mrklaw said:
shame it doesn't work from a dead stop - one of the main reasons for having them powered really, make it easier to have 'stations'.
Also dumb to have it so weak. I'm not sure the exact distribution, but I have tons more redstone than gold, and one gold per track is very expensive in comparison to what it takes with redstone. I still maintain that as they use redstone for 'power' across minecraft, they should have used redstone to make booster rails..
Yeah, they're rather disappointing, and I certainly don't see using them for any reason in their current state. I understand that they probably didn't want them as powerful as regular boosters, but there's plenty of happy middle ground to be had.
Did some experimenting with the detector rails, and I've got to say that they're also similarly disappointing. You make them by using a stone pressure plate, so I had assumed that they'd have the same functionality as a stone plate by itself (off unless a cart with a passenger of some sort is on it). However, they act like the wood plates. They're on when ANY cart goes over it, empty or full. I really don't see the purpose in this, since a cart is the ONLY thing that will set one off, why bother with them in the first place. I think what almost everybody used the pressure plates for was an empty cart control system. You accidentally send an empty cart boosting away, and the pressure plate detects that it's empty and reroutes it onto a track that returns it to you so you don't have to go chasing after it. Without that, I really don't see a use for them. I guess they could be useful for using a single track going to-from somewhere, and routing the cart to a different place based on whether it's coming or going. Otherwise, what else are you going to do with it, use it to open your front door via minecart?
Oh, and for reference, the detector blocks send the signal to the blocks next to and below themselves.
Honestly, they should just integrate all the minecart functionality from
Craftbook (well, I think they make almost all of Craftbook part of vanilla MC, but that's beside the point). While the usage of signs is clunky and a necessary evil due to it being a server-side mod, it does everything you could possibly want. There's boosters, brakes, the ability to automatically kick out a passenger, station blocks, sorting blocks, automatic cart storage and dispensing, and so on.
Don't get me wrong, I think these two rails that we got today are a step in the right direction, but they're not nearly powerful enough to be useful.
