Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Allow a player to select a rail tile as a starting point, and another rail tile as an ending point to view the path.
If the path is not possible, show where the path got to before it was considered "impossible" (via the shortest distance)

What ?

Some people have extremely large rail networks, and very complicated signal setup in some instances (like me!)
I have before spent countless hours making a rail network, stackers etc to find a train that is No Pathing because I forgot a single chain signal on a piece of rail 100 tiles away from the station itself.
Being able to select a starting rail segment, and an ending one and view the direction that a train would take i feel would be useful - it would also take into account the penalty of stations along the route.

However, a big step forward would be to be able to see where a path got to before the pathing engine decided it was impossible to reach it's destination.

Why ?

The amount of time spent by factorio players attempting to figure out why a train is No Pathing could be avoided by having this kind of system in place.
This could also really help new factorio players getting into the world of locomotives.

I haven't had this problem since two years or so and that was, because the trains where much more complex than now, not much possibilities to debug them compared to now...
I recommend you to build the train network less complex instead.

Okay, instead then at least allow the trains path that is shown when you mouse-over a train to be always visible via a button or some sort.