Factorio Forums

TL;DR

When putting the "anything" signal in a train stop name in a schedule / interrupt, it should act as a wildcard signal and choose any stop with "any icon at all" in that corresponding location of the stop name.

What?

You can currently add the "anything" wildcard signal to a train stop name when making an interrupt, as shown below.
However, when you do this, it acts as a normal icon. I propose that when this is done, it will act as an actual wildcard signal and choose all train stations with "anything" in the corresponding location in the stop name.

This could have essentially the same functionality as when two train stations have the same name, except it would apply to all train stations who pass the wildcard condition.

Why?

This would allow for one iron train to service ANY train stop with "Iron" in its name, instead of the current implementation in which you can only service iron stations with identical names.

This would allow for multi-item requester stations. For example, if I had a "iron+copper requester" and a "iron+steel requester", I could set my interrupt to target "iron+anything requester" and it would service BOTH stations.

This would give extreme flexibility in how you can define target train stations, and would function identically to how the current "any signal" wildcard works. However, this would add new functionality that you cannot replicate with the current system.

This is already something we are allowed to do (place "anything" in a train stop name), it just does not function as an actual wildcard. I think the propsed change would be more intuitive than the current version of having the "everything" signal be selectable, but not function.