Space Age: Fulgora: recommendations for rail between islands?

[AileTheAlien]

Does anyone have a recommendation for how to structure railways between islands on Fulgora, before you get deep-oil elevated-rail-foundations? (Note, I'm stuck on Fulgora without a robot network on Nauvis. I need to make Fulgora work before I can do anything else.) On Nauvis when I want to upgrade from single trains on dedicated tracks, I use two rails side by side, with one side going one direction and the other side going the other direction, like a highway in North America. They then split off with a small turn into a dedicated station:

nauvis rail highway

nauvis.jpg (128.33 KiB) Viewed 1535 times

This saves on the amount of rail, since all my trains have the same type of fuel, the same length, etc, and so go the same speed. I don't have a need for passing lanes like some of the blueprints I see on Factorio School. (I'll probably never upgrade past two-way trains with one cargo/fluid wagon each. Aka 1-1-1 trains.)

However, it seems like on Fulgora I never have enough space for my rails, because turns rail have a wide radius, and elevated rail foundations also take up a bit more room. Plus, most of the shallow-oil areas eventually get skinny, so I could only have a single lane of rail, and not two side by side. So far, I'm building out a big one-way loop of rail, with sections that split off onto larger islands:

fulgora rail loop

fulgora.jpg (156.55 KiB) Viewed 1535 times

Does that seem good enough? Since I don't have any cliff explosives because I haven't done Vulcanus yet, I'm going to try having train stations that use requester chests with circuits, to fill up a wagon with exactly one type of item, then send it off to a station that's currently requesting that exact item. (Fluids I think I'll have to make locally, because I don't think I can guarantee I'll always empty out a tank, pump, or pipe line, and the "purge" button can't be triggered by circuit as far as I know.) This might fail horribly, so if anyone has tips for trains / rails in this limited space, I'd be grateful for them!

[mmmPI]

I wouldn't recommend shipping more than 1 ressource before getting access to the technology that extend the elevated rails possibilities on the deep oil ocean. Just scrap. And doing it "as you can" because it's tricky not all island allow you to choose how to connect them sometimes there aren't many choices for where to place support. Just point A to point B disconnected pieces of staight lane to get access to a nearby island is enough to get past the stages where you have to worry about rail positionning, it's only the power supply then, because those require foundations.

Do you feel you need to make much more than just "scrap" go by train or is it anticipation ?

[AileTheAlien]

Do you feel you need to make much more than just "scrap" go by train or is it anticipation ?

Trains make my logistics much easier, because I can name stations to get specific resources. (I also made this proof of concept that lets me send generic trains to any station with interrupts and keep the pickup stations with specific icons in their names. So I'm pretty comfortable with signals and trains.) If I ship scrap everywhere, I'll need a lot of overflow lines and chests, plus recyclers just to process the materials. If I centralize my scrap-recyclers, I can supply those 12 resources to islands that need them, and my other islands can supply other specific intermediates, the same way as Nauvis. If I do point-to-point rail lines for each resource or whatever, I'll be using up a lot more rail and foundations, for a type of simplicity that make my other stuff more complicated, expensive, etc.

[mmmPI]

You can unlock the ability to make rails everywhere using a single point to point rails with 1 island is what i meant. Then the question of recommandation no longer really matters imo.

[AileTheAlien]

You can unlock the ability to make rails everywhere using a single point to point rails

Deep-oil foundation tech needs Vulcanus research so I can't actually research it on this planet.

[mmmPI]

I would recommend getting that tech before scaling past the 1 island point to point network

[AileTheAlien]

I would recommend getting that tech

You're not reading what I wrote - it needs Vulcanus science to research, and I'm on Fulgora. I literally cannot research that technology in this game until I build another space platform and escape this planet.

EDIT:
Anyways, I've solved this with a big, one-way loop that branches off to other islands with two-way stations for sub-factories:

big loop

rail.png (141.78 KiB) Viewed 1363 times

[mmmPI]

I would recommend getting that tech

You're not reading what I wrote - it needs Vulcanus science to research, and I'm on Fulgora. I literally cannot research that technology in this game until I build another space platform and escape this planet.

I am reading what you wrote maybe you didn't understand, i try to explain again : there is no need to make an extensive network in Fulgora, before you have access to the tech that allow you to build in the deep ocean.

Network established before that will be rebuild anayway. And in the meantime they will look temporary so spending time connecting that many island i think again is 'useless'. You asked for some tips in your original post. A tip would be : Don't lose time making such network because the throughput will be low if you try to increase, and you don't need it at this stage of the game.

Yes , later when you have access to more planets and more technology it make sense to go back to Fulgora and extend the rails.

When you asked "does that look good enough ?" (i assumed for the future too) , the answer would be " it's ok for a temporary thing, and a getting few reserch done but you'll feel throughput limited later and need rebuild everything.

When you ask for recommendaton on how to structure trains between islands on Fulgora before getting the tech, the answer would be : i recommend not bothering much, since anything even point to point disconnected lane works and at this stage you can do with only shipping scrap from 1 or 2 "rich' island to a "big" island for a long time ( like enough time to go to other planet and get useful tech and come back). That's my point.