A Train Benchmarker

[zebediah49]

This is a creation is more of meta-utility than in-game usefulness, but I thought it might be of interest to the people here. There has been a fair amount of examination of train speed maximums under various conditions, but as far as I know people have not particularly investigated train acceleration. This came up in a train performance thread, and I decided to fix it. Thus, I present the multi-purpose train benchmark

Overview of the train benchmarking system

OverviewTrainCounter.jpg (340.83 KiB) Viewed 15072 times

The only mod-content used is nixie-tubes, for a convenient display. Any other method could be used instead. The big display counts off a lap counter, which I have primarily used for fuel-economy tests. The small counters are lap counters.

Theory of operation

Annotated detail of the train benchmarking circuitry

AnnotatedTrainCounter.jpg (268.9 KiB) Viewed 15072 times

There are a few moving parts to this, although the overall concept is pretty simple. The track is a 100-tile (50-rail-piece) loop with a counter and timers.

A) is the reset mechanism. The original form was awkward manual-reset by the rightmost constant combinators: 1=run; 0=stop (on/off). This provided difficult to use for timing tests though, so I added the other part. It is now a set/hold reset signal. The player must stand on the gate, and then turn the combinator besides the gate on and off. This will hold the reset signal until the gate is released, but not re-engage it accidentally. Thus, you can start the counter when you enter the train, without risking reseting and losing all your data if you walk in the wrong direction later.
B) is the train detector. The pair of lights runs an RS latch -- I'm pretty sure I don't actually need it, but I didn't want to break the working tool.
C) takes a derivative, selects positive values, and then integrates it. In other words, every time the train goes by it will emit a 1-tick pulse, and then count that pulse. The output from the bottom combinator is the transit-count.
D) is a series of "is lapcount less than" tests. They output a signal until the total lapcount exceeds the threshold, and are set 1,2,3,....10.
E) is a visual display of (D). Reading the lap-count is quite difficult when in a train going at 0.8 laps/second, so the visual feedback of lights going on is nice.
F) is the integrators. I used arithmetic multiplication-type integrators, to make it easy to reset. This counts how many ticks the corresponding (D) test has been enabled for -- an elapsed time.
G) is a (* -1) array. Controlled by (H), it passes the previous result forwards, allowing for total or per-lap times.
H) is the control for difference mode. When off, the displays output the total tick count until that lap is complete. When on, the displays output ticks between last lap and this one.

If anyone wants to use this sort of scheme to do some of their own benchmarking, here's a blueprint string for it.

blueprint

Code: Select all

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FOR SCIENCE!