Controlling trains and inserters with circuits

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BurningSky
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Controlling trains and inserters with circuits

Post by BurningSky »

Hey,

I am just getting into learning how to use circuits to make my Factorio life a lot easier. I want to have a supply train that I can send off to my outposts so I can have my bots build things for me when I place a ghost item that they don't already have. At the moment I have a train with an in and an out wagon. My idea is to set the items the outpost needs on a requester chest, then when the items are in the chest to flip a switch which would start the inserter inserting the items into the wagon then when the inserter has finished, turn the signal light for the train to green so the train can head off.

Has anyone got any tips on how to go about this? Or suggestions on how I could do it better?

Thanks!

Aeternus
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Re: Controlling trains and inserters with circuits

Post by Aeternus »

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking. The problem with your idea is that I don't know of any way to convert a "building ghosts placed require x units of building type y" event to an actual circuit signal.
What you could do is something I tend to do with supply trains:
- Supply train is loaded with all the item types that the local base can use. (SupplyDock -> Wait until cargo full)
- Supply stations use filter inserters to unload a small amount of items into a passive provider chest. Connect the inserter to the provider chest and disable the inserter once cargo exceeds a certain amount. Typically I use 10.
- Use a few Decider Combinators to flag when the content of the passive provider chests falls below a treshold (I typically use 5) and activate the station to call the supply train to it. If the amount of items is above the treshold for all item types, the station should be disabled.
- Train should use "SupplyStation -> Inactivity 30 seconds" to wait at the station until it's done unloading stuff that's being used at the base. As the construction bots keep picking up buildings, more are unloaded from the train which holds the train at the station until either the construction is done, or the train is empty. If empty, it'll go to the dock, reload, and then return to the still active station with more stuffs.

I've used this method to build a very large nuclear plant from the large map by ghost placing stuff, while at the same time building other parts of my factory. It works but can be slow, especially if you place more then 600 building ghosts on the map.

Bauer
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Re: Controlling trains and inserters with circuits

Post by Bauer »

Hi!

I use the following system for support of manual building (inkluding the use of blue prints and personal robots):
- Build a supply train station close to your mall. Use requester chests (request one type per chest, multiple chests per item are allowed) to bring stuff to the station.
- Use stack inserters to load the train directly from the requester chests. Controll the amount by middle-clicking the wagon slots (=define cargo).
- The train stays at the "Depot" "until full". For the second stop "Supply" the schedule is "leave when empty". Make sure you have always have 0 or 1 such stops.
- When you need stuff, build a station. Name it "Supply" and pick the stuff from the train manually. You can send the train back manually as well when a specific product is empty.
- When finished building, you deconstruct the stop and the train will return (also giving you a free ride).

- My train has 12 wagons, 8 with supplies and 4 to return wood, stone, coal, and other stuff. The later gets unloaded into purple chests at the mall to be recycled or burned. 6 engines for some acceleration.

I also tried to set up a more elaborate system: I have a red wire connection along my complete rail system. At an outpost, I would build a constant combinator and red-wire the needed items home to the supply depot via that red wire. White inserters would now load the supply train with the requested items (read train content from station, add this to red-wire times (-1), activate white inserter if xxx < 0. Train leave condiction: If everything > 0, output G1 to train station. Leave when G>0.) However, this takes too long. I want the supply train to arrive at the outpost asap. There is no time for loading stuff. Do you really want to wait for 2000 landfill to be loaded??? Well, the result is this 12 wagon monster-train with all stuff pre-loaded and ready for dispatch.

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