Quality kills trains?

[NineNine]

Does quality kill the need for trains? When Legendary everything (assemblers, modules, beacons, etc) comes together, it's very easy to fill a green belt with just a few assemblers. In my experience, there's really little need for trains, if you're doing Legendary everything. Am I wrong?

[eugenekay]

There are many, many ways to play the Game.

I think trains are even MORE useful with Quality setups: they are a Filterable Chest that can move itself around, supports Circuit conditions and Interrupts when Item quantities are reached, and far outpace Throughput of Robots. You (probably) don’t want to move every single item on a Train; just the most common Intermediates to feed the hungry hungry Assemblers where needed.

[mmmPI]

Trains are required before quality, elevated ones sometimes on Nauvis or Vulcanus but for sure in Fulgora to me. And once the trains are laid out , even when getting more and more quality available doesn't give me an incentive to remove them.

If i were to start with all techs unlocked, maybe i wouldn't feel like using trains for "gathering ressources", but to bring repair packs or ammo or fuel for my defenses i wouldn't use stacked green belts . And if lay out trains for defense and expansion, i may as well use it to carry ressources.

I understand how belts are getting easier to use to transport large quantities of material but those do not "kills" train imo.

Plus trains are awesome and i would use them even if just for fun, with those elevated rails !

[Leo Felix]

Legendary quality makes production crazy efficient but trains still rock for moving stuff around. They might be great for hauling intermediates and making the factory flow better. Plus, elevated rails add some fun ways to build.

[BlakeMW]

Trains have always been limited in their own way.

For example in many speedrun categories trains don't appear at all, because it's cheaper and faster to just use belts.

In Space Age trains aren't upgraded much other than elevated rail and quality fuel, but belts are upgraded a lot, and so is the fluid system in many ways. In a recent playthrough I tore up much of my rail network on Nauvis in favor of pipeline metal. Why have trains when a pipeline is so much more compact, and with big mining drills ore patches last forever? And with all the productivity bonuses you can stack, not only do the nearest ore patches last forever, but they also allow a huge amount of production without needing to expand to additional patches, making the ease of routing trains somewhat irrelevant. Why bother with rail for such a short distance when the pipelines are much more compact compared with train unloading stations, but even over long distances, pipelines are still perfectly fine and except not being able to hitch a ride on a pipeline are cheaper and easier than rail even with the odd pumping station.

Space Age largely imposes the use of trains on Fulgora and to a lesser degree Vulcanus, often on Vulcanus you can snake a belt across the landscape, but there are some tungsten patches on islands. Also, Artillery wagons are often better than stationary artillery, for the basic reason that an artillery wagon carries more shells than a normal wagon, it doesn't hurt that it also fires the shells, but normally you want an artillery turret at each outpost anyway to detect when enemies are in range.

Anyway, I'd say that Space Age largely kills trains so far as being an optimal logistic system goes, obviously you can still use them if you like, except that Fulgora nearly enforces their use.

[mmmPI]

and so is the fluid system in many ways.

But not by "quality" this is 2.0 update that is still valid even without quality !

In a recent playthrough I tore up much of my rail network on Nauvis in favor of pipeline metal. Why have trains when a pipeline is so much more compact, and with big mining drills ore patches last forever?

To me pipeline are only easy to use when you have a single fluid in them, but if you have 2, usually people do separate pipelines, and that takes as much room as a rail track, but on a rail track you can have more than 2 ressources going easily.

Also, Artillery wagons are often better than stationary artillery, for the basic reason that an artillery wagon carries more shells than a normal wagon, it doesn't hurt that it also fires the shells, but normally you want an artillery turret at each outpost anyway to detect when enemies are in range.

If you use an artillery turret at each outpost, you will still have to provide them with shells, for which using a belt is mediocre imo, as they don't even stack and belts get no useful bonus from quality regarding logistic.

[waterBear]

The claim in the op is basically "turbo belt throughput is higher than train throughput." It's not, though. A single track with back-to-back trains has an insanely high throughput. I don't know what it is, but when people do intersection throughput testing, they regularly exceed 100 trains per minute, usually 1-4 trains. A 1-4 train can carry, say, 8000 items at 50 per stack (which is a pretty reasonable average value, as some items stack in groups of 200 or as low as 1). So that's 800000 items per minute, without much trouble, or 13,333 items per second. Now, when I look at the number 240 and I compare it to the number 13,333, I feel like one of those is pretty significantly bigger than the other number.

[BlakeMW]

To me pipeline are only easy to use when you have a single fluid in them, but if you have 2, usually people do separate pipelines, and that takes as much room as a rail track, but on a rail track you can have more than 2 ressources going easily.

It's not about the width of the rail, but the area taken up by the station (and perhaps turning loop), a pipeline has a tiny fraction of the footprint, especially if we are talking a belt based station rather than bot based station but even then pipes are great. A single copper and iron pipeline will easily support a 1000 spm base so the throughput is very good.

If you use an artillery turret at each outpost, you will still have to provide them with shells, for which using a belt is mediocre imo, as they don't even stack and belts get no useful bonus from quality regarding logistic.

Maybe you didn't understand my point, I probably wasn't very clear. I use a single artillery turret at every artillery outpost, the artillery turret is direct fed from an artillery wagon, so each outpost is effectively storing 5 shells, when those 5 shells go down it enables the train station to summon the artillery train to come do its thing. Artillery wagon is the best way to deliver shells (in both senses of the word), but an artillery turret is by far the best way to detect that shells need to be delivered.

[NineNine]

To me pipeline are only easy to use when you have a single fluid in them, but if you have 2, usually people do separate pipelines, and that takes as much room as a rail track, but on a rail track you can have more than 2 ressources going easily.

It's not about the width of the rail, but the area taken up by the station (and perhaps turning loop), a pipeline has a tiny fraction of the footprint, especially if we are talking a belt based station rather than bot based station but even then pipes are great. A single copper and iron pipeline will easily support a 1000 spm base so the throughput is very good.

That's all true, and that's part of what I'm talking about.

I'm also saying that with Legendary things, you don't need trainloads of stuff until very, very, VERY late game. I've got minining productivity up to level 59, and research productivity at 24, and I haven't built a single piece of rail in probably the last 200 hours of playing, and I don't forsee making very much any time soon. I'm certainly nowhere near building city blocks of Legendary assemblers, foundries, etc.

Without quality, you do need trainloads of stuff going to giant groups of assemblers much, much earlier in the game.... Not too long after the first rocket launch, in many games.

[mmmPI]

It's not about the width of the rail, but the area taken up by the station (and perhaps turning loop), a pipeline has a tiny fraction of the footprint, especially if we are talking a belt based station rather than bot based station but even then pipes are great. A single copper and iron pipeline will easily support a 1000 spm base so the throughput is very good.

a single train can hold dozen of different materials for which you'd need dozen belts/pipelines, which would take up much more room, i guess it depend on how you play, but this is not much related to quality itself anyway, more like the 2.0 fluid system imo

Maybe you didn't understand my point, I probably wasn't very clear. I use a single artillery turret at every artillery outpost, the artillery turret is direct fed from an artillery wagon, so each outpost is effectively storing 5 shells, when those 5 shells go down it enables the train station to summon the artillery train to come do its thing. Artillery wagon is the best way to deliver shells (in both senses of the word), but an artillery turret is by far the best way to detect that shells need to be delivered.

yeah i meant that it still require train

I'm also saying that with Legendary things, you don't need trainloads of stuff until very, very, VERY late game. I've got minining productivity up to level 59, and research productivity at 24, and I haven't built a single piece of rail in probably the last 200 hours of playing, and I don't forsee making very much any time soon. I'm certainly nowhere near building city blocks of Legendary assemblers, foundries, etc.

Do you have a gigantic pipe running the whole map to provide sulfuric acid for uranium mining ? and also one for the oil in the flammethrower turret ? because to me that's 2 tile width, and you could have used a rail there, and have many things moved on the same infrastructure. I'm not saying you have to do so, but there are things quality doesn't change imo. Even when i tried to make a base that relied only on infinite ressources from space gleba and vulcanus, i still used trains on nauvis for uranium mining and defense perimeter to provide materials on the outpost as it's so much simpler to just route a single rail and drop a station and get all the needed material rather than not using trains to provide repair packs arty shells, robots, replacement turrets walls, oil for turrets and so on

Where quality removed the need for trains is more in the personnal transportation department to me, as i use the quality mech armor and exoskeletons. I was already trying to smelt ore near patches to avoid transporting iron ore but instead using steel as it require much much less train, so in that regard quality pushed things "a little" further, but green belt aren't related to quality, stacking on belt isn't related to quality, and even those aren't removing the use of trains imo.