yet another smart train System & Factory (Img heavy)
Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 8:36 pm
hello fellow factorians. I've been very busy in factorio and outside recently which prevented me form posting this before. I had also a nice migration to 0.15 so congratulations to the devs and the modders for making us so happy^^. In this case the mod I use is of course Choumiko's smarter trains and as a reference when starting I read siggboy's build and even get the blueprints and play a bit with them but I'm a bit slow so I prefer to do things on myself from the beginning in order to learn. Basically I like mining and building millions of iron plates but the satisfaction of developing a system like this is one step further so I encourage you to try. My following discussion will be descriptive without going into much details. I'll provide the blueprints so you can investigate and try around but the configuration if you intend to use it for production can be tricky sometimes. Anything you need or ask I'll try to answer.
So I wanted to start a new factory, really nice one, to have high availability of finished products. Then I thought about doing it train based with a delivery system and there it all gone crazy. I spent like 3 days cabling uncabling testing.. I had done some stuff with combinators but this was not easy.
The Smarter trains mod has to be installed and all the trains that we intend to operate in the same circuit must belong to the same line. On this line all the stations must be listed, my recommendation to speed up is to put all the providers in the beginning of the line and all the requesters at the end. If you know how many stations youll have you can create "dummy" stations for the future provider's but that is too much detail.
Let's see the Depot:
The signals that are used for communication between stations are unusable for transporting items, this means my system cannot transport diesel locomotives, train stations, wooden chests or cargo wagons. this could be changed masquerading those signals i did it in the depot in fact since the last memory cell is a bit problematic. But for now these i thought wouldn't be very useful to transport by rail ^^
let's make an example and talk about it so I went to my factory and get some plate running. The depot would start polling with the train station signal, it will go increasing the station signal till a certain value (for me now is below 50). When it get's some request it will star searching for a provider that has this quantity available. The poll will be in this second round with wooden chests. Then the internal calculation and the final order. For our example I removed all the trains from the Depot so the polling will stop (why to poll if you don't have trains to deliver right?) and we can see the booked order and understand it:
A couple of sidenotes, in theory you can have different trains with different number of wagons, this is not fully implemented now and I don't see the real need but i think with a bit of tweaking it cound be properly managed. i made all the stations so they can book multiple orders but when cabling them for normal use i modified them so they can only accept one and wait for the deliver to be finished to order another. this makes sense since we can deliver multiple trains and otherwise even if what it is promised is taken into account at the outpost, could lead to more requests tan desired. There are many details and it is hard to go through them, I realize while I write that many things are left to be described but as I said it is not a full detailed guide.
So let's ride to our provider, the depot will pass the P15 to the train and we¡ll be on our way. before arrriving we'll see the Provider ready to serve:
let's talk a bit about the config of the trains:
On the depot they wait for signal P
on any provider they wait for signal R
on any requester they wait for signal D (alwais = 1 a.k.a. the Depot) AND empty cargo inventory
That's why you can see the lamp on in the requesters when they are booked but not on the providers since they have to load first and sometimes you don't want them full. Always some excess of material will be transported, that's why I usually make the standard requests smaller than one train.
Regarding connecting the requesters and providers, please add them to the line in smart trains before connecting anything, even electricity for the requester will lead to malfunction. Once they have their smarstation number asigned then you can connect them. Also remember each time you add a station you have to configure the line so the train will be directed to Signal#
Before leaving let me show you the multirequester station (in reality is a small polling system similar to the one used in the train system but just for the factory), it can book a configurable amount of trains (for me if 3 trains are on their way it waits) then a big filtering belt to feed the buffer that will feed the central bus. There is a pic of our order booked on the factory buffer. Then i have a system connecting all the factory outputs and a smart loading station to make trains with the quantities you configure, this if is interesting for somebody I can share. I hope you enjoyed and please let me know any idea to improve it or to work on.
So I wanted to start a new factory, really nice one, to have high availability of finished products. Then I thought about doing it train based with a delivery system and there it all gone crazy. I spent like 3 days cabling uncabling testing.. I had done some stuff with combinators but this was not easy.
The Smarter trains mod has to be installed and all the trains that we intend to operate in the same circuit must belong to the same line. On this line all the stations must be listed, my recommendation to speed up is to put all the providers in the beginning of the line and all the requesters at the end. If you know how many stations youll have you can create "dummy" stations for the future provider's but that is too much detail.
Let's see the Depot:
depot
basically it consist on a 1st sage polling area, where if something is demanded (negative numbers) the memory cell will register the order and activate stage2. On stage 2 it will poll all the stations to see if someone can provide what it is required, if there is, it will be registered on the second memory cell. Once these 2 cells are booked, the stops are booked. Beware! if you don't send the trains to those stations, you'll have problems. Finally it will calculate internally how many trains does it need to deliver the goods depending on their stack sizes. And the third memory cell will deliver actually the trains. When it is emptied, the polling system starts again. The Yellow aprt is the 1st in polling area, the memory cells are numbered 123, the calculation of number of trains is done in the green part, the blue constant combinators hold the stack sizes.The signals that are used for communication between stations are unusable for transporting items, this means my system cannot transport diesel locomotives, train stations, wooden chests or cargo wagons. this could be changed masquerading those signals i did it in the depot in fact since the last memory cell is a bit problematic. But for now these i thought wouldn't be very useful to transport by rail ^^
let's make an example and talk about it so I went to my factory and get some plate running. The depot would start polling with the train station signal, it will go increasing the station signal till a certain value (for me now is below 50). When it get's some request it will star searching for a provider that has this quantity available. The poll will be in this second round with wooden chests. Then the internal calculation and the final order. For our example I removed all the trains from the Depot so the polling will stop (why to poll if you don't have trains to deliver right?) and we can see the booked order and understand it:
depotloaded
We can extract valuable information here, The requester R20 Asked for 7k Iron plate, it needs a 4 wagon train. The provider P15 can deliver up to 69k iron plate atm so it will deliver it (number of wagons is checked in the provider when it is asked) and one single train can transport it with 8.9k remaining free capacity. In case multiple trains are needed the total amount requested will be divided by the number of trains and the requester and provider will know and will stay booked for the whole order.A couple of sidenotes, in theory you can have different trains with different number of wagons, this is not fully implemented now and I don't see the real need but i think with a bit of tweaking it cound be properly managed. i made all the stations so they can book multiple orders but when cabling them for normal use i modified them so they can only accept one and wait for the deliver to be finished to order another. this makes sense since we can deliver multiple trains and otherwise even if what it is promised is taken into account at the outpost, could lead to more requests tan desired. There are many details and it is hard to go through them, I realize while I write that many things are left to be described but as I said it is not a full detailed guide.
So let's ride to our provider, the depot will pass the P15 to the train and we¡ll be on our way. before arrriving we'll see the Provider ready to serve:
Provider
In the provider we can see 1 train coming, to take 7k ironplate to go to R20. The signals W15 and Y20 are just booking signals for the corresponding requester and provider. As they are sent together the'll be on both stations. I have a loading circuit and unloading circuits on my stops, you can see them on the blueprints and I''ll not cover them here. So once loaded R20 is passed to the smarttrainstation and let's go to the requester:Requester
There we can see..... WAIT! xDD yees I knooow, So we can see our order, plus some other order. What happened is i went to my dreamed factory, that has a special requester. This special requester will handle requests of 8 materials needed in the factory. Anyway the improtan numbers ie. the quatities are ok. let's talk a bit about the config of the trains:
On the depot they wait for signal P
on any provider they wait for signal R
on any requester they wait for signal D (alwais = 1 a.k.a. the Depot) AND empty cargo inventory
That's why you can see the lamp on in the requesters when they are booked but not on the providers since they have to load first and sometimes you don't want them full. Always some excess of material will be transported, that's why I usually make the standard requests smaller than one train.
Regarding connecting the requesters and providers, please add them to the line in smart trains before connecting anything, even electricity for the requester will lead to malfunction. Once they have their smarstation number asigned then you can connect them. Also remember each time you add a station you have to configure the line so the train will be directed to Signal#
Before leaving let me show you the multirequester station (in reality is a small polling system similar to the one used in the train system but just for the factory), it can book a configurable amount of trains (for me if 3 trains are on their way it waits) then a big filtering belt to feed the buffer that will feed the central bus. There is a pic of our order booked on the factory buffer. Then i have a system connecting all the factory outputs and a smart loading station to make trains with the quantities you configure, this if is interesting for somebody I can share. I hope you enjoyed and please let me know any idea to improve it or to work on.
order booked in buffer
main filter form the air
main bus
The factory output for configurable train loads
The factory form the air