[2.0.75] Train switches to automatic when bots attach artillery wagon

[tapedeck]

As stated in title, I've observed this behavior - I recently replaced an artillery train with legendary artillery wagons, and that's when I first noticed this behavior. I built the first version of this artillery train a month or two ago and did not observe it then.

Steps to reproduce with the attached save:
1. Switch to Nauvis (player is on Vulcanus), you should see 3 locomotives sitting at an artillery loading station. Observe that they are in manual mode with an interrupt configured.
2. Attach an artillery wagon (ghost). When it is placed by the construction robot, the train immediately switches into automatic mode and the interrupt is triggered. I've tested this with both common artillery wagons and legendary. Both should be available in the save.

I would expect that the train remain in manual mode until flipped by the player. Attaching another locomotive, cargo, or fluid wagon does not exhibit this behavior.

[eugenekay]

Trains which have all of their Ghost construction & Fuel requests fulfilled are set to Automatic mode.

FFF-395:

Easier train dispatching
Another annoyance which becomes more clear with larger train systems, is the pain of creating and dispatching new trains. With the ability to blueprint trains, it is almost painless, but you still need to manually set them to automatic mode.

No Longer! Now when a train blueprint is fully built (importantly, including fuel requests), it will switch to automatic mode.

Good Luck!

[tapedeck]

Trains which have all of their Ghost construction & Fuel requests fulfilled are set to Automatic mode.

I hadn't seen that! There might still be a bug here though - if you build all 6 artillery wagons in the save, the train will go into automatic mode when the first wagon is built - even though there are other wagons still pending.

[tapedeck]

I don't think it's that behavior now that I re-read it. The locomotives were not blueprinted, they were placed as ghosts and without orders initially. I gave them the interrupt after they had all been built and left them in manual mode.

[eugenekay]

Blueprints are a shortcut to mass-creating Ghost entities, so its not surprising that they trigger the Automatic setting. Depending upon how you configure the Train (shift-clicking to Copy-Paste settings) that will also trigger the Automatic toggle.

There have been a few (Resolved?) bugs recently in this area. Its possible that a behaviour change happened:

• 132730
• 132626
• 132428

To be clear, I’m not guessing if this is/not a bug; just trying to provide some Context.

[CyberBill]

I'm able to reproduce this bug in 2.1.8 using fluid trains!

Repro steps:

I built a train station, and then manually (not using a blueprint) added a locomotive. After the bots built it, I configured the train (it was an oil train - so I told it to pickup until full, then drop off until empty - very simple) and the train was set to manual mode. I then told the bots to build 4 fluid wagons attached to it, and went about my business. I came back to an oil train with one fluid wagon waiting behind the other 3 fluid wagons! So I deleted those, told it go back to the station, added the 3 missing wagons (via bots) and again, went back to building somewhere else.... And it did it again!

At that point I realized what was going on, so I deleted a section of track so it couldn't move, and that allowed the bots to construct the additional wagons without the train pulling away.

[JohnMeister]

I made a simple mod that prevents trains from switching to automatic mode. You can toggle it on or off at any time.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/train-auto-switch-fix

[Bilka]

Since there is no dev response here, I am moving this back to bug reports. The fact that any ghost wagon connected to a train causes the train to just drive off when the wagon is revived is quite annoying for players, e.g. 134826. The train starts moving even when more of the whole train is ghosts and it is not fully built yet, which to me looks like a bug since the FFF quote says it should wait on the full train. Example video for that from 135441





Most likely the ideal solution for player expectations would be to have the trains not auto-start at all if they're manually ghosted (not from a blueprint).

[Rseding91]

I looked into making the switch-to-auto only happen when built from a blueprint however this fails when it comes to fuel deliveries, since the fuel delivery finishing also switches to automatic.

The issue is: manually building ghosts does not 'connect' them to the existing train in any way. You can observe this by hovering the mouse over the ghosts and seeing they aren't showing connections to anything.

If you for example built the ghost(s), then drove the train away and drove another train up next to them - when the ghost is built it will connect to the new train.

[Bilka]

I looked into making the switch-to-auto only happen when built from a blueprint however this fails when it comes to fuel deliveries, since the fuel delivery finishing also switches to automatic.

If it's not built from a blueprint, it shouldn't have a fuel delivery. So this edgecase would only happen if someone manually requests the fuel via the ghost cursor in remote view or using undo on a deconstructed train. Which seems a lot more rare than the situation described in this bug report and its many duplicates. So this may be a viable trade-off.