So as most of us may know, there is a mechanic in vanilla Minecraft that allows pistons to push and pull rails. However, if this is done in a particular manner, this mechanic glitches to create an infinite rail producing machine. Among Minecraft Multiplayer Servers, this is practically cheating, and EMC is no exception to this. As a result, EMC's developers have disabled pistions' ability to move rails altogether. However, this also leads to many disadvantages for those of us who are more mechanically and redstone inclined in Minecraft. JDHallows requested this issue to be reinvestaged back in June 2016, as per the following thread. https://empireminecraft.com/threads/pistons-pushing-rails-reinvestigate.65270 This thread, however, seems to have been archived, as no further replies can be added to it. As such, I have created this thread with the exact same title as JDHallows' original thread. As of 1.12, this bug only works when slime blocks are pushed or pulled with rails on them with the following configuration.. However, rails do not get duplicated when the piston is in direct contact with the rail as in the picture below. I have tested this at various speeds with levers, comparator clocks, hopper clocks and burn-out clocks, with the same results for each respective layout as described above. There is something about the rails on slime blocks that causes them to be duplicated when pushed by a piston. Given the changes to Minecraft version 1.9+ that have resulted in these behaviours that currently occur in vanilla Minecraft, I would like to request that this issue be revisited again. Maybe there is a way to allow pistons to push and pull rails when they are not on slime blocks, but prevent them from pushing and pulling when the rails are on slime blocks. I would like to request the developers at Empire Minecraft to please take a look into this. Not revisiting this issue will prevent many great rail systems from being built on EMC. Thanks!
For a more complex explanation: The update order is what makes the duper works, the slime blocks first push the rails across, (it goes from back to front) , but the block that is there is moving, so they pop off, then, (in the same game tick) the slime blocks push the blocks from underneith, wich does work, so the blocks are processed like they both pop of and move, wich causes the glitch. I assume that this glitch isn't possible to fix as easy as it sounds, as mojang didn't do it in a long time. I think the only way you can properly do this is by making slime blocks not pull rails, make them like glazed terracotta if you will. I don't know if that would work. but I think that would be worth a try.
I agree with Jelle68. If the developers on EMC can make it so that pistons can push and pull rails, but not push and pull slime blocks that have rails on them, that would allow rails to be moved by pistons (without slime blocks), but not allow the rails to duplicate via the aforementioned glitch.
I agree with both Jelle68 and CheckDFX, but with a different suggestion. Another way to look at the issue is make it so you cant place rails on slime blocks at all, just like you cant place them on glass, but pistons can still move glass.
We have no plans to ever re-enable this. EVERY single minecraft update introduce some new way to dupe rails with pistons. We do not have the time to constantly monitor and enable/disable them every update. We would have to essentially disable it every mc update, wait to see if any exploits are released, then re-enable them once patched... That still then doesn't cover those who abuse it before its even made public. It's too much hassle. I rather everyone just accept that they cant do that on EMC instead of playing cat and mouse on whether or not they work. Otherwise people are going to go building giant contraptions around them, and then be super upset when it then is disabled and they feel like a lot of money and time was lost.
Thanks for the reply, Aikar. JDHallows never received an official staff/dev reply in his original thread, so it was unclear as to whether it would be revisited or not. I have work-arounds for my smart-rail build, but without the piston's ability to push and pull rails, these work-arounds would not look as good, although they would function in the same manner. We'll just go with the work-arounds. No worries about how much time we have invested in this build either, as we only have it designed in creative at the moment. I wanted to be sure of how this would be handled before proceeding with our rail system. Thanks again.
i read aikars comment but im still +1 for the suggestion. too many ppl just disallow everything b/c they believe every1 is going to scam which i think also shows some distrust 4 the community. i could understand if were talking about pricey items but rails are pretty cheap, and the mechanic could be used 2 make some really cool stuff (plenty of servers do allow 4 this to be used). lots of scammers are pretty dumb 2 that usually makes it easy 2 spot them if u know where 2 look. u know the types; they try 2 sell 2 DCs of hard 2 get stuff, go out into mining world and 20min l8r they got another 2 dcs of stuff. takes effort but usually its often the community who spots those scammers and then tells server staff about m.
I had a very hard time reading and understanding your post and I hope I actually spotted the main thought in it. Sorry, if I misinterpreted it. You have a point there, but let's trust Aikar's decision to disallow this particular concept altogether, for the sake of server's population as well. I doubt it's about distrust, but rather taking the temptation away As usually, it's a weight of pros and cons, when it comes to allowing or disallowing something.
This has nothing to do about distrust to the community. There are bad apples in the community that will take advantage of exploits. And it only takes a few people to do it to cause impact to the economy. Someone could dupe a lot of rails, go flood every shop with rails, destroy prices, and create more supply than needed for a long time. This isn't something we could just go "revert" either. And Dragon Eggs are also been subject to dupe with piston pushes. What if placing a rail next to a dragon egg, and then pushing the rail rapidly, then caused dragon eggs to dupe? This isn't some fringe idea. These 3 blocks have a long history of bugs. Could you imagine how much damage that would cause.
What Aikar says is true. With any economy (both real and pretend), a certain balance and structure has to be maintained. When that balance or structure becomes lopsided due to exploitation of the economic system, the economy eventually spirals down towards crashing. The best thing we can do is petition Mojang to fix this bug. Once that is resolved, maybe then EMC will have this functionality returned.
