[Ratta237]

A subway with high roofs plus extra lanes for horses is my ideal subway.

[Emershaan]

I'm for the subway, both for function and aesthetics. And lemme preface all of this by saying I'm somebody with extensive experience both digging out long tunnels and building long aerial structures.

Digging out a subway generates cheap resources (cobble, iron, coal, etc.) whereas building a skyrail just consumes resources. A subway is also more secure and safe for travelers, since if mobs spawn due to torches being stolen or wander in from connected dark areas, they can be more easily dealt with in an enclosed tunnel than on top of a high open structure where creeper explosions or skeleton arrows may (depending on the skyrail's specific design) have a high risk of knocking players off. Also, since the extensive subway infrastructure in private realms will be preserved, it'll be much quicker and easier to rebuild the missing sections and expand further.

Aesthetically, a subway is much less obtrusive and simple to build and connect, whereas a skyrail requires unobstructed airspace, and for all players contributing to it to be able to memorize and reproduce its design. And that design has to look really good, and not architecturally detract from the realms it passes through. And, to be really frank here, I really really really don't trust folks on this server to be able to agree on a good-looking skyrail design. Plus, a good design would be highly likely to be resource-heavy to construct over long distances.

But what really makes my decision on the matter is that the more open nature of a skyrail is incredibly condusive to noob grief. Within a few months, there'll be literally hundreds of 1x1 dirt towers all along it that people have used to try and climb up to it. Within a year, there'll be vast tracts of deforested and mangled terrain as far as the eye can see, abandoned and griefed featureless wood cube houses every 50 blocks, and several times as many dirt towers. In two years, it'll be a freaking mercy if all the land under half the length of it's been strip mined to hell. And that's not even mentioning how tempted nub griefers will be to trash the skyrail itself. It's a big tall long structure that looks important. It'd have to be patrolled constantly and rolled back probably several times a day.

So, yeah, there's my main reasons for favoring a subway.

(My personal suggestion for subway design: start with a basic design to establish travel functionality, but leave space around it to expand to more spacious tunnels and multiple lanes in the future.)

[macrofeet]

Prodigy9: I own a rather long stretch of subway some distance south of spawn, and I believe all the subway-containing realms between my area and spawn station are owned by other players. I suspect that at least the first few stops along the north, east, and west rails are also private (just because of the huge popularity of realms near spawn), so we'll at least have a respectable chunk of the subway to use right after the wipe.

This would be cool, i also own a large chunk of upgraded south line next to Prodigy9 which i dont plan on wiping it is all farily upgraded to spawn not just square tunnel

[JonColmanator]

Although for protection wise, Subway should take priority. However, I personally believe that we should have both, integrated with one another OR separate. This is purely because some people, like myself, would love to be able to see the world as I travel, rather than a droll stone tunnel and have to get out at every stop to admire the scenery.

If we do indeed have separate systems, although I'll need to spend some considerable time gathering resources, I like building bridges (http://minerealm.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8711) and will happily work with people to get a consensus as to how the bridge should look.

I also have a good 300k to use, this could quite easily make a straight bridge from spawn to one of the map edges possible!

[Darth_Raven]

I built the island line in two days, it really does not take that much time to build a subway. And where parts of the island line are now down because of the wipe, it will be rebuilt after , and the rail at dead sun still remains as well as the entrance.

[Tee]

Some well thought out points re the negatives of a skyrail. One of the most significant is probably that a griefer need only remove one block of track and supporting structure to condemn anyone travelling on that line to certain death, and that it could require a lot of manual running along the line to locate that damage for staff to roll back the grief.

Subway line is very easy to reconstruct though really.

[Pr0sanity]

with minerealm not being as popular as a year ago or so i dont see much point to subway as not many will use i remember there being a skyrail like 25 blocks off ground -wasnt very long but was still fun to just go round see peoples builds.- level way back when minerealm had 50+ most of time and i personally think skyrail or no rail subway is boring u dont get to see anything and u would just use nether if u wanted to travel far as its faster to run in nether than take the subway

[dlgn]

with minerealm not being as popular as a year ago

I don't see any reason to believe it isn't.

or so i dont see much point to subway as not many will use

Lots of people would use it if it were decent.

i remember there being a skyrail like 25 blocks off ground -wasnt very long but was still fun to just go round see peoples builds.

Granted.

- level way back when minerealm had 50+ most of time and i personally think skyrail or no rail subway is boring u dont get to see anything

Seeing things isn't the point, swift travel is. Also, have you ever taken the subway? There are lots of epic builds under there that you can't get to any other way.

and u would just use nether if u wanted to travel far as its faster to run in nether than take the subway

The Nether is dangerous, indirect, and griefed. The subway would be safe, deliver you directly to the closest stop to your destination, and avoid grief by not being out in the open, and by being partly protected. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure that Minecarts are faster than sprinting.

~dlgn

[GaidinBDJ]

I'm more in favor of a subway system. I renovated (and build) a good chunk of the main south line and its offshoots down in the Abyssus area and I can say that something that should be seriously looked at is coming up with basically an RFC for the subway lines. I tried to keep it fairly standard (torch spacing, booster spacing, width, access) and found that I was going a lot of work to keep it standardized.

So stuff like tunnel size (I went 3x3 for single-lane, 5x3 for double-lane), booster spacing (1 every 38 rails), torch spacing (I did one every 12, alternating sides of the track), stops (I did bypass a few stops for defunct towns and places there were no actual POIs) and surface access (I dug a single block tunnel with a ladder to the surface on every 100 coordinate line minimum). Depth did stay pretty much standard (or just varied by one depending on if the person figure out eye-height or foot-height before the clarification in the stats)

So maybe working what the general consensus thinks before the wipe would help.

As far as a skyway goes, I think it'd have too much of an impact on the views, would have a ton of single-dirt columns getting to (as was pointed out earlier) and would be harder to adapt to existing builds.

[eah]

I prefer the subway beneath ground and "horse trails" on flat, level ground (for easy travel) above ground.

I've attached two world saves to this post.

The one entitled "Redlight" is a neat subway station for a track node splitting in two directions. Feel free to use it. There are already 3 on the east line.

The second save entitled "Minecart Dispense" includes a free minecart dispenser. It is, of course, limited to dispense one minecart every 256 seconds in order to prevent syphoning of them all. The reset time can be set to anywhere between 1 and 256 seconds by simply changing the number of items in a hopper. Getting it any longer would likely require a major design change.

The second save also has an "automatic iron donating station" where players can donate iron for minecarts. The machine spits out anything that is not iron and features 15 redstone lamps indicating remaining storage capacity.

If you have access to a subway station, feel free to add these.