how to supply city from outpost?

[Nemac]

Hey,

i will soon run out of iron in town and have some questions i have some time left, and just startet to fill some chest to have a buffer later.

to wich max range i can / should use belts to get supply from my outpost in the city? when use trains?
i dont see yet how to supply my city train only later :/ Have to replace ~60+ iron miners. is there a way to get more room? Just use long trains? 2k bulk vs 75k liquid. there should be more room for bulk good

sorry for maybe stupid questions, its my first bigger city which i want play some longer and will run out auf ore in start position

thanks

[Wanderer]

My personal opinion of when to use trains instead of long belt lines is when you have to go out past the 'bug wall', the basic perimeter you get of spawners when you first fire up the map (at least on default). It works out to around 300-400 transport belts worth of distance for me, roughly.

This is mostly because it's easier to defend a walled rail station at that distance than try to defend it as a component of your home base.

As to goods transporting, 60 iron miners are producing ~35 ore/second. A 1-2-1 locomotive (one loco each end, two cargo in the middle) can carry 4k in ore per trip. As long as your round trip for the train (loading, travel, unload, return) is under about 2 minutes, you'll be fine. If it's longer than that, either use a 2-4-2 configuration for 8000 units/trip, or put more locomotives on the line which would require you to learn railroad switches, which are a bugbear when you first start learning to use them but eventually make complete sense. Of particular importance to increase your loading/unloading speed is stack inserters and their bonuses.

Good luck!

[Zool]

Or, if you construct your rails in a way that requires no turning, just use 2-4 which is a lot faster then 2-4-2 - And when you add rocket fuel in the end, its just insane how fast the trains are comming.

[Nemac]

Thanks.

I do research to speed up the stack inserters. That seems be the chokepoint, load / unload the chace fast.
Yes i use a loop for my train so i dont need switch direction. yet maybe switch this if i have to carry different goods later. for now i have some copper/oil near the base.

Will a 2-4 setup be faster? use 2 locomotive in the same direction? i understand that the train lost speed the more heavyer it is. but i cant see much difference with bare eye. will try a stoppwatch later.

thanks so far, seems i dont have to worry much about this.

[Greybeard_LXI]

The 2-4 setup will be faster than a 2-4-2 because the 2-4-2 has two locomotives facing the wrong way and not helping pull the train. They just add weight and slow acceleration.

[SpeedDaemon]

The "when to switch to trains" question is (for me) pretty easy to answer. If I know I'm going to play on a map long enough to deplete the starting resources, it's "As soon as possible!"

Once you properly set up your smelting area to accept ore from trains, you can start slapping down blueprinted mining stations very easily, and just connect them to your rail network. It's much slower before you have personal roboports, obviously, but still pretty easy. At that point, you don't have to worry about it again - just extend your rails and put in another mine when you run out, or need a higher incoming ore rate.

Once you go past a handful of active mines (I need 5+ each of Fe and Cu to support my current expensive recipe factory at this point), you can consider building a transfer station (ore flow is mines->xfer station->smelting) to simplify your train schedules. (this also means I can use very long trains for long-haul trips to mines, and 1-2-1 trains that fit into a very dense unloading area at the smelter)

[Nemac]

i dont mean the when in time.
just compared to belts to wich range use belt or train..

i guess i have ~4-5h playtime lieft until my base is empty.. so some time left. start fill some chest as buffer.
So i have some sparetime do some resaerch and try some with signals... never realy build trains yet