Coasters: Engineered

Create-style hardware for Create: Coasters Simulated.

1.0 is out, and hardware from 0.5 and earlier does not carry over. Launch track and brake fins are now a single linear motor, so fins need re-fitting, and a run does nothing until a Linear Motor Controller is pointed at it. Trackside Sensors are replaced by the Coaster Observer. Motors are fitted with a crafted Linear Motor rather than a Redstone Magnet, carts no longer need upgrading, and server settings reset to defaults. Create: Simulated is no longer required either, so if Create Aeronautics was only ever here for this mod you can drop it. Names, data shapes and mechanics are settled from here, and nothing will break again.

Most launch track mods accelerate a cart to a number. This one applies force through the physics engine: the motor pushes, the cart's mass resists, and the speed you get is whatever the run you built allows. A launch is something you engineer, not something you set.

It is a Create tech mod that happens to be about coasters. Physics, a programmable controller, redstone instrumentation, survival crafting, and optional Forge Energy.

Getting started

1. Fit a linear motor. Right-click an anchorpoint with a Linear Motor, aim along the track, and click again to set how far the run reaches.
2. Point a Linear Motor Controller at that anchorpoint, then place it within 16 blocks.
3. Right-click the controller and build a sequence.
4. Send a cart in. It arrives, the sequence runs.

Every piece of hardware has an in-game Ponder scene.

Linear motors

Track hardware, placed as a span the way the base mod places a chain lift: pick the anchorpoint it starts from, aim along the track, and click again to set its reach. It can stop partway along a curve or carry on through several, and the stretch fills with stator fins.

• Real force. Thrust and drag go through Sable, so launches show up in the force diagram overlay and a cart that runs out of track simply does not reach the speed you asked for.
• Heavier carts work the motor harder. Up to the rated mass a cart launches at full rate; past it the rate falls off with the square root of the excess, so an overloaded cart needs a longer run without ever becoming unlaunchable.
• The run's length is the throttle. A short run to a given speed punches, a long one rolls out gently, the way a real launch is designed around its exit speed.
• Sneak-right-click with a Wrench to remove, the same way you take a chain lift off.
• Motor hum, field particles, and fins that light while the motor is working.

Linear Motor Controller

The brain. One motor, one controller, and a sequence rather than a single speed.

Step Does Launch Drives up to a target speed, forwards, backwards, or whichever way the cart is already rolling Trim Drags down to a speed limit Coast Lets the cart pass through untouched Stop Holds the cart until a new redstone pulse arrives, parking it at a set point on the run if you ask for one End Finishes, and waits for the next cart

Nothing is timed. A step ends when the cart has cleared the motor, so a step can wait out an entire circuit before the cart comes back for the next launch. That is what makes shuttles, swing launches and multi-pass rides expressible: launch, let the cart run the course, catch it on the way back, send it out again.

The console's lights track which step is live, and Engineer's Goggles report the step plus how the last pass went, including whether it fell short on track or on power.

Coaster Observer

Point it at a spot on the track and place it nearby. It reports the speed of carts crossing that mark as an analog redstone signal, scaled against its Speed at Full Signal value.

• Nothing is too fast for it. It samples with the physics rather than the block tick, so a cart at 60 B/S cannot slip past between ticks.
• A pulse for redstone, a number that stays. The signal pulses as the cart passes; the reading stays on show for ten seconds so a display by the station is still worth walking to.
• Put it on a board. Point a Display Link at it and pick Cart Speed.

Coaster Casing

The shared body of both machines, with connected textures, and a building block in its own right. Built from an Industrial Iron Block and a copper plate.

Optional: run it on Forge Energy

Off by default, and a single server config option away. Turn it on and every anchorpoint that starts a run offers an energy buffer that any FE cable can plug into, from any energy mod. Nothing extra needs installing: Forge Energy is part of NeoForge itself.

• You pay for what you use. Cost tracks the work actually done, so a loaded cart launched hard draws more than a light one nudged along.
• Brownouts, not blackouts. A run short of power pulls weaker rather than dropping a cart halfway up the launch.
• Regenerative braking. Braking feeds a share of the energy it sheds back into the same buffer.

Reading a ride

Engineer's Goggles, Display Links and Jade all report the same figures in the same words, in one unit: B/S. Jade also draws the anchorpoint's charge bar when Forge Energy is on.

Philosophy

No stations, no block sections, no programmable logic blocks. Create already has a good answer for control logic in redstone, observers, display links and ComputerCraft. This mod adds the ride hardware and the instruments, and leaves the cleverness to your circuits.

Requirements

Requires Create: Coasters Simulated on NeoForge 1.21.1, which brings Create and Sable with it. Java 21.

Works in single player and on servers. The mod is required on both sides, and all tuning lives in a server-synced config.