Rail signals should act the same to auto and manual trains

[Deadly-Bagel]

Huh, that is weird that's censored. It appears to be the whole word too...

Anyway I did suggest a third rail if you often take manual control of your trains, and you can tweak the signals so there's no way you could ever run into anything. I think you should be able to link it up to the main rail too if you put signals on it the wrong side, eg splitting off a northbound rail, put a signal on the split so that only southbound trains may travel on it. Alternatively set it up so trains have to be travelling in reverse or something? There'll be a way.

[Mengmoshu]

A third rail dedicated to manually driven trains always seems like a huge waste of resources and space to me, as well as probably complicating junctions.

Can either of you (Ssilk or Deadly-bagle) explain why my idea shouldn't be used?

[Deadly-Bagel]

Ideally there would be something in place, however developer time is limited and consider once 0.15 is stable it is likely to become 1.0 at which point development ceases and the game is considered "finished".

I don't know how simple it would be to implement but it's not going to be a five minute job. Personally I would rather the development be spent elsewhere, such as having the ability for a station to summon a train and basically everything in the 0.15 circuit update topic, not to mention a total overhaul of combat equipment and ideally vanilla vehicle modules or at least some faster way of mass clearing biters endgame.

[aeros1]

Still thinking safe manual driving(at least as mode) is good thing as it is cleaning out some unfinished/suspicious elements. As well as proper station tree or way to group up stations and selection of stops and drive to by map. It wouldn't anything new but would make game look more finished, and less frustrating for new players. My friend finished driving manually from point he was T rammed by Auto train after missing red signal. It is hard to see incoming signals because there is no even

Simaphore signals anywhere on interface to see next signal or next signal after yellow to be exact would be nice. So it is so easy to miss that red dot on the map. It would be nice if you get blue simphore signal also get a list in order of turning (left arrow, center, right arrow) of next simaphores instead (one blue signal level deep only) Or safe driving mode. For now it is pretty hard on high speed to see signals comming up too. Though if safe driving mode implemented it is more like making game pretier. Unnecessary ironing out. Though would help sometimes to peek correct turn in some cases.

[steinio]

Well I would like if manual trains stop at red signals.
To pass a red signal you could press shift for maintenance purposes or something...

[Deadly-Bagel]

So it is so easy to miss that red dot on the map.

I can't see red or yellow (or most colours for that matter) so I know what you mean. Higher-contrast rail signals would be nice.

[Mengmoshu]

Developer time is always a good point to consider. Especially with an indie game approaching its 1.0.

I hadn't even considered color blindness when I was thinking about how to make manual driving safer. I'm not color blind, but zoomed out far enough to see where I'm going I can't spot the little dots of the signals. I think somebody already suggested a UI element that tells you what's up with the next signal, and maybe more, which could probably be designed in a color blindness friendly way, or at least allow a mod to fix it.

I've probably already been pretty clear about this, but to summarize my position: Whatever dev time goes into making manual trains better/safer I'd rather see go into directly preventing collisions instead of trying to present more information to the player.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Hmmm

As something that creates a solid contrast between "manual" manual driving and "auto" manual driving and also provides additional functionality over just catering for a certain play style, how about this idea. I think it could even totally replace manual driving as it's a bit more intuitive and easier to handle once you get the hang of it.

Hop in a train and there is a control to set the speed you want to travel at (recommend ALT+W for faster and ALT+S for slower but obviously this would be a keybinding for customisation). This has an additional advantage of allowing far greater control of a train when you only want to travel slowly, say for example because you're using bots to build the rail or something next to it.

A, W and D are used to tell the train which direction you wish to go at the next intersection. This is a toggle, so you only need to press (not hold) A so it knows at the next left turn it needs to turn left. W for straight ahead, and D for right. Setting this ahead of time allows the signals to update as the train has worked out its pathing, at least around the next intersection. S can be used to set the speed to 0 so you only need press it and the train will come to a complete stop.

Now, there is a big problem with any "auto manual" train control and that is you have two trains approaching an intersection, let's say for example a T junction oriented like a T as well. You have a manual westbound train (on the top track) and an auto eastbound track (on the bottom track). The auto train will cross the junction but the manual train is pathing straight ahead. At the last minute the manual train changes direction to turn - neither train has time to stop. You might have the manual train reserve ALL paths but this isn't particularly efficient, especially at complex junctions on a busy network.

With this control scheme only the correct track can be reserved, unless the driver changes direction directly before an intersection. In this situation I would say the train would ignore the request and continue going the path that was previously planned, basically if it can't stop before a reserved or red signal it will continue on its given path. This doesn't make the train harder to control, if you need to make two turns very close to each other simply lower the speed of the train so it will have time to stop.

For clarity this driving method can show the yellow arrows along its planned path (just as auto trains do when you hover over them) - it would probably need a little UI at the top to show current speed % and next direction, maybe fuel as well. When you attempt to make a "bad" change of direction (that would cross a reserved or red signal) the turn indicator can flash red or something to say the turn is not possible.

[ssilk]

Well I would like if manual trains stop at red signals.

This is not possible in cases, where the signal goes red just milliseconds before the train passes.
Or if implemented in a always working manner such a feature would mean, that you drive automatically.

Or in other words: If you improve the rail signals for better manual driving you need to automate it completely. Otherwise you have a compromise.

But completely automating trains is in my eyes a no-go! You need manual driving. You cannot fix a completely jammed crossing with 20 trains without manual intervention!

To pass a red signal you could press shift for maintenance purposes or something...

Nothing of that is needed, if you keep it as it is and increase the comfort of both a bit:

Automatic mode (transport mode):
- A "one-time-schedule" for automatic mode driving to a train stop. (*)
- A "one-time-schedule" for automatic mode driving or any random rail segment on map.

This last feature is the key: If you are in automatic mode and in the train you can click on the rails and the train tries to drive to that point. Or you can click on the rails on map. Super useful, cause that would free you from always need to jump into train and switch to manual. You can shunt the trains in most cases from outside.

Manual mode (Shunting mode):
This means: You are normally driving very slow or on empty rails, cause otherwise you are not shunting, you are transporting.

For that case it is helpful, if the signals you may enter are turned red. This is simple: "precognition" of possible routes the train can drive into and switching crossing signals to red similar mechanism as for the gates. This is no guarantee for no crash but it is helpful if you want to fix some train cludder.



(*) This feature could be much more powerful, if a train can decide to switch between different schedules. But for that more than two schedules are useful.

[steinio]

Well how about set a station in the timetable and set as leaving condition something like remove on arrival.
Yes i know its no leaving but an arriving condition but who cares.

With this rule, the station is deleted from the timetable on arrival...

[ssilk]

I don't see the big difference, indeed it was my first thought. But then I thought that stop conditions are something completely different.
Well, it's just how you name the baby and what is more useful in the long run.

[dauphin]

Automatic mode (transport mode):
- A "one-time-schedule" for automatic mode driving to a train stop. (*)
- A "one-time-schedule" for automatic mode driving or any random rail segment on map.

This last feature is the key: If you are in automatic mode and in the train you can click on the rails and the train tries to drive to that point. Or you can click on the rails on map. Super useful, cause that would free you from always need to jump into train and switch to manual. You can shunt the trains in most cases from outside.

This! This is exactly the solution Factorio needs!

Why? Because, as has been said previously, true manual mode driving is sometimes necessary. You don't want to have to remove signals in order to do something unusual when you're driving.

But also, this should not be hard to implement at all. The logic for routing trains to any given rail segment is already in the base game! As long as I'm in a train, I should be able to hold onto some special controller that enables me to click on a given rail segment and immediately be routed to it.

The harder part is that I should also be able to bring up the map, zoom in until I can click on a rail segment accurately, and route myself all the way there. Right now there's no built-in functionality for map clicking that I know of, so it would have to be added, and it is likely that it would require some work to be really user-friendly, since you wouldn't want to be required to click on a single pixel thing.

Perhaps the compromise in the meantime could be that you could quickly bring up a list of train stations and select one that is near where you want to go. For this to be as user-friendly as clicking on a map, it would be ideal if the list were searchable just by typing.

I wonder if there are any mods that do any of this. I haven't heard of any. I'm halfway tempted to try to write one.