The current way of making a station is with the use of inserter's to input/output items from wagons. Whilst this is effective and does work - it can be rather tedious when setting up all the inserter's and whatnot for your loading/unloading point.
My suggestion is for an actual entity of a 'station' that is the same length as a wagon (I believe wagons are different sizes depending on horizontal/vertical so maybe two versions of the station?). This would remove the need for complex loading/unloading points. As well as this most station setups currently have something along the lines of: Belt > Inserter > Chest > Inserter > Wagon, where the chest is used as a buffer. This could be simplified by having the 'station' entity have an internal inventory.
I am no coding genius but this solution may even increase performance since I figure there would only be one entity interacting with the wagon rather than 5-6, someone with a bit more knowledge care to educate me on whether this is the case?
Overall I believe having this 'station' entity will make it a lot easier to set up large rail networks with multiple stops.
'Stations'
Moderator: ickputzdirwech
Re: 'Stations'
Blueprints are your friend! 
The main thing that would be useful is if they fixed the difference between train size when viewed vertically and horizontally. That would make blueprint stations even better. After that, it would be great if wagons were standardised in length to match the grid - currently they're just over 7 tiles long, which means you have an awkward time aligning inserters with some carriages.
The main thing that would be useful is if they fixed the difference between train size when viewed vertically and horizontally. That would make blueprint stations even better. After that, it would be great if wagons were standardised in length to match the grid - currently they're just over 7 tiles long, which means you have an awkward time aligning inserters with some carriages.
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Re: 'Stations'
Although it is not quite the same as your suggestion, I believe the the large bridge cranes idea is made with the same spirit in mind.
The greatest gulf that we must leap is the gulf between each other's assumptions and conceptions. To argue fairly, we must reach consensus on the meanings and values of basic principles. -Thereisnosaurus
Re: 'Stations'
Even if I like the idea and explanation, I want to say a bit about this. This idea brings factorio into a direction like OpenTTD. That is: trains drive into a station and suddenly wagons are filled.
Not that I don't like that, but in my eyes, this is the main difference between Factorio and OpenTTD. Your idea brings it too near into that direction.
Again,not that I wouldn't like that, but i think it is an tightrope walk, it suddenly hides, that we are transporting single items. Instead we are moving wagons. That is another game, that's OpenTTD and so on. In Factorio we have to care for each stupid item, because the very little differences in handling them is, what part of the game makes it so fun.
And the other thing is the technical aspect: what is a station? Is it the train stop? The positions of the wagons? Something else? Currently a train station is nothing else then a combination of entities. (Don't mix train station and train stop.)
And because of that, because it is something like a puzzle, we don't really know how to built stations. Of course we know the "standard cases". But I know 4 or 5 special uses for a "train station". Despite from the standard builts (which are also quite different), there are useful combinations where you fill and empty a wagon at the same time. For example. Or there are useful but very complex filling and emptying stations. And so on. By implementing such an idea, we are concreting facts, how trains stations look and should be used. But as result, there are no new ideas, how to create simple and effective train stations. And the community hasn't dug very deep into that yet. we will lose something, if we do that now.
So my opinion is, that it is much too early to implement such stuff.
Instead I want to point to the above; Khyron says use blueprints. I want to have t a bit more comfortable:
I want a blueprint-creator-tool, or so, that generates me blueprints for the standard train-station setups we already know well. A train-station-assistant. I can configure a train setup (that I can save) and it generates me a blueprint for inserter position. I can say for each wagon position and per side: input or output or none, and which inserter type. I can configure, which power poles should be use and it covers all. And so on. Signals. Fuel supply for the trains... Endless ideas, no break with the current setup, useful speed up, but as flexible as before, cause you still can change that by hand.
That blueprint can be placed then and the configuration can be saved. That's all we currently need.
Not that I don't like that, but in my eyes, this is the main difference between Factorio and OpenTTD. Your idea brings it too near into that direction.
Again,not that I wouldn't like that, but i think it is an tightrope walk, it suddenly hides, that we are transporting single items. Instead we are moving wagons. That is another game, that's OpenTTD and so on. In Factorio we have to care for each stupid item, because the very little differences in handling them is, what part of the game makes it so fun.And the other thing is the technical aspect: what is a station? Is it the train stop? The positions of the wagons? Something else? Currently a train station is nothing else then a combination of entities. (Don't mix train station and train stop.)
And because of that, because it is something like a puzzle, we don't really know how to built stations. Of course we know the "standard cases". But I know 4 or 5 special uses for a "train station". Despite from the standard builts (which are also quite different), there are useful combinations where you fill and empty a wagon at the same time. For example. Or there are useful but very complex filling and emptying stations. And so on. By implementing such an idea, we are concreting facts, how trains stations look and should be used. But as result, there are no new ideas, how to create simple and effective train stations. And the community hasn't dug very deep into that yet.
we will lose something, if we do that now.So my opinion is, that it is much too early to implement such stuff.
Instead I want to point to the above; Khyron says use blueprints. I want to have t a bit more comfortable:
I want a blueprint-creator-tool, or so, that generates me blueprints for the standard train-station setups we already know well. A train-station-assistant. I can configure a train setup (that I can save) and it generates me a blueprint for inserter position. I can say for each wagon position and per side: input or output or none, and which inserter type. I can configure, which power poles should be use and it covers all. And so on. Signals. Fuel supply for the trains... Endless ideas, no break with the current setup, useful speed up, but as flexible as before, cause you still can change that by hand.
That blueprint can be placed then and the configuration can be saved. That's all we currently need.
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Re: 'Stations'
I see what you mean about a station entity taking away that whole 'placing every damn entity' feel and I absolutely agree. Your solution I agree with much more - I currently use blueprints but it's still kinda tedious in some situations, this would be alleviated with a blueprint-creator.ssilk wrote:Instead I want to point to the above; Khyron says use blueprints. I want to have t a bit more comfortable:
I want a blueprint-creator-tool, or so, that generates me blueprints for the standard train-station setups we already know well. A train-station-assistant. I can configure a train setup (that I can save) and it generates me a blueprint for inserter position. I can say for each wagon position and per side: input or output or none, and which inserter type. I can configure, which power poles should be use and it covers all. And so on. Signals. Fuel supply for the trains... Endless ideas, no break with the current setup, useful speed up, but as flexible as before, cause you still can change that by hand.
That blueprint can be placed then and the configuration can be saved. That's all we currently need.
As a side note - I believe the current station management screen (where you set the trains route) needs to be a scalable window. It's a nightmare in my 50+ station world!
Re: 'Stations'
For me 'it can be rather tedious to set up' is basically the summary of factorio. You're making and designing your own little systems and machines here with pretty basic tools. Replacing any systems with bigger overarching machines just seems not in the spirit of the game to me. If you want to speed it up, use blueprints like suggested. You could even make a whole station design into blueprints. The current systems you can create to load trains are not broken or fiddly, so I don't see a reason to change it. Making the setup easier, that's up to you.