with a comparator. The mod expands this functionality to also detect minecarts with players or other mobs.

Editable rail shape

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Rail placement improvements

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Configuration

This section contains an explanation of configuration mechanisms and a summary of configuration options introduced throughout the above Features section.

Game rules

Game rules are accessible using the /gamerule command or during world creation (More / Game Rules / Rails Revamped) as shown below the following table. Also see Minecraft Wiki on game rules.

identifier	default	vanilla	short description
rails-revamped:powered_rail_strength	true	false	allows for controlling minecart speed on powered rails with redstone strength
rails-revamped:rail_intersections	true	false	if disabled, placing intersections without cheats becomes impossible
rails-revamped:editable_rail_shape	true	false	allows editing rail shape and direction using right click while holding any rail
rails-revamped:stable_iron_minecart_speed	true	false	whether empty iron minecarts should be as fast as mounted/full ones
rails-revamped:stable_copper_minecart_speed	false	—	same as above but for copper minecarts
rails-revamped:detector_rail_mount_comparator	true	false	whether detector rail emits comparator output for mounted minecarts
rails-revamped:misc_minor_improvements	true	false	whether to apply minor improvements to vanilla rail placement/editing mechanics

Data pack (recipes)

The Fair Rail Prices built-in resource pack is enabled by default and can be disabled/re-enabled at any point using the /datapack command (/datapack (disable/enable) "rails-revamped:fair_rail_prices"). It can also be disabled during world creation (More / Data Packs; click ← on Cheaper and balanced rail recipes) as shown below. Also see Minecraft Wiki on data packs.

Digression

Here's some less technical and more personal information related to the mod and vanilla rails.

Recommendations

While most features are fully supported on the old minecart physics, I recommended enabling Minecraft's "Minecart Improvements" experiment during world creation. The mod's features tone in better with the new physics. Also, provided that the experiment is enabled and rails-revamped:powered_rail_strength is enabled (which is the default), it is also worth considering to increase the value of game rule minecraft:max_minecart_speed: the default is 8, but I usually set it between 12 (1.5 times faster) and 20 (2.5 times faster). This allows for rails to catch up with the other means of transport in the game.

Motivation

I've always loved rail transport in Minecraft and hoped for a rail/minecart update. We've never gotten one, but instead from time to time alternative transportation gets added that suppressed minecarts by being cheaper and easier, but not cooler (in my opinion). Rails are still often used for automation, but rarely for transport, which feels to me like a waste.

To fix that, I've decided to make a mod that makes rails more accessible, but not too cheap and encouraging, or overpowered. Of course, I also didn't want to reshape the vanilla experience – I just wanted to improve it. The mod only adds one new rail block – the interruption rail – that I thought was missing and had a hard time automating stuff without it. All the remaining features are only minor improvements to the vanilla rails.