LTN and efficient transportation of barrels

Adds new train stops forming a highly configurable logistic network.

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randomizer52
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LTN and efficient transportation of barrels

Post by randomizer52 »

I'm trying to figure out how to best use LTN with a barreled-petrochem setup.

It is of course possible to have two separate stations on both the production and consumption ends. At the refinery, one station provides filled barrels and another station requests them, and vice-versa at the consumption end. (Of course this could be the same physical station.)

But in a setup like that, there will be two separate LTN deliveries, right? One to deliver filled barrels and one to deliver emptied barrels. This seems inefficient. What I want is for the train that delivers filled barrels to the consuming station to pick up empties at the same time, and drop those empties off when filling up back at the refinery (perhaps after a stop at a depot).

My current thinking is to have one LTN network for all barrel-related trains. The filled-barrel providers and filled-barrel requestors will be LTN stations. No stations will request or provide empty barrels via LTN, but the physical stations will be set up to handle them. The LTN trains will deliver filled barrels, pick up empty barrels (though they don't know it), and return to the depot; when an order for filled barrels comes in, they will travel to the refinery. At the refinery they will pick up filled barrels and unwittingly drop off the empties.

Does this make sense, or is there a better way of doing it?

nuhll
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Re: LTN and efficient transportation of barrels

Post by nuhll »

I tried it. It doenst work.

I had LTN handle the full barrels and just manually via filter inserter insert empty barrels back... what happens is that LTN unloads the empty barrels... :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

Anyway, i used now LTN to get the empty barrels, works good. I just set up a station with a request for empty barrels with active providers... only problem is that you always get "CANT FIND EMPTY BARRELS IN YOUR NETWORK" blabla when no empty barrels are in network. Besides this, it works just fine.

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Optera
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Re: LTN and efficient transportation of barrels

Post by Optera »

It would take dedicated station designs to fill empty barrels at the requester and unload them at provider.
This would mean that except for the trip between provider and requester those trains would have their wagons always filled with empty barrels, therefore locking them to only fluid transports. At this point you may just as well use fluid wagons and safe yourself a lot of headache at station design.

randomizer52
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Re: LTN and efficient transportation of barrels

Post by randomizer52 »

Optera wrote:It would take dedicated station designs to fill empty barrels at the requester and unload them at provider.
This would mean that except for the trip between provider and requester those trains would have their wagons always filled with empty barrels, therefore locking them to only fluid transports. At this point you may just as well use fluid wagons and safe yourself a lot of headache at station design.
Yeah, I was coming to that conclusion. I don't use LTN to its full potential, really—my stations are often quasi-custom, at least in their filter inserters, so a custom station design is not a dealbreaker. The fact that it would lock certain trains to just barrels is annoying, as part of my goal was to make a design that only required one train configuration. This would in effect be separate configs (barrel and not-barrel).

I guess I'll play around with it and see what ends up working. Might just have to fall back on separate trips for filled and empty barrels.

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