trains not loading fast enough

[cooltv27]

im currently having problems with my trains. when they leave a station they are usually not even half full (3 cars).
the problem is that im not getting enough material into the buffer chests in the time the train leaves the mining station and comes back. is this simply an insufficient quantity error or is there something simple I can do? like just increasing the belt speed

[Bushdoctor]

Yes, maxing things out helps a lot. Belt speed, inserters, speed modules.
You can also consider telling your train to wait at the station for x seconds AND having a full cargo before leaving.
When you know your trains load fast, you can change that to x seconds OR full cargo.

[AndrewIRL]

A basic belt carries 13.33 items / sec and an electric mining drill mines 0.525/sec. So you need 13.33/0.525 = 25.4 mining drills to compress a yellow belt.

If you have more than 26 miners then increase the belt speed, if you have less than 26 feeding this train station the belt speed isn't the problem and yellow is fine.

One train cargo wagon carries 2000 ore so it takes 2000/13.33 = 150 seconds of yellow belt throughput to fill a cargo wagon. If your mining outpost is being visited more frequently than every 150 seconds then the cargo wagon would never get filled. This is for a train with one cargo wagon and a mining outpost producing one compressed yellow belt.

[iceman_1212]

@cooltv27

Would it be possible to post a screenshot of your setup?

[Serenity]

Why don't you just let the train wait until it is full? If that doesn't leave enough ore at the smelter have more trains. You can let them wait in a stacker if the unloading station is occupied and then quickly unload them so different trains can rotate in and out.

[Mehve]

When you set a destination for a train, you also need to set a condition for leaving. This defaults to "Wait 30 seconds" (which might be what you currently have), but you have a lot of options to work with, including "Wait until full" and "Wait until X items are loaded". You can also use OR/AND operators to set compound conditions.

[cooltv27]

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... reenshots/
I have wires going across the chests an into the station.

based on what ive been told the issue should simply be that I dont have enough miners going to supply 3 cars.

[Frightning]

The solution is to simply have the train wait until full. That way it carries full cargo every trip back to the unload station (you can have it wait til empty there to ensure that you get all of the cargo out of it before it leaves too).

[AndrewIRL]

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... reenshots/
I have wires going across the chests an into the station.

based on what ive been told the issue should simply be that I dont have enough miners going to supply 3 cars.

Looks like about ~50 miners (I'm too lazy to count them exactly) so you have ~2 yellow belts worth trying to feed three cargo wagons. It is going to take 150*3/2 = 225 seconds to get that much ore. Unless the distances are huge the train roundtrips just aren't going to take that long. You can pack the miners more densely and fit in about 6-7 more than what you have:

Don't know why this is red belt, don't use it unless you have over 26 miners in a single row (you don't), yellow belt is fine.

Don't set your circuit condition to iron ore = 0, that's never going to happen as the inserters keep putting stuff into the chests. You should set it to iron ore < (number of chests) x (inserter stack size) = 12*3 = 36 if your stack size is, say 3. That way, once the backlog in the chests clears the train can leave. Note this is going to mean the trains are even less full when they go.

Otherwise your setup is fine. Don't worry about half empty trains, it only costs a bit of coal to run the trains, the important thing is to get that ore back to the smelters to ensure the factory doesn't starve. Regular supply of ore is more important than minimizing trips. I saw Youtubers building out megabases with giant 2-6-2 trains and I started thinking I needed to do the same when I built my first train. After some testing on my rather less majestic base I found that 1-2-0 trains work just fine. With a roundtrip of 37.5 seconds a single full cargo wagon is equivalent of one compressed blue belt. If two cargo wagons is not enough, put two trains on the same route. More flexible and less wasted cargo space when visiting smaller mining outposts. Plus it is cool to see trains whizzing about.

[cooltv27]

you say dont set the condition to iron ore = 0 cause thats never going to happen, but it works reliably when I have it set up. probably only cause im not inputting a full belt (I was actually surprised when it did work)

that miner setup looks pretty sweet and I will totally be using that from now on.

ive also managed to slightly fix the problem by having the mining stations only activate when they have 3000 ore or more and reducing the number of trains I have to 1 (from 2). im still getting enough iron for my factory and the train is at least half full

[AndrewIRL]

you say dont set the condition to iron ore = 0 cause thats never going to happen, but it works reliably when I have it set up. probably only cause im not inputting a full belt (I was actually surprised when it did work)

Your train wait condition is working because you've (correctly) used OR and not AND. I'm not saying the train will get jammed there, it won't. What I'm saying is that the iron ore = 0 will never be true and will never be the reason the trains leaves the station. Or at least in my stations. It appears that you are using stack inserters on both sides of the chests, I use the cheapest inserter to do the belt-chest move. Maybe your inserters sync up perfectly and allow your chests to simultaneously all hit zero. I haven't tried this setup. Also you are on 0.15 and I am on 0.14 so maybe there's a difference there too.

The conditions I use are:

Cargo full
OR
Signal = green
OR
120 seconds passed

To get the green signal I use a decider contaminator in the template for the stations. Then, when I am setting up trains I only have to remember green = go.

[t-lor]

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... reenshots/

Otherwise your setup is fine. Don't worry about half empty trains, it only costs a bit of coal to run the trains, the important thing is to get that ore back to the smelters to ensure the factory doesn't starve. Regular supply of ore is more important than minimizing trips. I saw Youtubers building out megabases with giant 2-6-2 trains and I started thinking I needed to do the same when I built my first train. After some testing on my rather less majestic base I found that 1-2-0 trains work just fine. With a roundtrip of 37.5 seconds a single full cargo wagon is equivalent of one compressed blue belt. If two cargo wagons is not enough, put two trains on the same route. More flexible and less wasted cargo space when visiting smaller mining outposts. Plus it is cool to see trains whizzing about.

TBH, thats a fair point untill you get to "megabase" size. Im using 1-3-1 trains, and right now there's so many wizzing around (74) that they spent more time waiting for signals than actually driving. and thats after i cut out as many not completely full trains, so do try to not run to many halffilled trains.
So im now reorganizing a big green circuit factory WAAAYY Down south, which will be serviced by 2-6 trains for the input.

[AndrewIRL]

TBH, thats a fair point untill you get to "megabase" size. Im using 1-3-1 trains, and right now there's so many wizzing around (74) that they spent more time waiting for signals than actually driving. and thats after i cut out as many not completely full trains, so do try to not run to many halffilled trains.
So im now reorganizing a big green circuit factory WAAAYY Down south, which will be serviced by 2-6 trains for the input.

My base has around 7 trains! Sounds like your base is significantly more majestic/epic than what I build and thus my suggestion does not apply to you.

[Bushdoctor]

(...) I use a decider contaminator (...)

...

[Aeternus]

The biters are going to loooove that contaminator. *sagely nod*
If you've got too many trains on the grid, keep in mind that you can pre-smelt copper and iron at the mines and pack twice as much iron/copper that is already smelted into those wagons - stack size for copper and iron is 100, ores are 50. Only exception is the iron ore you need for concrete mixing, but you need very little of that, so it's easy to set aside a smaller iron field for that. I tend to use a "call to mine" kind of setup, trains leave a loading dock when a mine has a cargo ready, then return with that cargo. The production facilities of the factory then draw from that loading dock, typically by longer trains. This way the traffic on the grid is minimal, no trains are on it with less then a full cargo or on their way to get one.

[pieterhulsen]

A basic belt carries 13.33 items / sec and an electric mining drill mines 0.525/sec. So you need 13.33/0.525 = 25.4 mining drills to compress a yellow belt.

If you have more than 26 miners then increase the belt speed, if you have less than 26 feeding this train station the belt speed isn't the problem and yellow is fine.

One train cargo wagon carries 2000 ore so it takes 2000/13.33 = 150 seconds of yellow belt throughput to fill a cargo wagon. If your mining outpost is being visited more frequently than every 150 seconds then the cargo wagon would never get filled. This is for a train with one cargo wagon and a mining outpost producing one compressed yellow belt.

i believe Mining productivity research has made your numbers obsolete.
Since every research basically increases the mining speed.
Better to calculate by belt and place as many miners as possible, they will run out eventually and ones that didn't have work will start then.

[AndrewIRL]

i believe Mining productivity research has made your numbers obsolete.
Since every research basically increases the mining speed.
Better to calculate by belt and place as many miners as possible, they will run out eventually and ones that didn't have work will start then.

The numbers are also off if you use speed or productivity modules. This is for the base miner without tech tree upgrades or modules. With mining tech (2% per level) here are the numbers:

26 miners per yellow belt at tech level 0
25 miners per yellow belt at tech level 1
24 miners per yellow belt at tech level 3
23 miners per yellow belt at tech level 6
22 miners per yellow belt at tech level 8
21 miners per yellow belt at tech level 11
20 miners per yellow belt at tech level 14

But don't bother upgrading your mining productivity beyond level 8 unless you are building a megabase.

[Serenity]

I saw Youtubers building out megabases with giant 2-6-2 trains and I started thinking I needed to do the same when I built my first train. After some testing on my rather less majestic base I found that 1-2-0 trains work just fine. With a roundtrip of 37.5 seconds a single full cargo wagon is equivalent of one compressed blue belt. If two cargo wagons is not enough, put two trains on the same route. More flexible and less wasted cargo space when visiting smaller mining outposts

Agreed. Two wagons works just fine to start with. You could use four wagons, but for a long stretch of the game they'll just sit around in the unloading station a lot. And it's overkill for smaller ore patches. Maybe if you play with huge ore patches, so you have tons of miners everywhere.

About the only real pre-rocket resource sink is modules. Those will eat a lot of materials. But just slowly expanding your base and doing some research on the side isn't really a huge operation.

[Aeternus]

About the only real pre-rocket resource sink is modules. Those will eat a lot of materials. But just slowly expanding your base and doing some research on the side isn't really a huge operation.

Rapid research is a huge resource hog as well now in 0.15.x - especially on iron. Modules tend to eat more copper.