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Construction Tips for Consistent Speeds
- how many rails do I need to slow the speed?
- is it possible to maintain a slower speed through cities for example, and then increase it again?
- How many normal rails can you have between powered rails to maintain top speed?
- How many powered rails do you need to have in a row to keep that top speed?
[..] I had the same questions, I did a bunch of testing and the TL;DR is:
30 Powered Rails on a flat surface to get maximum speed and momentum 3 consecutive Powered Rails after 35 normal rails (so the 36th, 37th, and 38th blocks get Powered Rails) to maintain maximum speed forever
I tested 3 powered rails after 35 normal rails and went 4000 blocks without losing time compared to using all powered rails. Maybe there's some dropoff further down the line but the /clone command is a pain to use over long distances and I gave up testing at 4000.
Over short runs (200-300 blocks), doing the standard Minecraft 1 powered rail after 37 normal rails works fine, but you start to lose momentum by the 400th block and over a very long run you would get noticeable changes in time. Doing 2 powered rails after 36 normal rails prevents you from seeing momentum loss until about block 800, and I didn't start seeing significant time changes until about block 2000. I spent the time doing it, figured I'd share my results. All of these tests were on completely flat surfaces, I really didn't feel like testing slopes after all this. I plan on using using all powered rails for any inclines to make sure it doesn't affect momentum.
For slowing down, an unpowered powered rail while at full speed won't actually stop you, but slows you down a ton. I tried doing an unpowered powered rail, a normal rail, a powered powered rail, and then did the normal Minecraft 1 powered rail after 37 normal rails and kept a medium, Vanilla-like speed. You could play around with inclines if you didn't want such an abrupt slowdown though. Hope all this helps.
Hey, you mean 3 powered rails, 35 normal rails, and then again 3 powered rails and then again 35 normal rails, and so on and so forth, right?
That sounds about right. The maximum speed of 34 m/s skips every second block with a 70% chance and to account for this when you hit a powered rail you get an additional boost of 70%. So when your speed is over 20 m/s it's a good idea to put at least 2 powered rails in a row every time if you want a more consistent experience. Since you have 3 in a row this is even better. The cart will nearly always hit 2 of these powered rails with 34m/s (in rare occasions it will only hit a single powered rail of the 3).
Regarding slowdowns for a city: You can place: - Slopes - Curves - Detector Rails
And all of these elements cause a (temporary) slowdown to 9.4 m/s around them (it slows down but keeps hidden momentum which it uses to later accelerate again)
And I have to agree, great idea BeardedThorgi - a single unpowered rail is a great idea to really slow down your cart when you had maximum speed/momentum before because it removes speed AND momentum at the same time.