Change behavior of rail signals in looped/circular rails

[JasonCurnow]

I just spent most of a very frustrating day trying to figure out rail signals based on videos and tutorials with no luck. I have a big rail loop between all of my distributed factories and sites. When I went to add another train to the loop I put in some signals around one station. Much to my surprise, as soon as a train entered that station, both signals went red and wouldn't change no matter what.

I finally figured out that loop was causing these two signals to define two blocks - One between them in the station and one between them on the entire rest of the loop. Figuring this out took a lot of small-scale testing. I was finally able to make my looping rail work by adding a TON of signals all around it - Every hundred "yards" or so I placed a signal. That breaks it up into enough small blocks that everything flows smoothly.

A few things that caused confusion:

The colorization that comes up when placing a rail signal is VERY useful. I often find myself putting a signal in my hand just so I can see the colors. Click on a signal shows something very different. Personally, I found the colored blocks a lot more useful. Perhaps you could change it so that clicking on a signal would show all of the colored blocks instead? If you want to keep some way to show what is happening with THAT signal, perhaps increase the line weight for its blocks?

Speaking of colors.. The colors for the blocks when adding signals aren't intuitive. I now understand that the colors don't MEAN anything - They are just colors to help identify the blocks. I thought the colors on the track matched the colors on the signal itself - Red is blocked, yellow is soon to be blocked, blue-green is good to go. It would help others avoid this misconception by changing these colors to NOT match red/yellow/green - Orange, purple, dark blue, etc.

There wasn't anything really to show that there were two blocks, other than two colors, even when using the debugger. Could there be some kind of better way to show blocks? Perhaps some kind of floating "Block #1, Block #2" text? Some kind of pop-up legend? I dunno, might be too dumbed down, but man, I spent some very frustrating hours on this and just want to help others avoid it.

The behavior in a looped rail system is very different than all of the tutorials mention and there really isn't anything on the Wiki or other places that explain this behavior (yet). Perhaps some kind of console warning when there is a loop? "Warning - Adding signals to a looped rail system can result in very large signal blocks and unexpected behavior" or something.