Friday Facts #114 - Better train conditions

[EDI]

The new rail-building looks very awesome! I do have one question though... why do you pause the construction at some point in the center and not just drag the rail to connect to the endpoint right away?

Edit: Did I see correctly, that there's no more curved rails? The tooltip only showed the straight ones

[kovarex]

The new rail-building looks very awesome! I do have one question though... why do you pause the construction at some point in the center and not just drag the rail to connect to the endpoint right away?

Edit: Did I see correctly, that there's no more curved rails? The tooltip only showed the straight ones

Because the distance of one section is limited. And yes, curved rails as items are removed.

[Sparkerish]

YAY!! looks AWESOME.

Suggestions:
ROUTES: allow players to configure "routes" for trains, ie route 1 goes to station A B C, route 2 goes to station A D E. Each with pre-configured wait times/conditions that are route specific. then adding a train to a group only requires selecting the route. also the route should be editable for all trains without clicking each train, just update the route (change wait time from 20 to 10 seconds for station B for all trains with that route)
Individual stations should still be addable but routes would really help with organization. (I get tired of waiting for a train to return to the yard so I can change the wait time for a station)

GOTO: allow selecting a single station and tell train to Goto that station without requiring it to be added to the assigned list. Great for "I need a lift to..."

Couple of ideas for ya, Keep up the Great work!

[SHiRKiT]

Please add tooltips when a button is hovered for 1 second (or some time). This HELPS A LOT.

[EDI]

Ha, it's so cool, I can't wait to expand my train network!

[ratchetfreak]

I really like the work on the railway/train UI! *thumbs up!*

Instead of setting complicated conditions in a UI window, I'd rather like to be forced to build those on my own; aka: I need an element that allows me to control the train based on network conditions (included) and then some sensor for the wagon states. A stop timer could even be built with two chests (see Minecraft stop timers), the rest is already in Factorio. Sophisticated train control should have a certain level of complexitly.

then we'd need circuit outputs for stations (possibly on the other side?)

for example green signal == 1 if train is stopped at station, and rest of signals is the total inventory

[Blue_Lucario]

FINALLY!!!!
I have used trains a lot. I love them. I make beautiful multi train systems that never crash or stall.
Now I feel that I can start using trains for the first time. This will make things so much easier!!!

[genericname1]

If trains can be connected to the circuit network will be be able to read the contents of a train?

I'm thinking it'd be nice to be able to load a single carriage with a full set of repair materials (10 x turrets, 50 x wall sections, some repair packs, perhaps a couple of spare bots etc)

[indjev99]

Suggestions:
ROUTES: allow players to configure "routes" for trains, ie route 1 goes to station A B C, route 2 goes to station A D E. Each with pre-configured wait times/conditions that are route specific. then adding a train to a group only requires selecting the route. also the route should be editable for all trains without clicking each train, just update the route (change wait time from 20 to 10 seconds for station B for all trains with that route)
Individual stations should still be addable but routes would really help with organization. (I get tired of waiting for a train to return to the yard so I can change the wait time for a station)

GOTO: allow selecting a single station and tell train to Goto that station without requiring it to be added to the assigned list. Great for "I need a lift to..."

That!

[Nova]

The whole new things about trains are awesome. No, I don't use that word as often, and I mean it. The changes to the way how we build railways are so intuitive and just perfect. The changes to the train station menu are also perfect. It looks so much better. You can really see how much thought you put into the whole matter, kovarex. To be honest, it really shows that you guys are really good developers. Every big company could be proud to have developers like you! But please don't go to them. The Indie game world needs you, and especially Factorio. I didn't play the game in the last months, but I'm sure I will play again many dozen hours after 0.13 is out.

[Rseding91]

If trains can be connected to the circuit network will be be able to read the contents of a train?

I'm thinking it'd be nice to be able to load a single carriage with a full set of repair materials (10 x turrets, 50 x wall sections, some repair packs, perhaps a couple of spare bots etc)

As it stands now: no. Twinsen may implement some mechanic to read the train contents but as it is now there isn't a way to output train contents into the circuit network. Mostly I don't see how that would be useful so if you've got a good use case for it let us know

You can however use the "inventory count" condition to check against the count of items in the train cargo and combine any number of those to get what you're after: leave after 10 turrets, 50 walls, x repair packs and x bots are in the cargo wagon - 100% supported.

[kinnom]

the mod smarttrains (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 97&t=14432) might have wat you are searching for

[ratchetfreak]

If trains can be connected to the circuit network will be be able to read the contents of a train?

I'm thinking it'd be nice to be able to load a single carriage with a full set of repair materials (10 x turrets, 50 x wall sections, some repair packs, perhaps a couple of spare bots etc)

As it stands now: no. Twinsen may implement some mechanic to read the train contents but as it is now there isn't a way to output train contents into the circuit network. Mostly I don't see how that would be useful so if you've got a good use case for it let us know

You can however use the "inventory count" condition to check against the count of items in the train cargo and combine any number of those to get what you're after: leave after 10 turrets, 50 walls, x repair packs and x bots are in the cargo wagon - 100% supported.

Fuel count for one

or for a train going around resupplying outposts it can then decide to go back only if it is running low on a certain item

[Rseding91]

Fuel count for one

or for a train going around resupplying outposts it can then decide to go back only if it is running low on a certain item

The train conditions are *wait* conditions. They determine when the train should leave the station. Not if the train should go to a station in the listing.

[voyta]

Suggestions:
ROUTES: allow players to configure "routes" for trains, ie route 1 goes to station A B C, route 2 goes to station A D E. Each with pre-configured wait times/conditions that are route specific. then adding a train to a group only requires selecting the route. also the route should be editable for all trains without clicking each train, just update the route (change wait time from 20 to 10 seconds for station B for all trains with that route)
Individual stations should still be addable but routes would really help with organization. (I get tired of waiting for a train to return to the yard so I can change the wait time for a station)

Try Fat train controller mod.

(I mean, they give you hand, and you eat the whole developer, that's not nice )

[SpeedDaemon]

Regarding the "no items added/removed in last <user specifiable> seconds" condition.

I think this should be "less than <user specifiable> items added/removed in the last <user specifiable> seconds.

I think I would mostly use this sort of thing for picking up ore from mines or other production output, where you want to dump whatever amount is in the buffer into the train, but stuff would continue to trickle in once the buffer is empty.

Although I guess if we can use circuit conditions, we could just connect the buffer and do "wait until x in circuit network is less than Y"

[ratchetfreak]

Fuel count for one

or for a train going around resupplying outposts it can then decide to go back only if it is running low on a certain item

The train conditions are *wait* conditions. They determine when the train should leave the station. Not if the train should go to a station in the listing.

It would be nice if we could not go to a station depending on a condition (internal like fuel or possibly a circuit condition like not enough resources to bother to pick up)

[JC1223]

The new rail-building looks very awesome! I do have one question though... why do you pause the construction at some point in the center and not just drag the rail to connect to the endpoint right away?

Edit: Did I see correctly, that there's no more curved rails? The tooltip only showed the straight ones

Because the distance of one section is limited. And yes, curved rails as items are removed.

Related to this, does this mean all existing curved rails in worlds will be deleted or will worlds with them be unplayable after the update, or as a third possibility, will all current curved rails be changed to sets of just rails set up how they now are/will be to make the curves with the new changes to the rail system? Or do curved rails still exist, but not an inventory item for them, only as placed objects.

[kovarex]

The new rail-building looks very awesome! I do have one question though... why do you pause the construction at some point in the center and not just drag the rail to connect to the endpoint right away?

Edit: Did I see correctly, that there's no more curved rails? The tooltip only showed the straight ones

Because the distance of one section is limited. And yes, curved rails as items are removed.

Related to this, does this mean all existing curved rails in worlds will be deleted or will worlds with them be unplayable after the update, or as a third possibility, will all current curved rails be changed to sets of just rails set up how they now are/will be to make the curves with the new changes to the rail system? Or do curved rails still exist, but not an inventory item for them, only as placed objects.

Rails as entities on the map (both curved and straight) stays unchanged. Only curved Item (the thing in the inventory) is removed.

[bobingabout]

Suggestion.

If you're changing the UI and such, do you think it could be possible to make it so the game doesn't crash when you try to look at the fuel inventory when fuel inventory size is set to 0.