Salem

Probably suggested before, but tried thoroughly to look and couldn't find it so apologies if so.

Let us link sleds together, maybe only a new type of sled can be linked and maybe only linked to the same type of sled. Whatever costs have to be implemented in order to make sleds linkable would be super, super welcome. It would be super fun to haul around the wilderness with a sled train decimating deer and collecting granite boulders and such.

I'm thinking that you would start pulling a sled, sled A, then go to a second sled, sled B, right click, and select "Link" or "Chain", and you would then be pulling sled B and sled B would be pulling sled A.

To unlink, just go to any sled that is being pulled by another sled and right click, select "Unlink" or "Unchain", operating much the same as "Stop".

Maybe there would be a limit to the length of the chain but honestly it would be hilarious to see a chain of like 50 going by xD If there was a limit then I'd suggest maybe 6-12 being the max, more the merrier though.

Presumably this chainable type of sled would be valuable and cost about double as much as a cart but only hold 4 items since the extra sturdiness of being able to drag a long chain of carts behind it is introduced. It should be the same speed as a cart and should also be normal speed on paving (I guess only if all sleds are on paving).

I'm thinking maybe 2 blistersteel, 4 oiled boards, 8 dry boards, 10 nails, 2 ropes... Something like that. (see http://salemwiki.info/index.php/Cart for comparison)

The high cost and usefulness of it would mean if someone ran across you while you were pulling a chain of a dozen through the wilderness they would have a high incentive to knock you out and take them... Or simply threaten to and try to coerce you into pissing off and letting them keep them. It would be pretty easy to interrupt the chain too. I think this would add a lot more interesting wilderness encounters.

I also would love to see this on the water, boat trains would be cool as hell and would make trading with (*cough* looting from) neighbors up the river a lot more fun. Cart trains on land would definitely be the most useful though. Thanks!

Once we develop technology to link things you will probably see it on minecarts first.

JohnCarver wrote:Once we develop technology to link things you will probably see it on minecarts first.

Fair enough, minecarts came to mind as well but I assumed that there would be minecart tracks that would handle most of the mechanics of how they move and move together.

Guess it just comes down to the code, I was guessing that it might just involve applying the "pull" mechanics to sled entities as well but sounds like it's a lot more involved than that. Thanks for the reply!

Pull is very much a function that was written assuming one entity is a player character. Certainly could be changed, but not without a cost.

JohnCarver wrote:Once we develop technology to link things you will probably see it on minecarts first.

Didn't someone already do this? I believe there was a very interesting thread on it.

are you referring to the old sled trick, where you bullrun to get ahead of you sled, and then pull a new one? you could get a chain of sleds that way, but they all followed the player and would get stuck on eachother from time to time.

Kandarim wrote:are you referring to the old sled trick, where you bullrun to get ahead of you sled, and then pull a new one? you could get a chain of sleds that way, but they all followed the player and would get stuck on eachother from time to time.

It's sad that few remember the sled centipede.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM61TngRG2o

Kandarim wrote:the old sled trick, where you bullrun to get ahead of you sled, and then pull a new one

There's some glitch that happens now and then where a sled/cart stops restricting your movement and just slowly follows way behind, might be able to do it then as well but infinitely more annoying than if they simply followed each other in a graceful chain

jcwilk wrote:

Kandarim wrote:the old sled trick, where you bullrun to get ahead of you sled, and then pull a new one

There's some glitch that happens now and then where a sled/cart stops restricting your movement and just slowly follows way behind, might be able to do it then as well but infinitely more annoying than if they simply followed each other in a graceful chain

The inherent problem with chaining them that way is simple math, the last sled will move a shorter total distance when taking even a slight turn than the one close to the player, meaning that, if you dont run in an exact straight line all the time, they will collide with each other sooner or later, stopping themself an all behind them.

Taipion wrote:

jcwilk wrote:

Kandarim wrote:the old sled trick, where you bullrun to get ahead of you sled, and then pull a new one

There's some glitch that happens now and then where a sled/cart stops restricting your movement and just slowly follows way behind, might be able to do it then as well but infinitely more annoying than if they simply followed each other in a graceful chain

The inherent problem with chaining them that way is simple math, the last sled will move a shorter total distance when taking even a slight turn than the one close to the player, meaning that, if you dont run in an exact straight line all the time, they will collide with each other sooner or later, stopping themself an all behind them.

Yeah, doing it "brute force" with the current system only works in straight lines. In a linkable world I'm envisioning that they would work with each other as a sled does with a player, but I guess we'll have to wait for after minecarts for such a possibility. Would love to see more nomadic options in general. It's pretty fun hauling around with a sled, a canoe, and two misc objects but very limited too.