[0.17.23] Fluid wagons will not connect to pump if station is around a curve.

[soapy5]

If a train station is past a curved track segment, the fluid wagons will be slightly misaligned and will not connect to the pumps. It appears the train is a couple of pixels too far forward; tapping backwards once or twice in manual mode will be enough to align the fluid wagons.

This has been duplicated with the station 90, 180, and 270 degrees wrt fluid wagons, and with the station past an s-bends. This has also been duplicated with the station at different distances past a 180 degree curve.

factorio-current.log

(4.75 KiB) Downloaded 116 times

[posila]

Thanks for the report.
Pumps require wagons to be aligned to tiles, and locomotives standing on curved rails make the wagons not aligned to tiles.
This restriction probably won't be removed any time soon.

[Opsse]

This is, in my opinion, a very annoying limitation and should be fixed. Plus, this is inconsistent with the inserter behaviours which works fine in the same situation.

[mrvn]

While I agree this is sad you can design your station a bit differently:

1) Put the station on the straight rails going out from the loop. The train will then arrive, turn around and stop on the way out. It will stop quite a far wait out of though. Not inside the walls.

2) Build your train as LFFFFFLLLLLLL. Same speed but now the trailing locomotives can stay on the curve and you can put the stop inside the walls.

[eradicator]

Do what Deutsche Bahn does every day. Build the train in reverse-wagon-order :p.

umgekehrte-wagenreihenfolge.gif (5.67 MiB) Viewed 6030 times

[mrvn]

Do what Deutsche Bahn does every day. Build the train in reverse-wagon-order :p.

umgekehrte-wagenreihenfolge.gif

Bad idea. The fluid wagon has a way higher wind resistance than the locomotive. You need one locomotive at the start.

[eradicator]

<o))--(--(c-<

[nixxquality]

Any chance of this being revisited?

A friend of mine is playing Factorio blind and came to me and asked why the pumps wouldn't unload from his train.

He'd built something like this:

427520_20211109213510_1.png (2.85 MiB) Viewed 4768 times

Even I, with 300 hours in the game, had no idea what was wrong. Everything looks correct, the train is actually stopped at the station and the pumps are facing the right way.

I randomly asked him to get rid of the bend in the middle which fixed it and I was led to this thread after searching about the problem.

I can understand that this was put on ice once, especially back in beta, but this is something people are still tripping over, and I imagine more people will trip over it in the future.

[Silari]

Any chance of this being revisited?

It has been in other threads: viewtopic.php?p=553446#p553446 but there are issues with fixing it.

It's possible to change the allowed value for misalignment by changing the fluid_wagon_connector_alignment_tolerance value on pumps. It can make the graphics look wrong due to how the pump connects though, which is why vanilla restricts it.

[mrvn]

Notice how the cargo wagons in the curves remain closed showing they can't be accessed. Fluid wagons should have an indicator to show when they are open that also checks the alignment.

[posila]

Notice how the cargo wagons in the curves remain closed showing they can't be accessed. Fluid wagons should have an indicator to show when they are open that also checks the alignment.

Funny thing is, inserters can pull out items from the cargo wagons just fine , we just didn't want to spend VRAM on cargo wagon door opening animation for all 128 directions and artists didn't request inserters to not be able to interact with rotated wagons

[Silari]

Notice how the cargo wagons in the curves remain closed showing they can't be accessed. Fluid wagons should have an indicator to show when they are open that also checks the alignment.

Except whether it can connect or not isn't based on the fluid wagon, it's based on the pump. That means it'd have to run a check on every nearby pump to see if the tolerance would allow it to connect. You'd also then potentially run into situations where some pumps can and some can't, so either you'd show it open and still have people wondering why some of their pumps won't connect, or you'd show it closed and people think nothing could. So in the end a bunch of work on code and graphics for a situation not much if any better than the current one.

Putting an indicator on pumps to show a train is present but not aligned would be better. It would make for a great status message on them - 'Fluid wagon not in position' or such, so if it does happen there's a clear reason given and something easily searchable to find the fix.

[mrvn]

Notice how the cargo wagons in the curves remain closed showing they can't be accessed. Fluid wagons should have an indicator to show when they are open that also checks the alignment.

Except whether it can connect or not isn't based on the fluid wagon, it's based on the pump. That means it'd have to run a check on every nearby pump to see if the tolerance would allow it to connect. You'd also then potentially run into situations where some pumps can and some can't, so either you'd show it open and still have people wondering why some of their pumps won't connect, or you'd show it closed and people think nothing could. So in the end a bunch of work on code and graphics for a situation not much if any better than the current one.

Putting an indicator on pumps to show a train is present but not aligned would be better. It would make for a great status message on them - 'Fluid wagon not in position' or such, so if it does happen there's a clear reason given and something easily searchable to find the fix.

Don't forget pumps can also be circuit controlled.

Maybe the indicator should be on the pump as you say? A yellow LED when the pump has no suitable connector in position? Or blue when it does? red/green is used by the circuit control so I think it's best not to use them to signal alignment as well.