When placing a trigger on a coaster, is there a quick way to place it anywhere on the track, or do I have to move it along the entire track just to get it where I want it?
If you actually want a new, separate trigger, then yeah, when you hit "Add Trigger", it gets created at the departure end of the station and you have to drag it all the way around to where you want it (in either direction).
If you don't want to do that, you can just use the previous trigger and give the new triggered item enough delay for the train to get to it after passing the previous trigger.
Triggers are quite flexible. A single track can "only" have 50, but there doesn't seem to be a limit on how many items a single trigger can have attached to it. The same trigger can call the same item multiple times (good for flashing lights) and multiple triggers can call the same object. If you're willing to put in the work on setting the delays, it's probably possible to make an entire, complex dark ride work off just 1 trigger
I was messing with triggers this afternoon and it appears they have another quick. If I want to add a trigger before an trigger 1, the new one becomes trigger 1 and the old trigger 1 becomes trigger 2 and it appears the thing that was triggered by the old trigger 1 is now triggered by the new trigger 1. I didn't have time to exhaustively check this and I sure hope I'm wrong because what a PITA that would be!
Actually, the renumbering of triggers when you create a new one is pretty meaningless. It doesn't change which items are attached to which trigger. It might confuse you that Item A is now on Trigger 2 instead of Trigger 1, but you can solve that problem by renaming the triggers. IOW, instead of saying "Coaster Trigger" on the list, you can type in whatever you want like "Lift hill explosions" or "water splashes).
NOTE: Trigger #1 can only be on the track out past the departure end of the station. Triggers on the station itself, even if in front of where the coaster stops, are going to have the highest numbers.
Here's an example of how trigger numbering works....
Suppose you have a coaster with 4 triggers, numbered 1-4, defined as follows:
* #1 operates flame jets on the lift hill
* #2 operates water splashes as you skim over a pond
* #3 opens doors on the entry end of the station
* #4 opens doors on the departure end of the station. It's on the station platform just barely ahead of the nost of the train when the coaster is stopped.
Now suppose you want to add a trigger between 1 and 2 that causes some dirt to fall off a cliff. When you add a new trigger, it will appear just in front of #4 and will originally be #5. Now you drag it between #1 and #2. Thus, the new trigger becomes #2 and existing 2-4 become 3-5. Now the situation is like this:
* #1 operates flame jets on the lift hill
* #2 is blank---it's the new one you just created and doesn't have any attached objects yet
* #3 operates the water splash
* #4 operates the doors at the arrival end of the station
* #5 operates the doors at the departure end of the station
So none of your pre-defined triggers had any changes other than getting a new number. But they're still in the same place on the track, they still cause the same objects to do the same things as before, etc.