Friday Facts #403 - Train stops 2.0

[Otif]

Awesome updates as always!

One thing I haven't seen anyone talk about yet in the thread is the new rail planning from map. I noticed you can't see the ghost rails unless you have radar coverage. Personally alot of the times when I'm expanding rails are one of the first things to go in. The feature of being able to build in map view is incredibly useful for this however you would want to be able to see your first path like in the example video when putting down your second parallel rail. Most of the time late game I use artillery to "explore" / clear new ground. Having to run around and put down radar outposts to be able to lay rail from the map view kind of defeats the advantage in that particular case. Just a Qol request for the new Qol feature lol.

Truely an amazing game folks well done!!!

[yarolig]

When I played the Space Exploration mod I sometimes stuck on a small island without fuel (for jetpack, not for train).

This is what I used to get out:

• Just build some roboports on a landfill. And make a logistic request for fuel.
• Shot a capsule with a fuel using a delivery canon. Delivery chest not needed.
• Collect nearby trees or rocks (from another island using personal robots) and make some fuel in Fuel Processor. Luckily I have enough materials to make two Fuel Processors that time. The fuel ran out again while I was flying back

Stucking on islands was a little funny moments that I remember. I was not that annoying. Rather than puzzling.

[Kadet123]

Awesome updates as always!

One thing I haven't seen anyone talk about yet in the thread is the new rail planning from map. I noticed you can't see the ghost rails unless you have radar coverage. Personally alot of the times when I'm expanding rails are one of the first things to go in. The feature of being able to build in map view is incredibly useful for this however you would want to be able to see your first path like in the example video when putting down your second parallel rail. Most of the time late game I use artillery to "explore" / clear new ground. Having to run around and put down radar outposts to be able to lay rail from the map view kind of defeats the advantage in that particular case. Just a Qol request for the new Qol feature lol.

Truely an amazing game folks well done!!!

I believe in Space Exploration, once you launch a satellite, you can map view anywhere even without radar coverage. Whether that'll still be true in Space Age, I don't know.

[jgilmore42]

Awesome updates as always!

One thing I haven't seen anyone talk about yet in the thread is the new rail planning from map. I noticed you can't see the ghost rails unless you have radar coverage. Personally alot of the times when I'm expanding rails are one of the first things to go in. The feature of being able to build in map view is incredibly useful for this however you would want to be able to see your first path like in the example video when putting down your second parallel rail. Most of the time late game I use artillery to "explore" / clear new ground. Having to run around and put down radar outposts to be able to lay rail from the map view kind of defeats the advantage in that particular case. Just a Qol request for the new Qol feature lol.

Truely an amazing game folks well done!!!

I believe in Space Exploration, once you launch a satellite, you can map view anywhere even without radar coverage. Whether that'll still be true in Space Age, I don't know.

You can, but it's wierd. There's NOT radar coverage everywhere, instead there's radar coverage wherever you happen to be looking. So if you zoom in, you can see what's there, but the map doesn't fill in all unknown spaces on its own. Nor does it update the map about places that you aren't looking. Only when you zoom in the map view far enough to display graphics instead of map view does this come into play.

I personally don't use the rail planner over long distances though - that's what rail blueprints are for. The grid/tiling system that was added so they snap into the correct relative positions is a godsend. (And that way I get power, circuit network, and if desired logistic network connectivity as well.)

[mrvn]

What if you are stranded in a train above a lake, and the trains around you are out of fuel so you can't walk your train to solid ground without plowing through other trains. Are you stuck, or can you parkour from train to train?

They said you can do remote driving. I assume the "player pushes train" also works when you remote drive the train.

[TioQueToca74]

Is there something we have missed?

Another problem came up to my mind. I have a problem, where a train departs to a certain station, but in the middle of the trip it decides "I will go to a different one (with the same name)". It does this because the station, which it initially chooses, is very far and as it recalculates path in the middle of the trip (because of red signals), it chooses a station with the same name, which is closer, which wasn't available before.

It breaks my setups where I have N+M stations for pickup and dropoff and N+M-1 trains serving those stations (with train limit 1). If all stations N are full and a trains departs from any, there is a single M station which can be served, and it thus it gets served. And vice versa. However when train in the middle of the trip decides, that it will go to a different station, very far station may never get served, unless a train heading there doesn't recalculate path during its trip (meets green lights only).

Another minor issue with that is if train choses a station to serve, it uses its train limit, preventing other potential trains from selecting it. As it later abandons the station and frees up the train limit (as it chose a different one suddenly), the station's limit was blocked by a train which never arrives.

My suggestion is: when a trains chooses a particullar station, it should go there and not repath to a different station.

NOTE: if moderators/admins consider this to be a bug, I will hapilly move it to a bug report section, just let me know

IMHO both of your reports break proper performance, maybe a checkbox in the train, but it is not performant to allow trains to go farther, just ensure your number of provider trains is greater than the number of "consumer" stations, this would fix both problems.

If a train repaths to a a nearer station, it's because that station is free, if that station is free it's because you don't have enough trains going to that "named" station.

In some games before I understood that concept (from pros in multiplayer), I did some circuit magic to ensure a station was only served when it was about to get out of resources, this also fixes both of your problems, you define a threshold of expected resources to be in the chest and you define the number of trains based on that

[Theisen]

Is there something we have missed?

• Way to build rails without construction bots. On "Rail Worlds" The largest issue is build rails 800+ blocks quickly. An example of how to do this, is to allow spider-tron bots that can queue traveling to construction sights around lakes etc. Or variant of spinder-tron without weapon capabilities too be construction spider-trons.
• From the video the largest issue of placing from the map view is the slow down of pinpointing your rail connections. While this may be useful sometimes, what would be much more useful would be a toggle to automatically connect rail ends within a "few" blocks.
• An option to place 2-way rails. signals, power-poles, radars, but gated by technology so its not to Over Powered to fast like FARL.
• A way to place junctions smoothly like cutting uneven two ways rails, fixing signals to where the junction overrides the incoming paths.
• If you add a way to "snap" connect rails, as described above. You could place junctions first then connect rails after the fact. Making it really quick in placing rails for new ore mining bases.
• Another options would be able to switch and place multiple blueprints for rails before submitting to the construction queue. Ex. Place a rail in map view but it does not get send to do construction until you accept placement. Meaning you could put down entire paths, junctions, stations, before you start building your first rail. Essentially a pre-construction queue, before the current construction queue.
• The last thing if you snap rail placements to other rail placement ends ( As laid out above), being able to move a junction and all the paths going into that junction move too. I.E. I have a 2-way/ 2-way cross and have 8 paths connecting the junction. when you move the entire junction it moves all the paths going into that junction so it re-justifies the paths and replaces them so they matchup the new junction placement.

[mrvn]

Is there something we have missed?

Another problem came up to my mind. I have a problem, where a train departs to a certain station, but in the middle of the trip it decides "I will go to a different one (with the same name)". It does this because the station, which it initially chooses, is very far and as it recalculates path in the middle of the trip (because of red signals), it chooses a station with the same name, which is closer, which wasn't available before.

It breaks my setups where I have N+M stations for pickup and dropoff and N+M-1 trains serving those stations (with train limit 1). If all stations N are full and a trains departs from any, there is a single M station which can be served, and it thus it gets served. And vice versa. However when train in the middle of the trip decides, that it will go to a different station, very far station may never get served, unless a train heading there doesn't recalculate path during its trip (meets green lights only).

Another minor issue with that is if train choses a station to serve, it uses its train limit, preventing other potential trains from selecting it. As it later abandons the station and frees up the train limit (as it chose a different one suddenly), the station's limit was blocked by a train which never arrives.

My suggestion is: when a trains chooses a particullar station, it should go there and not repath to a different station.

NOTE: if moderators/admins consider this to be a bug, I will hapilly move it to a bug report section, just let me know

IMHO both of your reports break proper performance, maybe a checkbox in the train, but it is not performant to allow trains to go farther, just ensure your number of provider trains is greater than the number of "consumer" stations, this would fix both problems.

If a train repaths to a a nearer station, it's because that station is free, if that station is free it's because you don't have enough trains going to that "named" station.

In some games before I understood that concept (from pros in multiplayer), I did some circuit magic to ensure a station was only served when it was about to get out of resources, this also fixes both of your problems, you define a threshold of expected resources to be in the chest and you define the number of trains based on that

From what you describe your trains are either constantly serving the near station without any pause, in which case you really do need more trains.

Or your trains except one or two are stuck unloading with the buffer chests full. The one or two trains that are free load, path to the station far far away and before they arrive one of the near station finished unloading and steels the train. In that case the problem is that you are sending trains to stations that can't unload the train so they get stuck. If you add a decider combinator between the buffer chests and the train stop with "items < 1234: L=1" and program the train stop to set the train limit to L this will prevent trains from going to near station where the buffer chests are too full to unload without pause. (Note: 1234 should be adjusted to reflect the number of items left in the chest so that a train can unload.) By disabling the stations with enough items more trains will be ready to deliver goods and trains won't (usually) repath because all open stations will have trains assigned to them.

[jodokus31]

Wow, I'm very excited for the expansion!

[adam_bise]

I think my favorite thing in this FFF is remote driving. This will be such a time saver for me because I like railworld type maps with long rails and far away outposts.

[Annihilannic]

I'm so excited for all these changes that are coming... such quality and attention to detail.

I only wish all the other essential software in our lives received this level of care and attention to detail! Amazing job, folks...

[sizesnando]

Factorio QoL Changes

1) When a station is selected, option/shortcut to open the station panel/windows list with all station with the same name already filtered...

2) When a train is selected, option/shortcut to open the trains route panel/windows list with all trains with the same route already filtered...

3) Shortcut for station tab in train panel/windows list

4) on train station when hover mouse over icon/tags of itens/fluid in the name of station show whats the name of item is, same on a train on the train station list... there's too much itens in mod's almost identical to another...

5) shortcut to make all 10 Active hot bar open besides click on number, option to make that panel stay open until manual close (to rearrange itens...)

[Gerard]

Cool, but...
I just have a question about "Manual locomotive push" section. What if I'm not on the locomotive and the fuel runs out by the water?
How can such a train be restored to traffic remotely? Obviously, half-measures are out of the question, such as connecting another towing locomotive.

[FuryoftheStars]

Cool, but...
I just have a question about "Manual locomotive push" section. What if I'm not on the locomotive and the fuel runs out by the water?
How can such a train be restored to traffic remotely? Obviously, half-measures are out of the question, such as connecting another towing locomotive.

I mean, if you're not on the train, then it's no different than any other situation where it runs out of fuel. How would you handle that?

[mmmPI]

My guess is that in 2.0 every train has a pair of little robotic legs that can be used to remotely manually push trains. Because if one train run out of fuel in an elevated piece of track located above water, unlike for vanilla factorio, it will not be possible to walk to it and refuel it manually. That was the walk of shame somehow x). From what i understood this won't be the case in 2.0 as even train without fuel could be slowly pushed back remotely. How ? i can only see the litte legs under the train as a logical explanation.

[FuryoftheStars]

My guess is that in 2.0 every train has a pair of little robotic legs that can be used to remotely manually push trains. Because if one train run out of fuel in an elevated piece of track located above water, unlike for vanilla factorio, it will not be possible to walk to it and refuel it manually. That was the walk of shame somehow x). From what i understood this won't be the case in 2.0 as even train without fuel could be slowly pushed back remotely. How ? i can only see the litte legs under the train as a logical explanation.

It's possible, but it's unclear to me. The pushing made it seem like the player's character had to actually be in it. But we'll see!

Regardless, the person I was replying to wants to restore it to service remotely, so the idea of walking to and manually refilling would be out anyway.

[mmmPI]

My thought on the feature was that if i was on a planet, and i realized one of the train in another planet has no fuel because i forgot to automate it and it had run out of the few coal stack i gave it initially to get it moving out of the way when building, i'd be able to remote drive it to a nearby station, very slowly. Or at least in a place where it wouldn't block the main lane or be in range of logistic.

I would not want to walk there to restore the train to service, i think that's what Gerard was refering to too. "remote manual driving"

It's possible, but it's unclear to me. The pushing made it seem like the player's character had to actually be in it. But we'll see!

If that was the case ,it would be very annoying to restore to service a train that run out fuel on a bridge over water , as it would require going there somehow anyway, and coupling trains to tow it, or give it fuel while being a train which may be impossible if you approching from the back a train that has wagon on its tail.

Regardless, the person I was replying to wants to restore it to service remotely, so the idea of walking to and manually refilling would be out anyway.

Hence the little robotic legs, invisible under the trains, to do some remote manual pushing ! I was not meaning walking to the trains at all, i think if you can "unstuck" a lone trains on its bridge over water, in some way you don't need more to also guarantee it can be refueled, just "unstuck" it a little further away

[FuryoftheStars]

as it would require going there somehow anyway, and coupling trains to tow it

This could be done with the new remote driving feature. Which is why this from Gerard...

How can such a train be restored to traffic remotely? Obviously, half-measures are out of the question, such as connecting another towing locomotive.

...is a bit perplexing to me. With the new remote features, we can either (possibly, if you are correct) remotely "push" the train to a refueling stop, or remotely drive a train over to connect and tow (which may actually be faster).

My thought on the feature was that if i was on a planet, and i realized one of the train in another planet has no fuel because i forgot to automate it and it had run out of the few coal stack i gave it initially to get it moving out of the way when building, i'd be able to remote drive it to a nearby station, very slowly. Or at least in a place where it wouldn't block the main lane or be in range of logistic.

Their wording on the feature, though, was only in reference to when you are on the train and it runs out, or you hopping into a wagon and pushing it. They never explicitly said "it can only be done when you are physically in the train/wagon", but neither did they give actual remote examples there. Unless a dev wants to clarify that, though, we'll just have to wait and see.

[mmmPI]

With the new remote features, we can either (possibly, if you are correct) remotely "push" the train to a refueling stop, or remotely drive a train over to connect and tow (which may actually be faster).

I had not thought of this, because i am so convinced it will be possible to remotely push the train to a refueling stop, that i only quickly thought the alternative would be for the character to move to the other planet to drive a train and tow the stuck one. Remotely driving another train to unstuck the first one is way better but still risk causing problem if you have only 1 train on that remote planet. Curious to see ! There may be ways to use spidertrons too

[Impatient]

I have a stupid request:

Can you add water reflections? For buildings on water and close to the water?

Maybe with an option to disable them to reduce gpu/cpu strain.

Now, as bridges will be added to the game, this picture looks so weird:




Or maybe something other to give the feeling of water depth? Maybe a sprite, that shows a blury continuation of the bridge pillar under water?