Smart Train Deliveries with Combinator Magick [0.13/0.14]

[HiddenWolf]

I didn't want to do this, but after giving up and re-starting three times, here's my ' massive main bus' save.

The base itself is a mess, I was trying to build too big too fast, and there's loose ends everywhere.

The rail system was massively overbuilt as I was planning to brute-force it with dumb trains.
I'd like to move my smelting and refining somewhere else, and cut the base up in different parts.

I really need smart trains to work for that though.

Hooked up to MainLine are
1. Yard
2. Yard Fuel
3. Main Iron
4. Main Copper.
5-7 - Iron 1-3

All stations show on the bus, there's plenty of Iron in the buffers, and it should be moving. The logic to yard is showing a signal on the green wire, but not on the red.
No trains are dispatching.

I've tested these blueprints on a creative-mode save where they do work, but it's not translating to the main base.

I figure I either need to remove/rebuild the logic, the yard, or I forget to set something somewhere, but I've lost track. Can anyone take a look?

[siggboy]

All stations show on the bus, there's plenty of Iron in the buffers, and it should be moving. The logic to yard is showing a signal on the green wire, but not on the red.
No trains are dispatching.

You did not give the individual lanes their own signals. In your save, all the lanes use the signal "1", but it does have to be distinct for each lane ("1", "2", "3", etc.).

Also I recommend you use the newer version of the Depot, from the blueprint book that I've posted a few posts further up. In your save you still use an older version.
Replacing the depot is rather simple, so you should do that upgrade.

Also reset the signals in your outpost registers, for example your coal requester (for refueling) does have some dirty values in the register.

[HiddenWolf]

All stations show on the bus, there's plenty of Iron in the buffers, and it should be moving. The logic to yard is showing a signal on the green wire, but not on the red.
No trains are dispatching.

You did not give the individual lanes their own signals. In your save, all the lanes use the signal "1", but it does have to be distinct for each lane ("1", "2", "3", etc.).

Also reset the signals in your outpost registers, for example your coal requester (for refueling) does have some dirty values in the register.

How do I set the signal for the lanes?

I've tried setting the Arithmatic combinator next to the smart station to (station * *1, 2, 3") etc
The combinator above it is set to signal 1-2-3 in the demo, updated that as well.

I've updated to the depot v4, as suggested.

I'd like to see the new depot explained a bit further. You provided upgrade instructions in the annotations, but not a "set lanes here, wagons here" first-setup type explanation. Could you add that?

[siggboy]

I've tried setting the Arithmatic combinator next to the smart station to (station * *1, 2, 3") etc
The combinator above it is set to signal 1-2-3 in the demo, updated that as well.

You've set the numbers in the arithmetic combinators correctly, but you forgot to set the output types ("name" of the signal). If you see a signal with the name "1" then this has to be changed for each lane (so it is unique for each lane). It can be "1", "2", "3", ... but you could also use "A", "B", "C", ... or "Red", "Green", "White", ... as long as it's unique for each lane.

It needs to be changed in 3 places for each lane.

I've updated to the depot v4, as suggested.

I'd like to see the new depot explained a bit further. You provided upgrade instructions in the annotations, but not a "set lanes here, wagons here" first-setup type explanation. Could you add that?

I guess I will make a complete set of instructions and some in-depth explanation of everything and update the first post in this thread. That is long overdue, but I'm not really playing Factorio anymore so I don't spend a lot of time with the game these days -- and the documentation business is a lot of work.

[HiddenWolf]

I've tried setting the Arithmatic combinator next to the smart station to (station * *1, 2, 3") etc
The combinator above it is set to signal 1-2-3 in the demo, updated that as well.

You've set the numbers in the arithmetic combinators correctly, but you forgot to set the output types ("name" of the signal). If you see a signal with the name "1" then this has to be changed for each lane (so it is unique for each lane). It can be "1", "2", "3", ... but you could also use "A", "B", "C", ... or "Red", "Green", "White", ... as long as it's unique for each lane.

It needs to be changed in 3 places for each lane.

I've updated to the depot v4, as suggested.

I'd like to see the new depot explained a bit further. You provided upgrade instructions in the annotations, but not a "set lanes here, wagons here" first-setup type explanation. Could you add that?

I guess I will make a complete set of instructions and some in-depth explanation of everything and update the first post in this thread. That is long overdue, but I'm not really playing Factorio anymore so I don't spend a lot of time with the game these days -- and the documentation business is a lot of work.

Hi Siggyboy,

Thanks, I've done that as well.
I also found an obvious error. My iron requester was requesting plate. Fixed that, reset a few registers, and updated to the new logic.

The logic/depot now has a green light, but the lane selection still isn't working.
I think I need to tell the logic/depot that there's six lanes in my setup somewhere, but I can't find the combinator.
Would you have another look?

HW

[siggboy]

I think I need to tell the logic/depot that there's six lanes in my setup somewhere, but I can't find the combinator.
Would you have another look?

Just look for the "rail signal" signal in a constant combinator, and set it to "number of lanes" + 1 (default is 3 lanes, so the value is 4; in your case it would be 7).

However, even if you set the value too low it should still select a lane, it would just ignore the higher numbered ones.

I'll have a look at the save later.

[doxsroxs]

Hi

Just wanted to report that I managed to break your depot again
Im still not 100% sure, but it seems it cannot handle more than 300 stations. When I increased the train stop signal to 350 and T signal to 370 it would get stuck looping though on yellow phase.

To describe the problem, it will loop though materials, it looks like it makes a match but instead of launching a train the active depot lane light will just switch to another lane and it starts all over again.

Even after reducing to less than 300 stations the problem seems to stay and it will loop around in that fashion only sending off a few trains in quick succession once every 5-10 minutes.
I just noticed this issue so Im not sure it was the exact 300 station mark that caused this. But between depot loops I can see some materials are requested and have a provider (signal is over 8,6 M) so we should have more matches coming in.

Disabling the S combinator, waiting a while and reenabling it will make it send off a train or two immediately on the first match.
However, it is soon back to not matching properly and shuffling the active lane light without sending off trains for 5-10 minutes.

Any ideas?

Also, while the topic is up, would it be possible to extend/split the matching part of the depot logic so that I could use one part to make matches against stations 1-200 and another for 200-400 to reduce match times?
The plan is to run a green wire secondary rail network with much longer trains for all the really high throughput items. However, we will still need to add a bunch of stations to this primary medium throughput network.
Most of the new stations will have match times up towards 5 seconds and in the end that limits the system throughput.

Sorry for breaking your stuff again

[Acarin]

But mine's working!

You are a star, Siggboy, and I am extremely grateful for both your assistance and your hard work designing and implementing this amazing system. I'd buy you a drink, but then I would probably be arrested for Internet stalking or something, but please be aware that this whole project totally rocks!

[doxsroxs]

Hi

Just wanted to report that I managed to break your depot again
Im still not 100% sure, but it seems it cannot handle more than 300 stations. When I increased the train stop signal to 350 and T signal to 370 it would get stuck looping though on yellow phase.

To describe the problem, it will loop though materials, it looks like it makes a match but instead of launching a train the active depot lane light will just switch to another lane and it starts all over again.

Even after reducing to less than 300 stations the problem seems to stay and it will loop around in that fashion only sending off a few trains in quick succession once every 5-10 minutes.
I just noticed this issue so Im not sure it was the exact 300 station mark that caused this. But between depot loops I can see some materials are requested and have a provider (signal is over 8,6 M) so we should have more matches coming in.

Disabling the S combinator, waiting a while and reenabling it will make it send off a train or two immediately on the first match.
However, it is soon back to not matching properly and shuffling the active lane light without sending off trains for 5-10 minutes.

Any ideas?

Also, while the topic is up, would it be possible to extend/split the matching part of the depot logic so that I could use one part to make matches against stations 1-200 and another for 200-400 to reduce match times?
The plan is to run a green wire secondary rail network with much longer trains for all the really high throughput items. However, we will still need to add a bunch of stations to this primary medium throughput network.
Most of the new stations will have match times up towards 5 seconds and in the end that limits the system throughput.

Sorry for breaking your stuff again

Ok, update:
Im not sure the issue is related to the number of stations. I found the depot would match with requester station #245 repeatedly and fail to send a train. (I checked the combinator that hold the R station number in the depot)
This is probably what is causing other trains to work sometimes, but not most of the time.

Anyway, when inspecting that station I cannot see anything different with it except that it is requesting both satellites and ion cannons. Satellites are not available at the moment, but ion cannons are...
Going to review the provider station for ion cannons now.

[doxsroxs]

Ok, I rebuilt both provider and requester stations, cannot find anything wrong with them, they should work.
I also checked the Ion cannons are included as a materail and the number per wagon is set to 80 in the depot combinators. (I have bobs mods cars with 80 slots)

Can the issue be related to items that stack only one per slot?

[doxsroxs]

Ok, I must have been blind before, just found large negative values in the depot for ion cannons and satellites.
It seems you have a problem with handling items with cargo load per wagon below 144.
So it looks like this is tied to the item number reduction for multiproviders.

I found a bug, wasnt my fault this time!

[siggboy]

You are a star, Siggboy, and I am extremely grateful for both your assistance and your hard work designing and implementing this amazing system. I'd buy you a drink, but then I would probably be arrested for Internet stalking or something, but please be aware that this whole project totally rocks! :-)

Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it :). Maybe you'll find your own ways of making some creative extension or improvement.

Ok, I must have been blind before, just found large negative values in the depot for ion cannons and satellites.
It seems you have a problem with handling items with cargo load per wagon below 144.
So it looks like this is tied to the item number reduction for multiproviders.

Yes, the system doesn't really work that well with very low item counts (in some places counts lower than 200 or so are filtered, so it wouldn't be possible to transport anything in such low numbers at all). The fact that we subtract 144 per wagon to make the multi-providers work is another reason.

Barrels are still OK, and also the rocket components (they stack to 10), but anything that stacks lower than 10 (probably 1 in those cases) is not really practical because you can then only fit 40 per (unmodded) wagon.

In short: if the total amount is lower than 200 then it won't work anyway, unless adjustments are made to the depot and requester.

[siggboy]

I think I need to tell the logic/depot that there's six lanes in my setup somewhere, but I can't find the combinator.
Would you have another look?

Just look for the "rail signal" signal in a constant combinator, and set it to "number of lanes" + 1 (default is 3 lanes, so the value is 4; in your case it would be 7).

However, even if you set the value too low it should still select a lane, it would just ignore the higher numbered ones.

I'll have a look at the save later.

OK, I've checked your re-upload of the save and found several issues:

1. You still had the lane signals not configured properly. You need to go through all the combinators at each lane, and when you see the signal "1" you need to change it to a signal that is unique for that lane. Usually you'll use "2", "3", "4", etc. signals. It has to be changed in all the combinators where it appears and also the lamp.
   Use the alt-view to quickly check this.
2. The combinator where you set the number of lanes is at the bottom of the depot circuit and it holds a "rail signal" combinator signal, which needs to be the number of lanes plus 1 (i.e. "Rail Signal = 7" in your case).
3. Your rail layout leading into the lanes is not going to work, because the trains are not going to be distributed evenly across the lanes. In this scenario you already get a long queue of trains that all want to go to the top lane, and the train queue is blocking the main line.
   You need to make a stacker, then combine the rails to one point, use a chain signal at each stacker lane, and fan that out to the actual depot lanes.
4. Your "train fuel" station was connected to the red bus but wasn't part of the main train line (not configured in smart trains). Don't do that. Always add the station to the main train line before you add the connection to the red bus.

[HiddenWolf]

Here's the latest version of the depot that I use now. It contains a fix for the "depot can get stuck in phase 2" problem, and looks a lot nicer and cleaned up.

For upgrading, leave the constant combinators at the top and right (that contain the resource configuration), and place the blueprint on top of them.

Then you only need to reconfigure a few minor things (number of lanes, number of outposts, number of wagons).

This version subtracts 144 per wagon from the amount of resources that is promised (if at cap), which does not matter for general use, but prepares the setup for multi-resource providers. I will post a blueprint of an outpost later.

I recommend to update to this version of the depot. Runs perfectly for me.

Orange can be taken from the old setup (leave these combinators in place before removing the old depot circuit, also any others you have added to these groups).

Yellow needs to be checked for config. The value "T=80" must be larger than the "Train station" value, I recommend adding "20". So if your "train station" config value (max. number of outposts) is "50", then a value of at least "T=70" is good. Or simply set "T=300" and forget about it, it's not important as long as it's large enough; but don't make it too large, it's a timeout counter. (I should have made it larger in the depot blueprint, but I took that directly from my live game.)

Green is the combinator that you can disable in order to suspend the depot.

The lanes connect to the power pole on the lower right, the red bus can connect to either substation.

Make sure that there is only 1 combinator emitting the "D=1" signal on the bus (or whatever you have as the depot station number, usually it's D=1). Check this directly on the bus, and remove any extra "D=1" combinator.

depot-new.PNG

Blueprint

Code: Select all

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Hi Siggyboy,

In my ongoing efforts to get my trains to work, I put up a little creative mode save, where I have a running train using the v3 depot.
If I take off the power, rip out the old logic and put in the new version qouted above, the demo train stops running.
Has anything changed with the providers/requesters as well?

I saw you uploaded a new blueprint book, but I haven't been able to check it out. Foreman will import it but not load it into a book. KBM chokes on the string entirely.

[siggboy]

I saw you uploaded a new blueprint book, but I haven't been able to check it out. Foreman will import it but not load it into a book. KBM chokes on the string entirely.

You have to use Blueprint String to import that book. Do not use any older blueprints, I do not support them.

KBM is not compatible with Blueprint String (which is a pity, because KBM is the better tool to actually work with the blueprints after you have imported them).

In general I recommend you play with a simple sandbox setup until you feel comfortable with it, and do not change the blueprints at all (except for making the stations larger, which is perfectly OK of course and usually straightforward). Do not make huge setups all at once, it will only cause frustration.

[HiddenWolf]

I saw you uploaded a new blueprint book, but I haven't been able to check it out. Foreman will import it but not load it into a book. KBM chokes on the string entirely.

You have to use Blueprint String to import that book. Do not use any older blueprints, I do not support them.

KBM is not compatible with Blueprint String (which is a pity, because KBM is the better tool to actually work with the blueprints after you have imported them).

In general I recommend you play with a simple sandbox setup until you feel comfortable with it, and do not change the blueprints at all (except for making the stations larger, which is perfectly OK of course and usually straightforward). Do not make huge setups all at once, it will only cause frustration.

Yep. Went back to basic. A loop with one lane, requester and provider.
Gave up on my main base for now.

I didn't know KBM/foreman and blueprint string were not compatible. I'll install string and switch to all the new designs.

[siggboy]

Yep. Went back to basic. A loop with one lane, requester and provider.
Gave up on my main base for now.

The one issue I saw with your base was the stacker design. This is not even related to the smart train setup. If you have a train depot with multiple stations (all having the same name, e.g. "Depot"), then you need to build a stacker in front of the depot, so the trains will be, more or less, evenly distributed over the depot stations.

The important bit is that the exit from the stacker is a SINGLE rail (the length of which doesn't matter, but you can't have multiple parallel rails connecting the stacker and the depots). The stacker and the depot will have multiple parallel rails, but the connection in between needs to be a single rail that all the trains have to pass through.
Additionally, you need to put a chain rail signal at the front of each stacker lane (just before the point where the stacker lanes are combined). At the entry to the depot lanes you put regular rail signals, at each lane.

That's the only reliable stacker design I know of.

So in any case, you will have to make changes to this part of your base.

Now, a basic setup (like the demo map, or even simpler), is useful just to learn how to use the system. In a real game, you should also start with one provider/requester pair, then add more providers for a single resource, and finally opening up to more resources and advanced features like multi-providers.

This is so you won't have to solve too many problems at once, which can be overwhelming. Not least because even without fancy combinator circuits, the trains are difficult to handle on their own.

[HiddenWolf]

Yep. Went back to basic. A loop with one lane, requester and provider.
Gave up on my main base for now.

The one issue I saw with your base was the stacker design. This is not even related to the smart train setup. If you have a train depot with multiple stations (all having the same name, e.g. "Depot"), then you need to build a stacker in front of the depot, so the trains will be, more or less, evenly distributed over the depot stations.

The important bit is that the exit from the stacker is a SINGLE rail (the length of which doesn't matter, but you can't have multiple parallel rails connecting the stacker and the depots). The stacker and the depot will have multiple parallel rails, but the connection in between needs to be a single rail that all the trains have to pass through.
Additionally, you need to put a chain rail signal at the front of each stacker lane (just before the point where the stacker lanes are combined). At the entry to the depot lanes you put regular rail signals, at each lane.

That's the only reliable stacker design I know of.

So in any case, you will have to make changes to this part of your base.

Now, a basic setup (like the demo map, or even simpler), is useful just to learn how to use the system. In a real game, you should also start with one provider/requester pair, then add more providers for a single resource, and finally opening up to more resources and advanced features like multi-providers.

This is so you won't have to solve too many problems at once, which can be overwhelming. Not least because even without fancy combinator circuits, the trains are difficult to handle on their own.

Yep, my base is a mess. I'm regretting going with a four-lane solution. Will likely rip it out.
However, I can't even get your new depot and provider/requester circuits to work in a simple creative mode loop.
One thing that I noticed is that in neither blueprint, the station combinator is hooked up to anything. I've got green, D and S on the bus, and nothing else.
Mind having a quick look?

[sethcor]

If i want multiple drop off locations for the same resource do i need to name them each differently rather than having them all named the same? I am loving this system so far, took a bit to set it up though. so many little things can go wrong, though it is mostly involving powering a station before it is completely built.

[sethcor]

I had it working but now it is not sending trains to the requester after it picks up its ore. instead it continues the scheduled as if it was a normal train until i returns to the depot. if i send trains to the requester it will send them back to the depot.