Tired of babysitting expansions? Auto-supply w/ trains!

[Saadli]

This is a pretty basic principle but I've noticed that a lot of people haven't picked up on it so I thought I'd do a post.

This is my current map:



I've been extremely starved of iron the whole game, and I've recently run out of oil. This means that I've had no choice but to to make mining outposts, which I've connected via several rail lines. The rail system works like a charm, but the large amount of enemy bases means that I'm pretty much always under attack; I need to repair walls and rebuild turrets when they go down. The solution to this is having a logistic bot network at each stop, but you have to continually supply them with turrets, walls, and repair packs. So how do you automatically deliver these supplies to the outpost?

Obviously the solution is to make the train carry your supplies, but if you're not smart about it, you'll fill the whole car up with, for example, just repair packs and have it be useless for actually hauling ore.

So what's the trick? Middle click! You can middle click in the cargo wagon inventory slots to designate that slot for a specific item. The result is this:





Doing it this way make sure that you never have more than one stack of a necessary item in the train, and thus you can still use the cargo wagon mostly for its intended purpose. In my case, I've set my trains up such that they always have repair packs, walls, gates, turrets, and empty/full oil barrels. You can choose whichever items you want.

The main thing to consider when doing it this way is: Whenever you're offloading from a car, use smart inserters. Otherwise you may end up offloading things you didn't mean to offload. I'm sure this is enough information for you guys to start making your designs, but for the sake of completeness, here's how I've set up the train stations:

Loading Ore: You can use regular fast inserters when loading ore, but make sure you use smart inserters to offload. Top right side, I have a station to barrel up oil and send it back to my main base. Top left is offloading of turrets, walls, gates, and repair packs. I have it currently set to keep 20 turrets, 10 gates, and one stack of repair and walls.


Offloading:Same Idea, (except this happens to be the iron station) but offloading. Note that all the inserters removing ore from the train have to be smart inserters set to only move iron ore.

[n9103]

Alternatively, unload everything with fast inserters and sort it out back at base with a sorting system of smart inserters.
Or you could have it all loaded into an isolated logistic net and sort it with requesters.

But in any case, this is a good way to keep your supplies stocked.
It's also the only way to reliably put two types of cargo into one car, without the risk of one or the other crowding the other out due to oversupply.

[Saadli]

Alternatively, unload everything with fast inserters and sort it out back at base with a sorting system of smart inserters.

I'm not sure I see a reason you would want to do it that way, when you could just be smart about what you unload.

Or you could have it all loaded into an isolated logistic net and sort it with requesters.

Three reasons why this sucks (I've done it):
1.) It's slow as balls and seriously inconsistent. The bots are great when it's one network for your factory, but they are quite dumb at big spread out networks, and will be extremely slow at fixing things when they go wrong.

2.) I personally never put logistics bots at the expansions, only construction bots. This is because they always try to resupply me with walls/turrets/etc from the expansion's limited supply. I'd rather get that stuff from the home base. Plus logistic bots don't really serve any function in expansions, everything is easily done with belts.

3.) Having to put robo ports everywhere. It's unnecessary and hard to defend.

[ssilk]

I like this setup. Easy, understandable.
I use this in my current world a lot, but to its extreme, by having special supply trains with 5 wagons, carrying nearly anything you need to build anything. And resupply stations, and it all works astonishing well. But the afford is of course much over that of a normal game.

To the last post:

To 1: He means loading into Isolated logistic nets. I think it's a misunderstanding?

To 2: If you build everywhere construction bots, you don't need to carry the stones yourself. This is also a much faster building. And the logistics are in my eyes quite useable for the loading and fast unloading. Loading/unloading with only 4 inserters takes ages. Using the full capacity (7-8 on each side) and a wagon is loaded in under 10 seconds. This is not possible to achieve, if you bring the items directly with belts. But I also see, that this is more a late game strategy.

[Xterminator]

Nice post! I too have noticed a lot of people have problems with this.
I actually have a question about this. Maybe I missed it somewhere in your post, but how do you limit it to like 10 gates or 20 lasers? Cause to my knowledge, even when you reserve a slot in a wagon, there is no option to set how many can go in that slot. So in short, how do you stop it from just putting an entire stack of like lasers in the slot?

Thanks!

[Boogieman14]

You can't limit the amount of stuff that goes into the cargo wagon, so you'll always have a full stack there. The limits are set on the outpost side, so you always have at most, say, 10 turrets in the lognet there.

[chainedlupine]

Yup, that's what I do. I have a smart inserter remove the items from the train into a storage chest, then use logistics or wire logic to limit the output to, say, 10 items at a time.

I did not know that trains utilized the middle-mouse filter! Neat. I've been doing my rate limiting on the pre-loading side, and this works but it's somewhat inefficient and a waste of cargo space. Such as, if I tell logistics or wire network to only keep 60 items in a chest (to be loaded on train car), that is fine but then I don't actually know much is in the train car itself until I unload it all. And that meant keeping a small but necessary buffer for multiple types of items (in case, say, more than expected number of items was loaded, causing an automatic stack split), or making sure the train was unloaded of all items at the other end so I always started with an empty cargo car each cycle through the station. Using middle-click filtering will let me know exactly how many inventory slots are allocated and make this less wasteful.

[ssilk]

Btw.this is also the most annoying part of this strategy: you need a big buffer, the buffer must be filled to get serious amounts of items around. I've tried it with tier 3 modules and at this point you can bring a factory, which bores around doing nothing suddenly to its absolute maximum peak production.

[tecxx]

So what's the trick? Middle click!

oh f* me...... lol
i have seriously built a green wire network to the outpost, to load stuff into the train only when the outpost is missing something. this is of course very tedious to set up, and overally quite stupid now that i know about "middle click". whoaaa, time to redesign the base.

thanks and !cheers

[n9103]

So what's the trick? Middle click!

oh f* me...... lol
i have seriously built a green wire network to the outpost, to load stuff into the train only when the outpost is missing something. this is of course very tedious to set up, and overally quite stupid now that i know about "middle click". whoaaa, time to redesign the base.

thanks and !cheers

lol'd

[chapium]

I still have no way of middle clicking while playing from a Macbook pro.

[User_Name]

I still have no way of middle clicking while playing from a Macbook pro.

Download BetterTouchTool, it's free.

http://blog.boastr.net/downloads-second ... uchtool-2/

[Saadli]

I think it might be possible to rebind the key to something other than middle click in the settings menu. I haven't tried but I know you can rebind most keys.

[ssilk]

This about the Mac is interesting, but please try to keep focused on the thread title or make a new thread.

[N35t0r]

Wow, amazing. I just started doing this, only I'm also trying to supply construction robots, since they killed every now and then.

My problem is that I can't seem to limit the amount of bots that get stored inside the roboport (or repair packs either, but those are cheap to produce), even with smart inserters. any idea?

[Zourin]

Glory to the middle click.

This is how you resupply things like walls and repair kits to expansions.

Generally, the first car behind the engine holds 3 things: Repair Kits, Wall segments, and Fuel. Fuel gets put onto a loop to refuel the train car as it makes stops, and the stations' smart inserters only pull off supplies needed to recover from attacks.

This also works really well for oil barrels, allocating half a wagon to full barrels, and half a wagon to empty ones. No need to have a massive refining facility when you can decentralize between different needs and functions.

With iron and copper, you're probably best using whole cars, but intermediate goods like chips? Allocate space for basic circuits, advanced circuits, and processors all on the same wagon. It's always good to remember: trains are meant to be huge. One fuel/coal/repair/wall car, a chip car, an oil car, and several iron/copper cars only need one engine and plenty of place to go!

Wow, amazing. I just started doing this, only I'm also trying to supply construction robots, since they killed every now and then.

My problem is that I can't seem to limit the amount of bots that get stored inside the roboport (or repair packs either, but those are cheap to produce), even with smart inserters. any idea?

Only load the kits into one roboport. I swear they'd take the kits out of normal containers and use them though as long as they were part of the network.. *shrug*. As for drones, Kovarex really needs to count active drones (or at least inactive ones) as being a part of the logistic network for inventory count purposes.

[User_Name]

As for drones, Kovarex really needs to count active drones (or at least inactive ones) as being a part of the logistic network for inventory count purposes.

You can count them yourself
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=7002

[N35t0r]

Yeah, I've seen that. But there's no way I'm setting that up on every outpost.

I guess I'll dump the repair kits onto a chest then. I have the train unload (robots and repair kits) directly into the roboport, and this way it fills it up, despite the filter on the smart inserter.

[n9103]

Assuming they're well defended, you could just drop a stack of 50 into the outpost and forget about supplying bots altogether. Just keep them topped up with a stack of repair kits and turrets.

[Saadli]

Yeah, I've seen that. But there's no way I'm setting that up on every outpost.

I guess I'll dump the repair kits onto a chest then. I have the train unload (robots and repair kits) directly into the roboport, and this way it fills it up, despite the filter on the smart inserter.

You can dump the repair kits directly into a passive supply chest and then use a smart inserter to make sure you don't unload too many.

I've had a few stray construction bots get killed, but it's pretty damn rare. A stack of 50 should last you the whole game.