It’s Train Time!

2:00pm EST - The update is live and devblog is out! Game on!

1:00pm EST - Our update stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

12:00am EST - It’s that time again, the monthly update hits today. Along with a forced map wipe, this patch includes above ground modular trains, performance improvements, and more.

Our update stream goes live at 1pm EST. The patch is expected at normal time (2pm EST / 7pm BST). Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Modular Trains

After entering maps empty last update, the above rail network has some life this month! Modular trains have been added, here’s a summary of what you need to know.

Overview
Modular train wagons are now spawning around the map. Join the wagons together and you’ve got yourself a train which traverses the rail network of Rust!

Building a train
After the wipe, you’ll notice the rail network now has small branches which jut out from the main line. On these side rails you’ll find various types of wagons which spawn at random. First and foremost, find a work cart and fill it with some low grade.

Once in the work cart, simply drive around and collect wagons. Wagons you find will be auto-coupled to your work cart (and other wagons) as long as you’re not going too fast. One work cart can handle around 8 wagons before it really starts slowing down. It doesn’t matter where the work cart is positioned between the wagons. If you link two or more work carts, you can handle more wagons.

Players can couple and uncouple wagons at any time by simply looking at where they connect and pressing ‘E’ when the option comes up.

Wagon types
There are several types of wagons found on the tracks around the map. These include a tanker, flatbed, covered, and uncovered. Players can easily jump onto each one via platforms on the side. Each wagon has a health of 750 while the work carts have 1000hp.

Along with just holding players, these wagons - especially the flatbed - can hold some vehicles like minicopters (providing you can get them on there).

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Driving a train
These above ground work carts function basically the same as their below-ground counterparts. There are 3 throttle speeds in each direction set by pressing ‘w’ and ‘s’. To pick direction for an upcoming fork in the track, just hit ‘a’ for left and ‘d’ for right.

The instrument gauge will give you a warning if an object is in your way along with letting you know how much fuel you have and what your throttle is set to. Also, a light in the cabin will blink briefly when a work cart couples.

Other stuff
Here are some other things of note regarding trains:

• This is still a work in progress, we expect more additions and improvements in the coming months

• Two new cvars have been added for server owners:

  • trainskeeprunning - If true, trains don't automatically stop when there's no-one on them (default: false)

  • stop_all_trains - Stops the engines of all train engines on the server

Zipline improvements

Ziplines also received several improvements which go live with today’s patch. Primarily, we’re seeing new dismount options at various monuments. There’s a bit more flexibility with the placement as ziplines may now go straight across and even up in elevation as much as 3 meters from the initial mount point. Also, ziplines can now route through two midpoints to reach their destination.

This has created a number of cool and long new zipline opportunities at monuments including lighthouse, dome, sewer branch, and stables. 

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Optimizations 

The team identified and prioritized various performance improvements this month. I’ll leave it to the devblog for the real nitty-gritty, but here’s a couple things of note:

• Fixed performance drop when looking at a deployed boom box in a crowded base

• Fixed voice props laser lights not loading their speed setting properly if they were on while the server was loaded

• Hot air balloons will now disable global broadcast if they are grounded, the engine is off and they are deflated

• Made planters more optimized from a performance standpoint

Death screen icons

Some nice new icons have been added to the death screen. Now showing an icon for what type of enemy killed you and what they killed you with, the death screen is looking sharper than ever.

Twitch drops: Round 17

The next round of Twitch drops goes live at 3pm EST today. Focus on Rust content creators, this round has some great skins! You’ll be able to grab them for a week, so make sure to link your accounts at the Facepunch Twitch page.

Other stuff

• Reduced "bad weather" probability: 90% of days will now be clear

• Fixed NPCs sometimes not correctly patrolling at junkpiles

• Fixed issues with outpost railway floating in certain seeds

• Fixed first person spectating not properly displaying grenade launcher reloads

• SAM Site can no longer be damaged by bullet type damage

• Fixed junkyard keycard not respawning

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