Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

[rhynex]

a question, I think it is covered but I could not understand what the actual wall of text mentioned about NO_PATH. what happens lets say biters attacks rails (destroy them) or trains, making trains unable to reach the target station? are they dropped from that limit?

what about temporary stations where a user can move in map by just hopping to a train and click on rail?

[boskid]

a question, I think it is covered but I could not understand what the actual wall of text mentioned about NO_PATH. what happens lets say biters attacks rails (destroy them) or trains, making trains unable to reach the target station? are they dropped from that limit?

what about temporary stations where a user can move in map by just hopping to a train and click on rail?

Biters attacking a train will cause the train to be rebuild with less rolling stocks. This action forces the train to switch to manual which clears the reservation so the train is dropped from the limit.

Destroying rails that leads to train having a no_path... interesting question... well.. the train deletes it current path so it stashes the reservation so it is able to repath to the same train stop back even when it would be full, but when looking for path it is unable to find a path. Right now i made it to keep a reservation but this may need some tweaks when more people complain. Similar behavior is currently when train stop is disabled by the circuit network: train keeps the reservation if it is unable to find a path to another train stop.

Temporary stops are out of scope. They are not a real train stops to keep track of incoming trains. They are a simple feature added to trains saying "please go to this particular rail ignoring any train stops if there any, you can approach it from both directions" and they use targeters. If you destroy a target rail the schedule record will turn into "Temporary: Invalid" and when you rebuild the rail it will stay at that state as the original rail the train was pointing to no longer exists.

[eradicator]

The Tips are moddable!

Thank you very much sir!

Will there also be support for the "simulation" widget as a normal LuaGuiElement outside of the tips and tricks window? Currently i have to spawn stuff on an empty surface and use a camera widget to show it.

[Amarula]

I was (and am) ridiculously happy and excited to see the FFF!

I can't wait to play with the new train stop limit... and thank you Boskid for the Great Wall of Text, it is fascinating to get these glimpses behind the scenes.

The work behind the new tips and tricks - building in real game animation instead of a picture! Brilliant!

I am not quite as passionate on the topic as KoS but I also would like a visible indicator that more tips are available. Perhaps a button named "More" or a tip named "Tips on using Tips and tricks." It would explain that additional tips are hidden so as not to overwhelm new players. It would also explain how tips are revealed as the player progresses, and how marking tips as read unlocks further tips. It would have the instructions on how to unlock them if you want to see them all now. A key thing here is that the explanation is not hidden inside a tip named "Introduction" because that is the last place I am going to look...

Amazing job as always on the FFF, a heart-felt thank you to everyone at Wube, and stay safe! Live long and prosper!

[planetfall]

A minor quality of life improvement that shouldn't be overly difficult is a way to limit the number of modules inserted without having to open each machine's interface.

For example it's annoying when putting efficiency modules into machines with 4 module slots, because only the first three do anything. Or if I want to put one productivity module and one speed module into each of my electric furnaces - that's a lot of fiddly clicking in 48 UIs.

The obvious solutions I can think of are a) placing a moduled blueprint over existing machines places robot orders for those modules and b) right-clicking into module slots inserts one at a time rather than half the current stack. But I'm sure the devs can come up with something less clumsy.

Anyway, great work with this. Really looking forward to using the train limits!

[rhynex]

a question, I think it is covered but I could not understand what the actual wall of text mentioned about NO_PATH. what happens lets say biters attacks rails (destroy them) or trains, making trains unable to reach the target station? are they dropped from that limit?

what about temporary stations where a user can move in map by just hopping to a train and click on rail?

Destroying rails that leads to train having a no_path... interesting question... well.. the train deletes it current path so it stashes the reservation so it is able to repath to the same train stop back even when it would be full, but when looking for path it is unable to find a path. Right now i made it to keep a reservation but this may need some tweaks when more people complain. Similar behavior is currently when train stop is disabled by the circuit network: train keeps the reservation if it is unable to find a path to another train stop.

as far as I understood: when a rail is attacked by a biter and suddenly some of the trains (which has reservation) cannot reach the station will block other trains who are able to reach the target station, lets say coming from opposite direction of map.
it looks like describing how to create a memory leak to me

would not a simple logic in code help? "as a train, I have reservation. can I reach the NEXT station with ANY path? if not then drop the reservation and never take it back until gain the reservation through train stop cycle"
including reasons like : circuit network disabling stations, switching to manual, no path due to destruction of rails, out of fuel!! or other external factors. why not just drop the reservation if a train cannot reach the target station for ANY reason?

[Rebmes]

Very impressive, indeed ^^

[Nidan]

A minor quality of life improvement that shouldn't be overly difficult is a way to limit the number of modules inserted without having to open each machine's interface.

For example it's annoying when putting efficiency modules into machines with 4 module slots, because only the first three do anything. Or if I want to put one productivity module and one speed module into each of my electric furnaces - that's a lot of fiddly clicking in 48 UIs.

The obvious solutions I can think of are a) placing a moduled blueprint over existing machines places robot orders for those modules and b) right-clicking into module slots inserts one at a time rather than half the current stack. But I'm sure the devs can come up with something less clumsy.

Anyway, great work with this. Really looking forward to using the train limits!

You can use z to drop a single module into a machine, no need to open the UI.

[Stexe]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-361

Any chance we can get some more achievements for the new content that came out since the last achievements were created? Like a Spidertron achievement and maybe some other achievements like "win the game on default Death World settings" or something? Would just love to have a few more to bring me back into the game. Also, what about Steam cards / emotes / avatars / borders and so on? Would love to show my support and other awesome things that way. =)

[planetfall]

You can use z to drop a single module into a machine, no need to open the UI.

Huh, I didn't know that. Should maybe be a tip, then.

[MiniHerc]

Just more proof that the Factorio devs are the greatest devs ever. Love you all!

[Kinson25]

The new updates look great! Glad to have some more FFF goodness. Also as Amarula said, I think new players may not want to "Mark as Read" for fear of not being able to read that tip easily in the future.

Perhaps a button named "More" or a tip named "Tips on using Tips and tricks." It would explain that additional tips are hidden so as not to overwhelm new players. It would also explain how tips are revealed as the player progresses, and how marking tips as read unlocks further tips.

[MasterBuilder]

I have wanted and asked for something akin to the train stop limit a long time ago. Finally!

This is the awesome news! Thanks so much for adding this!

[barnaclebob]

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

i have spent sooooooo many hours trying to make this train thing happen with just flipping stations on and off and it never worked. SOOOOO EXCITED.

[Retne]

Hi guys,

I can't quite believe I haven't posted yet, given my 1200+ hours in the game and faithful reading of FFF, but I think usually someone else said what I was going to. While I'm here though: WONDERFUL GAME, thank you!

I had a few random comments which I'm going to put into one post because I should be designing my own UIs... sorry, perhaps not as nice as threading it all nicely.
--- Tips and UI:
I love the new tips interface. I agree with not hiding things as you have replied to. I would also love to see a "show all tips" checkbox in addition to a command so a user can force the tips to appear. Great if you want to check something and are playing on a new install (maybe having bought the game for a friend, but wanted to show them that _one_ really useful tip).

---
I'd also encourage having both next and previous buttons still - it's not going to hurt anyone and is handy for, as someone suggested, those of us that like to look through all / some early on. Ideally with an underlined key showing a keyboard shortcut - a pet peeve of mine right now is MS not following it's own previous accessibility guidlines on this in W10 Apps.
---
I also didn't know about Z dropping modules into assemblers. Cool. Yeah, bonus tip right there

Oh, and, possibly, something about the new grid / absolute grid features (which I love. I'd had a break from the game for a bit, so love seeing this)
---
I know this isn't a backlog with votes, but I also like IronCartographer's post about sorting the logistic requests - it's sometimes tricky to find it. A sort or, as suggested, mirrored build layout would be very funky.


--- On trains and stops:
Wonderful new additon there. I might just hold off on the blueprints I'm just designing...

I would love the idea of fallback stations or an OR (or other) condition on the stop itself, not just the conditions within the stop, with precedence (e.g. go here OR go there - would be _wonderful_ for stopping those trips to a holding stacker).
---
Random, but I'm reminded to ask if temp stops could have a new default condition when it just waits forever, or takes the last condition at the time it reached the stop as the default or an explicit option somewhere. Not sure of the details, but I find it handy to set a train to go somewhere, nip to the loo, and would love my character to be in my temp stop when I physically return
---
Do train no path or no destination messages surface in the global screens as alerts? I don't recall them doing that but would love that too.
---

Given this is my first post here, let me just say again: Thank you. Both for the game and, frankly, your openess. Totally see writing coherently every week is a PITA, but happy to see a post again.

R

[malecord]

Nice for the stations.

My max optimization until now has been to only activate raw minerals stations when ready and use a semaphore to release from smelting stations only the trains strictly necessary to fulfill the stations currently opened. It mitigated but not removed the issues you addressed in this patch.

My next issue with trains is how to deliver generic and occasional supplies on demand to the outposts stations. I use circuit network to send to the "central repository" all the items requested in the outposts and load trains. The issue here is that there is no way to distinguish what is request from one post and what from another. So supply trains take a lot of non needed stuff with them to the wrong place. At least now they are better at delivery with each one going to exactly one station. That's a in improvement.

[Riffix]

First off, thanks for the game and congrats on 1.0! I've owned the game for a long time but only played the tutorial initially and just came back for the full release. I am loving it so far and I am glad to see that work continues!

I still have a lot to learn but something that I think would make a good tip would be about finding the ratios of systems. I think as a new player it is hard to realize that you can use the data of how many items/second something can make or move to help figure out the ideal throughput. I'm still wrestling with this myself but I think something that indicates to the players that these values aren't just to indicate when something is faster than something else and can be used in this way would be a time/life-saver

Thanks for the game!

[NIronwolf]

Maybe a tip page on rotating? Particularly showing rotating belts with items already on them so you don't have to pick them up? From the list it looks like side-loading is going to be covered but if not, that's a quality topic.

[posila]

Maybe a tip page on rotating? Particularly showing rotating belts with items already on them so you don't have to pick them up?

For people who are like "I don't need to play Tutorial, I'll just go straight to freeplay"? I think these people won't bother with tips&tricks either.

[Z903]

Honestly I am kind of disappointed that the devs did not mention the mod version of "train stop limits" that has been updated every version for 3 years.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Concurren ... estriction