Subject:
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Re: Moonbase at Brickfest... how was it planned?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Thu, 26 Feb 2004 03:07:57 GMT
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Viewed:
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424 times
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In lugnet.space, Leonard Hoffman wrote:
> people announced how many moonbases the intended on bringing, but many people
> just showed up with some on their own. Jon and Gary did the two big bases
> (the ones with monorail, etc) - and brought extra monorail, rr tracks, and
> racer lanes which were put up at the event on saturday. A bit haphazard,
> but the best I think at this young stage.
Monorail is difficult to work with, even with the official
Monorail-compatibility guidelines, and Space Train can be even more restricted
by the lack of ramp-rails (haven't worked with Racers track, so I can't comment
on that). The biggest problem, I think, is that Monorail-compatibility seems to
be more of an optional thing. The second biggest problem is the sheer number of
possible layout configurations that you'd have to be able to accomodate to be
100% compatible (without getting into ramps or stop points, I can think of 34
possible layout sections). I'm getting the idea that the larger your module
display is, the easier it might be to juggle things to fit a Monorail layout in.
Admittedly, I've only participated in two events so far, but I believe the
layouts were 5'x12.5' and 5'x10' respectively. With the first layout the only
Monorail compatible module was a monorail station, and due to space constraints,
we were barely able to figure out a way to run a short loop around the back side
of it, and it couldn't have used more than 1/4 of the total display space. For
the second layout, we again only had one Monorail compatible module (1 plate
this time), and the layout hit all four edges of the table, but the train missed
module-impact in two places by less than 1/8". There's a certain amount of luck
involved in a smaller display as to whether it's even possible to run a decent
Monorail layout, and the more you can juggle modules on-the-spot, the easier it
might be.
The simplest solution would be to require that all modules be raised off the
ground with support stanchions only allowed in specific points that won't impede
any Monorail layout section, but there are a lot of cool ideas that don't work
well with that. Geothermal taps, huge towers, the Apollo moon-landing
site...they all really need ground-level construction.
> i do know Jon and others are working with the trackdraw people to come up
> with some sort of cpu prog that would help plan these things.
That'd be cool, but there are a lot of variables that would need to be accounted
for. You'd need to know what layouts a module can accomodate (both ground and
above-ground), how much vertical and horizontal clearance it would have around
the track, how much clearance the train would need (especially on curves, where
a long 4-wide might need more than a stubby 6-wide), and I'm sure I'm forgetting
something.
> lastly, there was an important issue of people not providing enough module
> connections (ie, too many 1 connection modules), so we are making a rule that
> every module must have at least 2 connections OR if they bring a 1 connector
> module, they also bring a 4 connector module.
Yeah, that's something that popped up with the last MichLUG layout. By the
October Motor-City Comic-Con, I'm really hoping to have a simple solution to
that problem worked out. And as much as it'd be nice to require all modules
have at least 2 connections, sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Living
quarters, for example, would never be used as a pass-thru.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Moonbase at Brickfest... how was it planned?
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| (...) Huw, people announced how many moonbases the intended on bringing, but many people just showed up with some on their own. Jon and Gary did the two big bases (the ones with monorail, etc) - and brought extra monorail, rr tracks, and racer lanes (...) (20 years ago, 25-Feb-04, to lugnet.space)
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