Train station reservations [solved by mod]

[Cobaltur]

TL;DR

Send a distinct number of trains (most of the time a single one ) to a (unique) station of if it's really requested.

What ?

In a larger base you will have dozens ore outpost and multiple smelter outskirts.
Have one train just for each outpost is a waste. And if the train is killed it`s annoying to replace.

So it makes sense that a (iron ore) train can serve multiple "iron outposts".
Therefore you name e.g. all iron outposts with the same name and you enable the station if enough supply is in.
And then the iron train should deliver the iron to the next smelting area that demands iron not just the next one.
So you name all smelting outskirts with the same name e.g. "iron smelting"

Now 2 bad things happen:

1) So if multiple trains are now searching for an "enabled iron outpost" all trains are going there. One gets in and the other one will turn (if you disable the station as one train will be inside.)
same for the smelting outskirts the trains will head to the next one
2) If you want to have a train stacker (in my case a fuel station where trains could wait for a job) trains won't wait there for an enabled station. If all outposts are disabled they skip the station heading to the next on plan.

A common workaround for 2 today is to use a circuit network. Enable the station AND a signal so the trains will have a "circuit condition" causing the to leave the train stacker.

IMHO more intuitive solution for 2:
a new waiting condition for the previous station "wait for next station being enabled".

But still multiple trains will start at the train stacker

Suggestion

So a good idea might that trains have to get a reservation for a train station (for its unique ID not the name that has beed shared with other stations)
If the station has a reservation limit of "1", only a single train will head towards that station (even if there might be more trains that have interest in)

For a heavy used station a limit of 1 will not be enough. So you want a configurable number for each train station.
A scenario could be a smelting area with 2 unloading stations each each have a reservation limit of 2 so 4 trains might be in this location.
The default value must be infinite for backward behavior .

If a train has a reservation for eg. a "iron unload" station it will not look for another "iron unload" station.

Why ?

I played alrealdy more than 1200 hours. And managing trains and 50 unique stations takes too much time. I want to build an outpost, setup mines and assign a train. If the outpost does not longer produce things trains will automatically never vistit them again and will go to other outposts => less idle trains.

[Cobaltur]

OK at least someone solved this in a mod that does everthing I want

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LogisticTrainNetwork

[Tekky]

Related thread:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49214 Train Entry-Condition

If such "entry conditions" were implemented, it should be possible to accomplish your suggestion using the circuit network.

[Escadin]

I've been working to solve this via circuits all this time and then it hit me: You can solve it really easily within the train network itself!

Say you have a stacker followed by several unloading stations. If the whole setup is about hadnling a single type item (e.g. only copper ore) you can simply prohibit multiple trains heading out for the same station:

Problematic setup

Code: Select all

STACKER-----------Stations
-------\          /--------
--------\________/---------
--------/        \---------

Fixed setup

Code: Select all

STACKER-----------Stations
-------\          /--------
--------\____|___/---------
--------/    |   \---------
             |
           Train stop bottlenecking the trains.

The bottle neck forces the trains to present themselves to all unloading stations one at a time. The added trainstop makes sure no other train can skip ahead in schedule.

[Aeternus]

This is a problem I've been wrestling with myself. I don't want to take the easy route and just fling LTE at it (which admittedly, would solve it in a hurry). Instead I'm trying to solve it with a mines -> storage -> factory kind of rail system, where the mines (all using the same station name for an ore type) deactivate their station until a full cargo is ready, then the stacker should release a train to that particular mine.
The problem occurs when there are multiple mines with a cargo available.
- The stacker should release a train for each mine with a cargo (they're smart enough to reroute if 2 go for the same mine, if another signal is green).
- The stacker should never release more trains then cargos available.

It's a bit of a state battle, but I bet with some clever combinator magic this nut can be cracked. Just a minor pain to keep track of trains in each state:
At Depot/Stacker
To mine
At mine
To /At Smelter

Advantage is that this should be extentable into infinity if it works right, and work in vanilla.

[mrvn]

I've been working to solve this via circuits all this time and then it hit me: You can solve it really easily within the train network itself!

Say you have a stacker followed by several unloading stations. If the whole setup is about hadnling a single type item (e.g. only copper ore) you can simply prohibit multiple trains heading out for the same station:

Problematic setup

Code: Select all

STACKER-----------Stations
-------\          /--------
--------\________/---------
--------/        \---------

Fixed setup

Code: Select all

STACKER-----------Stations
-------\          /--------
--------\____|___/---------
--------/    |   \---------
             |
           Train stop bottlenecking the trains.

The bottle neck forces the trains to present themselves to all unloading stations one at a time. The added trainstop makes sure no other train can skip ahead in schedule.

That changes absolutely nothing. All trains will leave the stack for the bottleneck station, one of them reaches it and blocks. Then an ore stations is enabled and one train after the other passes through the bottleneck station. You already have that affect if your stacker has a single output track. You need circuit logic so only as many trains are allowed to pass as are needed.

And then you have the problem that they all go to the nearest station. Only when that turns off do they reroute to the next nearest.

You can build your outpost with a single dual direction track. If you don't put any signals at the mine then only one train can go to the outpost. The others will be blocked at the split of point. They then can re-path to a different outpost. If you want more than one train per outpost you add some signals there. It's easy to scale it up to 2, 3, 4, ... trains simply adding waiting bays at the mine.

[Cobaltur]

but for larger bases I cannot build one kind of production in a single place
so this bottlenecks have worked for me only in smaller games where I end the game typically with starting a rocket.

Some people might be doing this running a 1k-science/per minute-base but I like more outposts .... and they still evole . My blueprints are getting better form outpost to outpost.
Currently I'am at consuming 200-250 science per sec/and rocket each 4 min. But I'm still investing much in building modules etc.

[Darinth]

This is the only solution that I can find to the problem of many trains all pathing to the same station, when that station doesn't have enough throughput. (excepting for mods of course, LTN) I think you can get some similar thing going by disabling a station on train arrival, but that just forces all of the trains that were there to repath to another station... they were still on their way to a station that ideally should've been able to tell them not to head there way earlier. In larger maps, I expect this would result in sets of trains trying to race to a station and as each one gets a train the rest all repathing to the same station (as I've sometimes watched trains do at mining outposts that I've currently got set to only be enabled when there's a full load of ore).