Selectively unloading train tankers (using rail tanker mod)

[bunnzy]

Hello,

When unloading a rail car you can use filter inserters to only unload what you need, how do you do this with rail tankers?

I'm going all Bentham and have a giant widespread Factorio towns going on. However, I have one station where I need lubricant and sulphuric acid delivered (I decided I'd just ship it because tankers are cool and it needs to go into multiple towns). So the trains are zooming around delivering to places, it's working wonderfully, until it's time to hit this one station. I also have a train with crude oil that stops in here to do something and crude oil gets taken off the train and put into the sulphuric acid system, argh, even though it's also being contaminated with lubricant. Oh, the whole thing is a sticky mess!

I was going to do a workaround like adding another station at this one town specifically for one of the products, or having a train that has it in specific tankers so it only unloads at one place, but with two-headed trains sometimes they are flipping, so that doesn't work. Plus, I think this issue is something that would just be good to sort as it's not the first time I've come up against this, and probably won't be the last.

I'm pretty shitty at things like circuits, but if that's a way to do it and if someone could show me I'd really appreciate it.

So, any suggestions? Small pumps are working great, I just want to be able to specify what they remove.

Thanks for your help!

[steinio]

You probably need to use barrels.

Greetings steinio.

[bunnzy]

You probably need to use barrels.

Greetings steinio.

Oh bummer, but you're probably right. This sounds like a workaround that won't break the town in the meantime. Plus, you can have inserters all along the rail car, rather than just in the middle-ish. So my platform would be more efficient with its space.



Filter small pump <-- sounds like a good mod idea! Not that I would even know where to start. Maybe it already exists? If not, maybe I'll try making one, call it a filter pump or something. Watch this space!

[bunnzy]

Um, someone else may need to try modding for this, this is haaaard.
Anyone got ideas about how this might be achieved using the circuit network?

[kingarthur]

im just guessing and havnt tested anything but you should be able to setup a system at the station to filter liquids using pumps. start by placing a storage tank and then attach pumps around the outside of it and wire them to the tank and set to active if the tank contains a specific fluid. 1 pump for acid, 1 pump for lube, and 1 pump for whatever else you need

[ChurchOrganist]

IIRC you currently cannot connect a single rail wagon to the circuit network.

You can only monitor wagon contents via the Station circuit connection. Unless the FAT Controller mod provides that, and on first glance it doesn't seem to.

Personally I have always used the fluid-barrel mod for transporting liquids rather than rail tanker, as you can carry more liquid in a wagon full of barrels than in a tanker wagon, and it is easier to move around at source and destination rather than with a maze of pipes to trip over and get connected wrongly.

So I reckon the only way you will be able to deal with different liquids in tankers at a station is to ship them in different trains.

[Choumiko]

From a quick test it looks like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Optera/I ... y%20Sensor should work with RailTanker. It outputs the fake fluid item from the tanker that's next to it.
This should allow to enable pumps only if a certain liquid is detected.

[orzelek]

I'd think that unloading to a tank and using it to control amount of unloaded liquid should also work.

Do a two stage unloader:
1. First set of pumps goes to buffer tanks - those decide how much to take from train.
2. Once train leaves and/or buffers reached desired level use second set of pumps to pump fluid from buffers to actual storage.

[steinio]

I'd think that unloading to a tank and using it to control amount of unloaded liquid should also work.

Do a two stage unloader:
1. First set of pumps goes to buffer tanks - those decide how much to take from train.
2. Once train leaves and/or buffers reached desired level use second set of pumps to pump fluid from buffers to actual storage.

But the problem is, she has different RailTankers at the same train stop and need only one liquid.
What should she do with the unneeded liquids accidently pumped from the train?

Greetings steinio

[orzelek]

I'd think that unloading to a tank and using it to control amount of unloaded liquid should also work.

Do a two stage unloader:
1. First set of pumps goes to buffer tanks - those decide how much to take from train.
2. Once train leaves and/or buffers reached desired level use second set of pumps to pump fluid from buffers to actual storage.

But the problem is, he has different RailTankers at the same train stop and need only one liquid.
What should he do with the unneeded liquids accidently pumped from the train?

Greetings steinio

Then he'd need to use contraption similar to those presented recently for moving different products through one pipe or it needs ability to read whats in train.

Alternatively buffer section could pump back to tanker if wrong liquid is detected - not sure if it's possible to do this in a way that guarantees no wrong product leftovers in tank/pipes. And it would extent the train stay on station a bit since it would be a 3 step process:
1. Pull some product from tanker to buffer and check if thats the correct product.
2. If it's correct then start pumping it further to main tanks.
3. If it's not correct - shut down input pump and enable one that pumps back to tanker.

Circuit would need to reset after train left station.

PS.
This is purely theoretical - fluid system is tricky at best so might be hard to get it behaving as needed.

[bunnzy]

He's a She

And these are all really good ideas, thank you! I'll do some experimenting with the ideas you've put forward and let you know how it goes. This will be fun!

Also, regarding barrells- I usually avoid them because I end up with empty barrells everywhere, but this could work well in my Factorio towns set up because when a town runs out of oil, maybe I want to move all of the production somewhere else, so being able to stockpile and transport everything I own quickly could work.

But I'm going to play with the other ideas first.

Thank you!
Michelle

[bunnzy]

From a quick test it looks like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Optera/I ... y%20Sensor should work with RailTanker. It outputs the fake fluid item from the tanker that's next to it.
This should allow to enable pumps only if a certain liquid is detected.

Thank you Choumiko, I'll look into that mod. It looks quite promising for other aspects of my towns too.

I just wanted to say FARL is awesome, I always have a FARL in my pocket. This towns setup I'm building would not really be possible without it (well, it would, but it would turn it from a game to a chore). So, thank you very much!

[ChurchOrganist]

Also, regarding barrells- I usually avoid them because I end up with empty barrells everywhere,

Trick is to limit steel barrel production with the logistic or circuit network.

I have used the logistic network to limit it up to now, but that, of course, only accounts for barrels in the current logistic network and ignores any barrels in the oil outposts.

Through multiplayer, though, I have just learned how to use the circuit network to keep track of how many empty barrels there are in the entire map, although I haven't tried to implement this yet myself.

My goal is to only have a wagonload of empty barrels in the main base at any one time.

Hope this helps in your experiments with barrelling

[bunnzy]

From a quick test it looks like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Optera/I ... y%20Sensor should work with RailTanker. It outputs the fake fluid item from the tanker that's next to it.
This should allow to enable pumps only if a certain liquid is detected.

Hi Choumiko, it appeared this mod might do the trick, but then I run into an issue with the rail tanker and the LOADING of liquids. This might have something to do with the rail tanker mod? In the rail wagon and the rail tanker I can err, filter(?) or reserve a spot for an item? By doing the middle mouse click on something yes? So I thought I had reserved my crude oil train by having that type of oil middle-moused/reserved in the rail tanker. SOooo, I used the mod you said and YAY I think I managed to have it only unload the train that came in with the crude oil, the outgoing pump did NOT take anything from the lubricant train, yay. Massive win, maybe solved this problem BUT, once the crude oil tankers were empty they started filling up from some loading pumps, even when I thought I'd reserved the tankers for crude oil.

Of course, I ended up in that weird situation where it was still reserved, and from the outside you can see it's full of sulphuric acid or lubricant, but inside view of the rail tanker says it's got nothing in it And then I empty it and end up with an inventory made up of fake acids and lubricant haha! If only I could use this, exploit the crap out of it. No, I'll bomb it in a chest I think. Take a look, this is my reserved crude oil tanker and I'm showing inside one of them. It has a nice reserved crude oil, but it's actually full of stacks and stacks of acid: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =795191444

So now while I think I have finally found a solution to selectively unloading rail tankers, I may have an issue where reserved rail tankers and getting full of fake other liquids because the reserve slot is being ignored Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can work around this?

[bunnzy]

Also, regarding barrells- I usually avoid them because I end up with empty barrells everywhere,

Trick is to limit steel barrel production with the logistic or circuit network.

I have used the logistic network to limit it up to now, but that, of course, only accounts for barrels in the current logistic network and ignores any barrels in the oil outposts.

Through multiplayer, though, I have just learned how to use the circuit network to keep track of how many empty barrels there are in the entire map, although I haven't tried to implement this yet myself.

My goal is to only have a wagonload of empty barrels in the main base at any one time.

Hope this helps in your experiments with barrelling

Thank you for your advice! I will definitely have a go in one of my saves on this, ideally I want to use rail tankers, but as you can see from my previous post I fixed one issue and broke another! I'm just not having fun with these liquids all going where I don't want them. They look very tempting right now, I think I need to put the Factorio down haha. I'm 563 hours in and still learning, love this game.

[Choumiko]

I just wanted to say FARL is awesome, I always have a FARL in my pocket. This towns setup I'm building would not really be possible without it (well, it would, but it would turn it from a game to a chore). So, thank you very much!

You're welcome

In the rail wagon and the rail tanker I can err, filter(?) or reserve a spot for an item?

Nope, don't touch the single item slot. This slot get's synced with the contents of the real tanker, so that the vanilla train conditions work. The items are useless, so destroying them is the best solution. Railtanker has no way of filtering the liquid a tanker should accept.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Given the poll results of the circuit features in 0.15 we should be seeing the contents of trains passed to the circuit network. Then just enable the pump if the right type of liquid is present on the train.

If you're going to have multiple liquids per train then you'll need to have a standard, like crude and medium oils are always in the first wagon, heavy and light oils are always in the second. Personally I think I'd just have single wagon trains running around only going dedicated loading and unloading stations for their liquid. Whoever said no to Moar Trains =D

[arbarbonif]

Why don't you add a dedicated liquids station to your town? Or perhaps a station for car 1 liquids and a station for car 2 liquids (and so on) and route the train to the proper one?

[bunnzy]

Following on from the latter posts here I took ALL your suggestions and implemented them
For towns with room I've now got dedicated stations for certain fluids. For towns where there is little room I've been more selective, there are some circuit networks going.

You've all been a HUGE help. My towns look awesome, I bet Bentham would be impressed