Allow rail signals closer together

[sparr]

I can't place a block signal diagonally adjacent to a chain signal in this configuration.

I'd really like to be able to.

[steinio]

Seems your are not on the rail otherwise a green square would be shown on it.

Greetings steinio

[sparr]

Your placement is one tile further away than mine. Yours works for me, too.

[steinio]

Your position is not on tile.
If you look closely you see the borders as blurred texture.

The signal can only placed in the middle of a 45 degree tile. Sorry.

What do you want to do with this signals so close together?

[sparr]

My position is fine, if the other signal isn't adjacent. Signals cannot be adjacent to each other, orthogonally or diagonally.

I want to put them closer together so my junctions and stations can be smaller.

[ssilk]

See FFF 134
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-134

Not what you want, just for information.

[sparr]

Thanks. I had seen that. In the context of that post:



Notice that each placed signal has a dead spot next to it, a missing green square in the next adjacent tile. The first green squares are two tiles away.

[bobingabout]

Why would you want to place a signal that close to another signal anyway? I'm not saying you shouldn't want to, I'm just curious as to your reason.

[sparr]

It allows making some arrangements of rail blocks smaller. Sometimes that one saved tile means saving 2-6 tiles somewhere else.

[ssilk]

Hm. You know, I played now half a year with a map with (currently) 300 trains. And I had several problems with building that. I agree, sometimes it would be useful to push out the last quant of space for the rails. I wished that a lot and was near to make a similar suggestion.

But currently I'm not so sure anymore about that. My current opinion is this: Where is the limit of this signal distance?

I mean: You cannot see the difference with the eye, you don't see, if a train matches into an area, if we have this little extra space. I'm not kidding: I took a lineal and hold it on the screen to compare the sizes of the spaces!

So can say: It's very difficult with the current space to see a difference and it's impossible to see it with smaller. With this in mind we can say: The game becomes then just a "let's try to optimize that signal now, wait until a train comes, hm, not enough, let's try a bit different, even not matching".

That is not a good game, it's a "search and see"-game.

A good game is, when the game animates you to see the basic problem of such a train-situation, let you plan things in your head and then brings you to the point (motivates you), to implement the plans. In the case of Factorio it means: Use the deconstruction planer to mine the whole area, which makes problems and then rebuild it in a way, that is much better than before. Without "search and see", just because of such a much better construction. And you did it you can explain why this is so much better than before.

You cannot do that with this suggestion.

I really like that feeling much better, than this "ah, now here I can place another signal, let's try that, perhaps it works".

Another argument is: the train/wagon sizes will change with 0.13, so let's wait and see.

[sparr]

I place the signals, then I place a locomotive/cargowagon to test it. There's no waiting involved, and very little guessing.

[ssilk]

So I would call that kind of placing "trying out", which you need, cause you cannot be sure for the length. Sombody call it testing. But indeed this is guessing with a test. No good gameplay.

BTW: What do players do, which have trains with 2 locos and 6 wagons? Placing 8 objects to see, if the signal matches, naaa.

So, logically, what's indeed needed is, when I hover an existing signal, that I see the positions of the loco/wagon.

[sparr]

You only have to "try it out" once for a given layout. I already know exactly how many rail tiles a stop needs to be for a 1+1 or 1+2 or 1+3+1 train, because I tried each of them out once. Ditto for trying them out on a curve.

[sparr]

Bumping this suggestion with another use case.



If you try to paste two copies of this junction next to each other, one rotated 90 degrees, then you will lose one of the edge signals. Despite them not overlapping, and not even being attached to the same piece of rail, they fall into the adjacency exclusion zone of another existing signal.

[ickputzdirwech]

A signal that you don't need in my opinion (but please correct me if I am wrong)

[ickputzdirwech]

I agree with you that the signals sometimes work a bit odd. One problem is that signals can be placed each block (what is really useful and shouldn't be changed!), but trains can only stop every second tile, at the end of every rail.

As you can see in the picture the blue and the green train both stop at the same tile, even though the signals are placed one tile apart. The red train is accordingly two tiles ahead.
It therefor makes no difference if you place a signal at the end of a rail or at the beginning of the next one, but a huge where you place it on one rail.

The problem with this is, that in this case the green train doesn't fit in the railblock, even though the distances between the signals are exactly the same. To solve this, trains should be able to stop halfway on a rail as well.

[dood]

This can easily be solved by not building the most complicated intersection ever and by not plastering straight rail full of signals.

[sparr]

Sometimes I want adjacent signals on relatively simple layouts. It's not all about complexity, although it helps in more complex setups.

[ickputzdirwech]

This can easily be solved by not building the most complicated intersection ever and by not plastering straight rail full of signals.

No, that isn't an option! This is factorio we are talking about!
Everything that can be done to increase throughput should be done

[sparr]

General non-complex use case:

I want to use rail blueprints. Currently, if I put signals at the edge of a rail blueprint, then later when I try to use two blueprints next to each other they might conflict because of adjacent signals.