(Sorry, no pic here. My PC is at home, but I'm not, so I have time to write stuff, but can only play on Mac and I've forgotten to take the map with me. We have here an example: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =10#p15125
I promise to make some photos )
They are really, really cool, I played the whole weekend with making big and bigger train stations and tried to come to the limits (one limit was for example the thing with the train stations with the same names, see https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=2190 ).
Train stations with logistic bots are most useable for
- loading trains equally (the requester chests which are filled into the trains of course)
- unloading trains, because the provider chests where the inserters put the items from the wagon into are emptied first
- storing: No question, that's why the storage chest is needed: You have just no interest what's inside a chest; it's so much, that it doesn't matter.
- sorting: A storage needs as output just some requester chests and they sort most effectively the needed material on the right belt (ahttp://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic. ... =10#p15125) , which brings it into the factory part (I use some parallel belts for that)
It looks quite amazing to have five belts of copper rolling into a cluster of 50-60 furnaces.
And it's fast! I achieved storing of over 200k items per hour in one "train station". Every train had 4 wagons, I had many trains. It would be absolutely impossible to achive that with belts, on which the inserters output the items directly, because they are not equally emptied.
The size of such a storage is BIG. 80x80 tiles is about minimum. I would say 100-120 should be planned. It's most important to keep the robotic network separated from other networks!
My next factory would look like follows:
- A big train station, as described above.
- The items are brought to the smelting factory.
- This part is so organized, that it doesn't matter, which furnace smelts which item: Copper- and iron-ore (and eventually also iron plates, but for them I don't know how I could do that in a always working way - waiting for v0.9) are just "put in" and the output is stored in a second logistic storage. Maybe connected with another train...
- From this storage the items are brought (eventually with more trains) into the "factory sites", circuits, science packs, modules, all are separated factory units with own logistic network.
Keen on playing.
