Train mods; will additional train logic be implemented?

[myridium]

Hello, I just want to ask whether anyone knows (e.g. if there has been news from the dev team) on whether conditional train stops will be implemented. If not, can somebody point me to a simple mod which does the bare minimum needed to complete the rail logic?

I am strongly convicted that additional train logic is needed for Factorio to be complete. Although I adore this game, I will be quite disappointed if they don't cap it off with a complete rail system, given how high a standard the team puts into everything they do. I don't want to get into a discussion of why I feel additional train logic is needed, as any fanatic of this game with 1000+ hours will likely already understand that. And there are already many threads on this, e.g. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=64362.

So, does anyone know if skippable stations or any additional train logic will be implemented by the Factorio team? And if not, can you point me to a mod that doesn't try to do anything fancy except add the minimal conditions needed to 'fix' the significant train problems in Factorio?

Thank you.

[Loewchen]

Unlikely, and certainly not before 1.0.

[Kinson25]

What logic are you looking for?
You can use the circuit network to turn stations on and off.

[Durentis]

Being able to toggle stations is great, but the available features in vanilla still don't allow fully automating anything but fairly simple situations without some crazy complex circuitry and/or jumping through hoops.

I'd very much like to see an event condition, perhaps which sits outside the usual schedule, whereby the train will go to a designated fuel station when its fuel runs below a set threshold. This would be a huge improvement to train QoL. I don't want to have either a massive bot network to fuel trains or a fuel delivery train on an isolated rail network to deliver fuel to all of my stations.

[astroshak]

You don’t want the massive bot network, because that’s not how bots thrive.

As for refueling, it does not take a separate rail network. It would be convenient to send trains that need fuel to a centralized location, yes. But as it is right now, it is not necessary, with the other thing you don’t want to do : a dedicated train shipping fuel around to various outposts to provide fuel as needed to the trains based out of those various outposts. But you don’t need a separate rail network for that! A single LC train can carry enough Rocket Fuel (Or whatever you’re fueling trains with) for your train needs and will not be a serious impediment to your other, longer trains.

[JimBarracus]

You don’t want the massive bot network, because that’s not how bots thrive.

As for refueling, it does not take a separate rail network. It would be convenient to send trains that need fuel to a centralized location, yes. But as it is right now, it is not necessary, with the other thing you don’t want to do : a dedicated train shipping fuel around to various outposts to provide fuel as needed to the trains based out of those various outposts. But you don’t need a separate rail network for that! A single LC train can carry enough Rocket Fuel (Or whatever you’re fueling trains with) for your train needs and will not be a serious impediment to your other, longer trains.

Also most trains end up at the same area. It is fairly easy to build a fuel station from where you ditribute the fuel to stations around.
Multiple train stops are a train station.

A thing you need to consider: Pathfinding can get messy. If a train gets triggered to go and refuel it might be in a bad place at that moment.
The detour could be weird and your system clogs up.
________

Only usefull thing that omes to my mind.
Conditions for train stops:
some thing like: coal < 20 go to that station
if not, skip the station.

But the condition should be universal. Something like a fuel gauge.
A loco can carry for example 150 coal. When there is only one stack (50) left the train only has 33% fuel left.

fuel < 20%, then go to this station
if fuel > 20% skip the station.

fuel could be a value like the train ID.

[astroshak]

One cannot claim that most trains end up in the same area. It is entirely dependent upon how one sets up the extended factory.

It is entirely reasonable that where someone would have a central processing and manufacturing area, served by ore trains, it is equally reasonable that someone else would set up a smelting facility, fed by trains, that supplies other trains taking the plates to various other facilities. In fact, the more intermediary production facilities one sets up, the less likely that all the trains will wind upon the same area, even if they are all on the same rail network. It’s not unheard of for the mines->smelting rails to be a completely separate network from the smelting->everything else rail network.

Speaking anecdotally, my current game has the make everything belt base I built to handle all pre-space science research. It’s got a separate outpost that pumps crude out of the ground, making rocket fuel, lube, batteries, and sulfur, all offered to the rail network. Three other outposts take raw ores, coal, and crude to make red, green, and blue circuits. Another facility makes bots for delivery to each outpost as needed. Another outpost makes speed modules and production modules for delivery where needed. Each of my science outposts (still need to set up yellow and white) take in raw ores and necessary circuits to produce one type of science. That’s a lot of outposts, right?

Each one has four, minimum, stations not involved with what they produce. Stone Brick delivery for the Concreep mod; trash removal for the same mod and for the Auto Deconstruct mod; Bot Delivery; Module Delivery. Many that have trains fetching materials also have a Train Fuel drop off station. Those stations are in addition to stations dropping off production materials or picking up finished products.

Should all of those trains be routed to a centralized refueling depot? Or should those trains be kept on task and refueled at their drop off or pickup stations?

That’s just my current game. There are many people who have far more trains than I do in this game. My point is... that refueling condition would be convenient for smaller networks, but at some point your factory will outgrow that convenience, both in terms of imberof outposts, and in terms of rail traffic overall.

[TheTom]

Well, here is what I would like:

* A signal. Yes, no joke.

-> You can set a penalty for crossing the signal that that path finder uses. I.e. I can say "10.000" then it will assume that crossing the signal is 10k steps longer than not. This can be used to keep trains on the main buses by "walling off" side sections. Trains that have no business in the side section WILL NOT GO THERE

-> Integration into networks allowing one to manually set the penalty or block off a path - easy way to make safe crossings without gates

But mostly I would e looking for a way to add a dynamic pathing penalty. I am having a larger base and I work on "islands" for production and trains ahve a tendency to go into the islands and loop when there is a train in front of them.

[astroshak]

That’s an interesting idea, but ...

Don’t you WANT trains taking the shortest path from Station to Station? If a path does not lead to a station the train wants to visit, it won’t go there anyway ... so not really sure what your signal idea is supposed to accomplish?

That said, you can use the circuit network to tell a rail signal to go red, can you not?

[TheTom]

point is - they do NOT take the shortest path. Under a lot of circumstances they go around and around a couple of times because there is a train in the way in the shortest path so they reroute through a factory "subcity". I want to make this more expensive so they rather stay in the line of the high throughput main train line instead of starting to interfere with the flow of the sub-busses.

[ssilk]

For the refueling: there are mods.

https://mods.factorio.com/query/Train%2 ... rsion=0.18

If you want the pathfinder to avoid a track just add train stops.

Or use mod to modify pathfinder:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pathological