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This. This is a nightmare. 500 hours in the game and 2-3 hours last night spent trying to figure them out I finally said screw it and started routing my trains the long way around my base. It's ugly and messy as hell. And I cannot for the life of me figure this out. It's not "well you arent reading enough". I read a shit ton and still haven't gotten it working. I'm no idiot, either... and I've come across enough people that agree with me that this should be easier. Why can't it be made more intuitive?

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I am sorry, what seems to be the problem? I dont see any concrete problems you state except "this is hard man"

I can only point you to check some train tutorials on youtube or look at designs and see if you understand them.

Yeah, it is hard. It's very difficult and unintuitive. Hence why I put this thread in balancing / suggestions. Should everyone having difficulty understanding this have to look it up online? And even still then not able to figure it out? It should not be this complicated.

I find it quite intuitive; signals separate track into blocks, blocks can only occupy one train at a time. Without more detail it is not clear what you consider unintuitive.

What would you consider intuitive ?
How do you expect trains or rails to behave ?
What is/ are the things that happens that is annoying ?

Is it the different parts individual behavior ? or more when they start to cross and share track and stations and multiples trains ?

From what you said it seems that you have read about the pieces, but cannot make in game what you have in mind.

It's different answer if it is differents mechanism of trains , tooltips or in game visualization, tutorials on more complex networks, that could help you in the situation.

Ghostwheel wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 28, 2019 2:53 pm

This. This is a nightmare. 500 hours in the game and 2-3 hours last night spent trying to figure them out I finally said screw it and started routing my trains the long way around my base. It's ugly and messy as hell. And I cannot for the life of me figure this out. It's not "well you arent reading enough". I read a shit ton and still haven't gotten it working. I'm no idiot, either... and I've come across enough people that agree with me that this should be easier. Why can't it be made more intuitive?

So, forgive me if this sounds like a put-down or something. It isn't. To me, the trains and signalling are absolutely intuitive. They make perfect sense.

I absolutely believe they don't to you, because I have your train experience with a whole bunch of stuff that everyone else seems to find intuitive, and I just stare at it completely confused. Clearly, intuitive isn't the same for everyone.

Since we can't know which of us the devs are more like, can you be a bit more explicit about what the problems you are having are?

Like, is this a problem with trains going in opposite directions using the same track, or is it intersections not working? Trains waiting somewhere forever?

With more detail hopefully they can fix it so both of us can understand it - that should be possible, for sure! Without ... well, if they like me, they won't be able to figure out what the problem is. Not because there isn't a problem -- there really is one! -- but because if it makes sense to someone, it is really hard to understand why it doesn't to someone else.

You're not the first to struggle with trains/signalling.

You might consider using a complete modular train system someone else has developed:

viewtopic.php?f=194&t=59517
viewtopic.php?f=194&t=69540

There's also the 4 way intersection sticky has a lot of examples of intersections you can build around: viewtopic.php?f=194&t=46855

I always recommend the train tutorial in this reddit post. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ts_23_and/

Hard no to any and all suggestions to dumb this game down.

Railblock must be bidirectional. So it must have a signal in and out on both ends.