Very roughly... Nerve signals are relayed via incoming (afferent) and outgoing (efferent) neurons. These do not intersect. Their respective signals are transmitted (across synapses) to each other via electrical impulses. This is part of the design for a system that is at once automated (parasympathetic) and responsive to it's environment (sympathetic), while dealing with enormous data.
Sounds good right?
For Factorio - trains become afferent/efferent nerves, and logistic systems are the signals across them. Trains thus do not intersect as you see in my first attempt at the concept below.
- AfEf 1.jpg (78.91 KiB) Viewed 1281 times
Afferent and efferent, incoming and outgoing. The above example is a circuit factory. There's two trains in and one out, although (100M) copper is onsite for now so, eventually there will be three trains in, one out.
Externally (away from the factory central) the handling of multiple outposts can be done in a manner inspired by another biological phenomenon - fungal hyphae.
Hyphae extend and detect resources, and then proliferate in the area till that specific resource is gone, then they're gone from the area, and another species moves in - for another resource e.g. brown rot fungi take the cellulose then white rot fungi move in for the lignin.
The trains likewise do their thing separately. While these networks will branch out - mine copper on one side of the base and iron on the other e.g west copper vs east iron vs north uranium vs south coal.... then a messy entanglement of trains does not occur. Deplete one specific resource then move in for the next after the previous has gone. Or, to use another biological term, it is ' functionally extinct'.
- AfEf 2.jpg (399.05 KiB) Viewed 1281 times
The trains do one thing - get on with their job. There is no more waiting for other trains doing things that don't concern them. Every science pack assembler runs without skipping a beat. They are not waiting either. It's small scale but (so far) proof of concept.