Factorio Forums

(Not yet) FULLY AUTOMATED RAIL LAYER


(Logo inspired by dee-)

Latest version: FARL 0.2.8 (requires Factorio 0.11.11+)
Older versions
Credits: Kolli (Automatic Rail Laying Machine), rk84 (railnetwork, Test mode)

Current features:

• Places rails while driving
• Removes trees and stone rocks that are in the way (and adds 1 raw wood per tree to cargo)
• Places big/medium electric poles and lamps, connects poles with red/green wires
• Places rail signals
• Cruise control: keeps the speed at ~87km/h (full speed when not placing rails) without pressing W, deactivate by pressing S
• Support for powered rails (5dim's mod), look here how to enable it
• Support for Landfill mod

Usage:
Place the FARL on the tracks, connect cargo wagons, fill them with rails (and big electric poles/signals if you want them placed too), get in the locomotive. When it's on a piece of straight tracks, press Start, drive it manually like you would a normal train. Unlike the Automated Rail Laying Machine the placement is controlled by pressing A/D while driving, not the cursor
Recipe gets unlocked with rail signals

Configuration:

Basic:
By default FARL uses big/medium electric poles, placed 1 tile to the right of the tracks. To change the side use the checkbox in the gui.

Advanced:
Create 2 blueprints with your desired layout, place them in your hotbar and click Read blueprints. Done!
Make sure you only have 2 blueprints in your hotbar and that they use the same poles (do not create one blueprint with big poles and the other with medium poles)

Explanation of minimal pole placement

Console commands:
/c remote.call("farl", "setCurvedWeight", X) --replace X with a number, weight for curved rails

Console command that should help when the gui isn't showing when you're in the train or recipe doesn't get unlocked:
/c remote.call("farl", "reset")

Todo:

• Pathfinding and automated driving to location ("nearly" done)
• improve performance

Random ideas:(mainly for my own reference, so i don't forget them)
use up pickaxe/ammo when removing trees/stone rocks,
record placed tracks, then place them in reverse order for 1 way system
deconstruct mode: remove rails in front when reversing
reduce speed? Placing rails at over 200km/h is insane
Snake??

Will this work in multiplayer

Not sure, but considering that he built this because the old way wasn't... most likely?

Zetsubo wrote:Will this work in multiplayer

Have not tried it yet, but will some time soon.
Replays work for SP games, that's a good sign i guess.

LordFedora wrote:most likely?

add a few question marks, like 100. I'm afraid of trying to create a mp game

This is absolutely great, thanks a lot! I loved the original track laying mod, but it was very hard to control the direction with the mouse, so what you did is exactly what is needed I think. Being able to turn it on/off is another thing which is extremely useful. Sometimes when I want to activate it with the start button I'm getting this error message:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lk2197u3zn1q4 ... 9.png?dl=0

I will try it more later. Thanks again!

imajor wrote:This is absolutely great, thanks a lot! I loved the original track laying mod, but it was very hard to control the direction with the mouse, so what you did is exactly what is needed I think. Being able to turn it on/off is another thing which is extremely useful.

Well, the main reason for not controlling it with the mouse is that the method used will cause desyncs in MP. But yes, the mouse steering was tricky at high speeds but really cool

The error is because you click start when the locomotive is on a curved rail. I'll fix it for the next version. For now just don't click Start when on a curve, doesn't activate anyways when on one.

Anything special we need to do if we were using the other mod and now want to use this one instead in a save?

katyal wrote:Anything special we need to do if we were using the other mod and now want to use this one instead in a save?

Uhm, no. You can deactivate the old one. I'm using a new item/entity, so you'll only have to craft it. My locomotive is only a recolored diesel locomotive, not as fancy as the other, i'm not able to do this

I think you should wait until Choumiko fixes the error message, because when that happens, the game quits, and you loose the progress (if any)

Please comfortible mod Silica https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=7387

organic matter not automatic layer

thanks

and idea!

automatic lamp (standar game and youki big lamp)

Airat9000 wrote:Please comfortible mod Silica https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=7387
organic matter not automatic layer

I'll see what i can do. I guess a train that removes trees and stones shouldn't be stopped by items on the ground. Question is: destroy them or put them in cargo? Right now I'm for destroying
I like the idea with the lamp.

New version: FARL 0.1.1

Changes: a few bug fixes, reduced max speed to ~ 173km/h

I noticed it really starts lagging when you go diagonal and are not placing signals. Seems strange as the mod should be doing less not more.. I suspect it's because factorio recalculates blocks/segments everytime a rail is placed.

Choumiko wrote:

Airat9000 wrote:Please comfortible mod Silica https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=7387
organic matter not automatic layer

I'll see what i can do. I guess a train that removes trees and stones shouldn't be stopped by items on the ground. Question is: destroy them or put them in cargo? Right now I'm for destroying
I like the idea with the lamp.

New version: FARL 0.1.1

Changes: a few bug fixes, reduced max speed to ~ 173km/h

I noticed it really starts lagging when you go diagonal and are not placing signals. Seems strange as the mod should be doing less not more.. I suspect it's because factorio recalculates blocks/segments everytime a rail is placed.

yes it is possible other resources, other than not recycled, which lie on the ground otherwise it is very sad ..

bug!!!

s and d simultaneously press!

earlier letter s helped immediately put

Airat9000 wrote: bug!!!

s and d simultaneously press!

earlier letter s helped immediately put

Not sure what you mean, a screenshot would be nice if you can reproduce it in the new version

New version: FARL 0.1.2
Changes:

• pick up items on ground before placing rail
  improved pole placement
  place lamps at poles
  don't try placing rails when train is reversing
  cruise control added, keeps speed at 0.4 (~87km/h)
  fixed that signals were only placed when pole placement was active
  fixed invalid train when (de)coupling with V/G

Pee Tee Double You.

n9103 wrote:Pee Tee Double You.

PTW? I'm usually good with acronyms, but this one i don't get

Post To Watch. Generally done by those that are interested in finding/getting updates on a thread easier, but when they don't have anything else in particular to say.

n9103 wrote:Post To Watch. Generally done by those that are interested in finding/getting updates on a thread easier, but when they don't have anything else in particular to say.

Ok, makes sense i guess

I did a quick test regarding multiplayer (with 2 instances on one pc): When using only 1 FARL it went ok, when both players used one all seemed to go well until the first desync, from then on it kept desyncing.

Friday Facts #70 - The smooth fps wrote:Deterministic scripting
Kuba solved the problem, that mods that used scripts in a certain way (iterating over the values of a hash table), had non deterministic order. The result of this was desync related to various mods doing this quite common thing. The fix involved changing some very deep internals of the lua (the scripting language used in factorio) implementation, so let's hope we didn't break anything.

This could be the solution, so i'll wait trying to fix MP until this gets released.

New version: FARL 0.1.3
Changes:

• deactivate cruisecontrol by pressing S
  cruisecontrol runs at full speed when not laying rails

I got a little bit obsessed with the cruisecontrol It now behaves more or less like the one in my car: accelerating doesn't pause it, it justs idles until W/gas peadal is released. If there's demand for it i could make a seperate mod to add it to all locomotives.

One idea i had is: Right now, when you deactivate the FARL, it just stops placing tracks, hits the end and stops instantly. How about having it decelerating below a certain speed before it stops placing tracks? Or how about matching the speed to something like the real thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBQDf-3XBNo

This looks awesome! I will definitely be using it in my current play through.

2 questions though, both are probably dumb but oh well haha
1. For the auto placing of signals, how does it know when/where to place them so that they are actually useful?
2. In the GUI, what does the setting for "weight of curved rail" do?

Thanks, and sorry if they are silly questions haha