Half automatic / half manual train driving

[mrvn]

When I need to go somewhere far away it makes sense to take a train. But often I don't want to go to a station, can't remember the name of the station nearest to my goal or there are multiple stations with the same name. So I switch to manual mode. And that's when the trouble starts. It's easy to cause a collision because manual mode ignores signals completely. So here is my idea:

Manual mode that honors signals. You would drive around deciding on weather to go left or right or straight and so on. But the train would keep to a speed that allows it to stop at the next yellow/red signal. If left/right is pressed it should consider all the paths after the next left/right turn, otherwise all the path from the current position.

Obviously this mode would generally be slower because not knowing the destination the train has to consider many paths and easily finds a yellow/red signal it hasto slow down for. But better safe than sorry.

Note: If the train is stopped at a signal then releasing and pressing forward again could override the signal. This would for example allow carefully entering a long block where a train has run out of fuel.


On second thought it would also be nice to pick a destination (not necessarily a station) from the map and have the train go there.

[Tekky]

I agree with your suggestion of a "safe" manual mode for driving trains. Actually, I once had the same idea myself, after being involved in several accidents. Although I was driving very carefully and only went past signals that seemed to be green, I still sometimes caused collisions, probably because the green signal switched to red shortly before driving past it.

However, I disagree with you that it should be possible to override stop signals by simply releasing and pressing forward again. It should be necessary to switch the train to full manual mode to drive over a red signal.

[ssilk]

With 0.15 you can choose the train stop from map.

[BenSeidel]

+1
But not for the "anti-crash" reasons, but for the rail system debugging!
There have been soooo many times where a train "no-paths" and I have travel the entire length of the path that I think it should take only to miss the one signal that is missing, having to retrace my steps a second time. If there was a "manual+" mode that acted as the OP stated then you could just drive the train "manually" through the path you believe the train should take to get to its destination where it would stop and not letting you go any further when you reach the block that is incorrectly signaled.

2 birds with one stone here!
it would make rails soooo much easier to debug!

[ssilk]

I used that method also a lot.

It's not a good way to debug that like so. The better way would be to see the missing link if you enter the map and set some source (the next train you are standing by default) and then drag the mouse to the wanted destination anywhere on map and you see the highlighted path the train would use in that moment to this piece of track/train stop.

[BenSeidel]

I used that method also a lot.

It's not a good way to debug that like so. The better way would be to see the missing link if you enter the map and set some source (the next train you are standing by default) and then drag the mouse to the wanted destination anywhere on map and you see the highlighted path the train would use in that moment to this piece of track/train stop.

Sure, but you would still have to travel to that location to fix the issue, if you could debug while driving in a "obey the traffic laws" way, then you would arrive at the place of the issue ready to fix it. Additionally, that is only the case when there is only the one issue. If there are two or more then you would continually have to go back to the train (via menu or similar) to see if it is still no-pathing. Driving it you can just put it onto full auto and away you go (either automatically or debugging the next section).

Don't get me wrong, a map based system would be great.

[Hannu]

There is a huge problem. Game can not allocate blocks and time brakings if it does not know where player is going. Simplest example is a two signals after a normal switch. One is green and another is red. If controller play safe and brake for the worst situation it almost stops at nearly every switch without reason and it is too annoying. If it takes a risk, it crashes far too often.

I suggest that there will be an option to click any track on map to one time destination. Then it would be possible to drive anywhere under full automation. Possibility to select the train stop is quite good, but when I build new rail I often forget to put a train stop at the end of the rail before I leave to get more stuff.

[Tekky]

There is a huge problem. Game can not allocate blocks and time brakings if it does not know where player is going. Simplest example is a two signals after a normal switch. One is green and another is red. If controller play safe and brake for the worst situation it almost stops at nearly every switch without reason and it is too annoying. If it takes a risk, it crashes far too often.

That's a very good point. Therefore, the only way to implement the suggestion of the original poster would be to force the player to start pressing the turn button sufficiently in advance. If not, the game would have to assume that the player intends not to turn. However, that would make the controls quite complicated and unintuitive. Therefore, I doubt that the suggestion of the original poster would be feasible.

I suggest that there will be an option to click any track on map to one time destination. Then it would be possible to drive anywhere under full automation. Possibility to select the train stop is quite good, but when I build new rail I often forget to put a train stop at the end of the rail before I leave to get more stuff.

Yes, this suggestion of yours, which was also made by the original poster as an alternative suggestion, sounds more feasible to me than the primary suggestion of the original poster. As far as I know, the possibility to click a station on the map has been added to Factorio 0.15. However, your suggestion goes further by suggesting that it should be possible to select track without a station as a destination. I guess that would also be feasible, but may require the user to zoom in quite far, if there are several parallel tracks running closely next to each other.

[mrvn]

There is a huge problem. Game can not allocate blocks and time brakings if it does not know where player is going. Simplest example is a two signals after a normal switch. One is green and another is red. If controller play safe and brake for the worst situation it almost stops at nearly every switch without reason and it is too annoying. If it takes a risk, it crashes far too often.

That's a very good point. Therefore, the only way to implement the suggestion of the original poster would be to force the player to start pressing the turn button sufficiently in advance. If not, the game would have to assume that the player intends not to turn. However, that would make the controls quite complicated and unintuitive. Therefore, I doubt that the suggestion of the original poster would be feasible.

As stated in my suggestion the manual train would have to reserve all blocks it can enter and that would be the major slowdown. You wouldn't be able to get up to full speed in signal dense regions because there would be too many blocks it could reach at full speed and at least one would be yellow/red already basically all the time.

But the slower the train goes the less blocks it would have to reserve. This might even be a good thing. When the train approaches a region with many forks it would slow down and picking left, right or straight at each fork would be easier. I can't count the number of times I've barreled through a fork and missed the next one because it came too fast.

The same problem is also why I think it should be easy to "ignore" signals, e.g. by pressing the forward twice when stopped at a signal. Maybe this could be limited to chained signals. Or it's release+press for blue chained signals and release+press+release+press for everything else. In cases with multiple forks in a signal chain it can be perfectly safe to drive through a certain way but since the path finding does not now which fork you intent to use it can't see that.

[dewiniaid]

Idea: A "navigate to" feature that lets you select any place a signal could potentially be (pretending that trees and other obstructions aren't there) and tells the train you're in to drive to that location and stop. The signal selection bit means it can automatically handle details like which direction of the tracks your train should be on when it arrives. From the train's perspective, it's just routing to a temporary invisible station.

[Engimage]

All this is just too complex to make its way into the game.
In 0.15 we get a feature that you can make a one-time order to the train to go to a station (w/o messing up with schedule). You will never need any more if you plan your actions ahead.
Manual driving makes sense when you need to fix failures in automatic transportation or when you build new rails. Trying to integrate some smart neural network predicting player movement is just bad.
The one and only option would be giving the ability to automaticly go to a random rail piece (not a station) and even this would bear many complications.

[impetus maximus]

i setup a 'passenger' train, and stops for outposts, or near clusters of other stations.
no need to worry about blocking, or more importantly crashing other trains.
then i can sit back and sip my coffee while in transit.

[redlabel]

I would definitely like a "manned automatic" mode where if a person is inside the train, the auto mode is smarter.

Meaning: If I'm on a train and the rails are physically connected it will go to the station I point it to.. No Path errors are so annoying when it is just because of a silly light somewhere. If I can manually drive there so should the autopilot. (Just that I don't like to break my finger and roundabouts are a total nightmare to drive around manually..

[SupplyDepoo]

With 0.15 you can choose the train stop from map.

When was this confirmed? It was listed as a potential feature under consideration.

Other improvements

There are other things we are considering. Just to be sure, this doesn't mean a promise or a plan, just an idea, that might or might be not implemented:

• Integrate the interaction into the train stop selection when adding new items to the train schedule
• Integrate the interaction into the train to allow semi-automatic one-time train order that wouldn't be limited to train stations.

[MKNZ]

Other than debugging the trains, this idea is useless. Selecting train stops from the map aside, their names are still visible from the map in 0.14. So you have one extra step of looking at the map, and this extra step is apparently being removed in .15.

[mrvn]

Except I often want to drive where no station is. E.g. where the alien happen to attack. So picking a station is not ideal.