Friday Facts #403 - Train stops 2.0

[FuryoftheStars]

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?

Interestingly, if you look at this pic when they first announced the bridges (FFF-378), there already is:


Perhaps its a graphics setting they disable sometimes when play testing other things? They even mention it in the caption:

There is a very special patch that draws under terrain which is visible only in places where the ramps or supports touch water.

[mrvn]

Since there is wind and clouds there should also be waves lapping at the support pillars.

Now you GPU wizards, get to doing some magic.

PS: shadows should be distorted by waves too.

[LeXoR]

hi,

i am still missing the opportunity to split the output from a train station evenly to all trains that want to go to that station.
for example: i've one pickup station for iron ore but if i have two trains that will pick up that ore and the production of the ore is too slow to fully support both tains only one train will get ore.
it would be nice if there was like a queue for Trains that want want to go to a station. so if 2 trains want to go to a station and that station have a limit the secon train (furthest away) will never go to the station, becaus the soler tain will always be prioritised.
the limit is set via a circuit to x = [amount of ore] / [cargo space in a train] an both trains sitting in the drop off stations waiting to go to the pickup, but if the amount of ore is enough so that the limit becomes 1 always the closest train starts moving.

my thoughts are: if a train has the pickup station in its schedule it will enter the queue for that station and if the station is ready the next train from the queue will get to go.

or is there a good way to solve that kind of problem?

Greetings

[FuryoftheStars]

or is there a good way to solve that kind of problem?

Seems you know production is slow, and in this case you only have the 2 trains, it'd probably be best to just set the limit static 1 vs circuit controlled. In this way, when train 1 fills up and leaves, train 2 (provided it's empty and ready) will immediately dispatch.

Obviously this won't work for all cases, though there may be tweaks and modifications here and there that could be made to handle some of them.

[LeXoR]

Obviously this won't work for all cases, though there may be tweaks and modifications here and there that could be made to handle some of them.

Yeah that would work too - i solved it with signals that were sent to the train inside the drop off stations. where ever less iron ore is the trains leaves first.

but i kinda like the idea of train station queue.

[Tertius]

i am still missing the opportunity to split the output from a train station evenly to all trains that want to go to that station.
for example: i've one pickup station for iron ore but if i have two trains that will pick up that ore and the production of the ore is too slow to fully support both tains only one train will get ore.

It has been said often, and multiple times even by some dev (boskid was the last one as far as I remember) that the regular solution is to provide enough items in the first place. So the solution for the problem you mentioned is: "increase ore output", which means: "build more mining outposts".

To create some round robin method to evenly supply every station needs some memory to remember what station were visited before and what stations are still to visit. You have to deal with a multitude of edge cases, for example if stations are being added or removed, or if stations are consuming their items faster than others. That seems a too complex task to implement. The current extremely simple, extremely bug free and extremely edge case free algorithm ("go to the nearest station that has an available slot") is also working extremely reliable and extremely predictable, as long as you provide as many trains as there are slots in the consumer stations, or more trains. You're never building too many mining outposts, because the factory grows and mining outposts will run empty in the long run.

[LeXoR]

It has been said often, and multiple times even by some dev (boskid was the last one as far as I remember) that the regular solution is to provide enough items in the first place. So the solution for the problem you mentioned is: "increase ore output", which means: "build more mining outposts".

sure - but its not always possible

[Qon]

sure - but its not always possible

Doesn't matter, do it anyways. If it isn't possible, make it possible. Just manually turn off stops if you need to temporarily divert all your resources to some specific goal if you can't supply all at once and the wrong stop end up soaking up all the resources.

What you are trying to achieve is not worth pursuing. You are trying to hide your problems, but that isn't actually going to help you. Give up on that now.

[mrvn]

hi,

i am still missing the opportunity to split the output from a train station evenly to all trains that want to go to that station.
for example: i've one pickup station for iron ore but if i have two trains that will pick up that ore and the production of the ore is too slow to fully support both tains only one train will get ore.
it would be nice if there was like a queue for Trains that want want to go to a station. so if 2 trains want to go to a station and that station have a limit the secon train (furthest away) will never go to the station, becaus the soler tain will always be prioritised.
the limit is set via a circuit to x = [amount of ore] / [cargo space in a train] an both trains sitting in the drop off stations waiting to go to the pickup, but if the amount of ore is enough so that the limit becomes 1 always the closest train starts moving.

my thoughts are: if a train has the pickup station in its schedule it will enter the queue for that station and if the station is ready the next train from the queue will get to go.

or is there a good way to solve that kind of problem?

Greetings

Nothing you can do with trains that haven't arrived yet. But if the train is waiting for the first train to clear the station then you can use the signals to count how many trains are waiting. Then calculate how much each train should recieve: (train content + chest content) / num trains. When the current train has more than that loaded send a "green" signal to the train stop and add a condition to the trains schedule to leave on green.

Note: You can also start a timer when a train enters the station and kick it out after e.g. 2 minutes regardless how full it is. That way when you produce too slowly to fill each train they each get 2 minutes of production output.

For me I don't quite see a problem. If the first train takes all or too much ore the next train will stay at the station till full. Both trains get a full load. It just takes time if you produce too slowly.

Bigger problem is unloading or where the trains go. If a train can go to N stations with the same name to unload and you produce too slowly then it will only go to the nearest stations leaving the further away stations dry. So your iron smelters get all the iron ore while the steel smelter stand still. Only when iron plates back up all through the system does a little bit of steel get produced.

Not much you can do there with the game mechanics to distribute items fairly. What you can do is make 2 or more stations for loading, one per use case and distribute the items with a splitter or circuit logic. Then each use case gets a different station name and separate trains and you can choose how much each use gets.


Overall the best solution is: produce faster.

[Impatient]

Yes, you are right. I didnt even notice back then.

[persy]

What do you think? Is there something we have missed?

Hello, this is my first post because I have an idea

For some reasons, I need trains to be able to send data to the train station. In my case, I need to know how much space is available in cargo wagons to balance the chests perfectly.
I know that you can already block stacking for specific items but my system needs to know, in advance, the exact number to be loaded.

My suggestion: add a value to be sent to the station in the train GUI (per station). This value would be sent at the same time as 'Read train content'.
In any case, trains can already receive and use data from stations, so why not the other way round?

[macdjord]

We're getting a way to bulk-rename train stations. Will we also be able to bulk-change their colours?

[guy smiley]

Can we also just get an option to set what the default is, for train limit on a newly placed station, and the default enabled state (enabled/disabled)? I've wanted it to be default enabled, and set to 1, for forever. Every single station I've had to make since the train limit setting was introduced, had an added step of "go into UI, click 'train limit' checkbox, click number field, type 1, click away". Every single one.

Sure, I then copied them afterward, if I needed duplicates, but that was and still will be a painful chore. Having a new mandated copy of settings from another station if it happens to have the same name, does not strike me as the most simple and elegant solution for that problem.

Please just let us set the default behaviours of things like that. Options, please.