Optera wrote:Sadly I can't take credit for coming up with that single combinator decoder. It's a XKnight design I struggled to understand for an hour myself, which is why I added the BP String, so those who don't know about binary representation can start using it.
even though you might not have invented that decoder, you have added the binary encoded signals, and thus made it possible to use the decoder in stations etc.
today, people grow up with computers and are only
using programs, and many don't know a bit (pun intended) about bits, bytes and logic. although it is not necessary to know such details when using an Xbox or a smartphone, it's always good to have at least a basic understanding of the basics. when i got in contact with computers for the first time, it was a teaching program for boolean logic on a typewriter terminal of a PDP-11 (probably a
PDP-11/20) :-)
Optera wrote:I guess I'm guilty of using marketing speech ...
"a depot able to service any L-x composition with base locomotives" doesn't sound nearly as nice :D
:-)
just add the unloader for the first position and you can almost keep the original description
"A depot able to service any
vanilla train composition of length 4 or lower"
Optera wrote:Anson wrote:it would be nice if the mod itself could provide an additional general signal for "number and position of ANY engines" (or wagons).
Adding general locomotive and wagon detected signals is easily done, but I refrained from adding any more signals as they add up quite fast. They might also be useless when used with mods like Junk Train or Yuoki Rails. Those have different carriage lengths than base, so you will need to use setups that can not only service any order but also account for different length.
What I do when servicing multiple locomotives with only base cargo wagon and rail tanker is I switch the logic from locomotive signal to cargo wagon signal and use an arithmetic combinator with "cargo wagon + rail tanker = cargo wagon".
in my test setup, i currently have 6 such engine signals, 6 such wagons signals, and 4 other signals from your mod. when i reenable other mods and get things like wagon MK2 and MK3, electric engines, etc,
that will add up quickly on the number of signals, but combined signals will only be
just one more signal for engines and wagons, no matter how many different units i add.
the length of junk train units seems to be only a bug in that mod and not intended, caused by bad conversion from the old system of having different lengths for horizontal and vertical stations. and mixing of engines and wagons with different length is no good idea anyway.
i converted the signals similarly to what you suggest. but i let the addition be done by just connecting combinators in parallel, chaining the station's output to all their inputs and chaining all their outputs to the final decoder combinator. this way more "converters" can easily be added for other engine or wagon types, and the signal propagation time is always a constant 1 (or 2 including the decoder).
The problem with this setup is that i need to do this work for each single depot station, in my case for a total of 20*6=120 combinators on my 20 slot stacker. doing it for wagons instead of engines would be the same since i also have 6 wagon types (some of them nort used, but i probably won't remember that when adding more wagons someday). a combined signal from the mod would greatly reduce work and space to set this up.
edit: on reading what i just wrote, i got an idea to halve the number of combinators. instead of "engine1 * 1 = diesel engine", etc six times, i can simply do "engine1 + engine2 = diesel engine", etc three times (connecting all three outputs just like i did before with six outputs). any ideas for reducing that even more ?
Optera wrote:I never thought anyone would be pushing cargo wagons.
Are you running a CC-LL-CC setup or something similar?
If so what are the benefits to a L-CCCC-L composition?
it's much simpler than that :-)
on some maps, i use "oneway trains" (anything from L-C to LLL-CCCCCC) setups. when i need more wagons or more engines, i can easily add them to the respective end of the train. if i only need more engines I also can add them to the end to help by pushing the train and thus don't need to adjust all loading and unloading stations.
on other maps i use "twoway trains" like L(forward)-C-L(backward), sometimes even with different numbers of engines for the two directions (depending on whether the train only goes backwards for leaving a terminus station and then turns around again, or whether it always goes forward when fully loaded and backward when empty) and it is only easy to add more engines to these trains for either direction, but not wagons. this also includes simple cases like using a LL setup for "personal transport" to get around quickly and adding a wagon to either end of it for transporting some items eg when i have harvested too much wood or artifacts.
if i temporarily add a wagon to such LCL trains, i end up with LCLC or CLCL and want to be prepared for such cases. in general, i prefer building "defensively", to always be prepared and not get surprising problems much later when i already have almost forgotten about the restrictions of depots that i built days before.
anyway, when there is almost no cost in adding a simple inserter with chest to position 0, why make it differently than for all other positions ? :-)
Optera wrote:Connecting lamps of different stops is not intended. ;)
Short Circuit detection checks if a lamp always receives only one color signal. Since the hidden combinator, providing the lamp color signal, is connected by green wire those add up when connecting lamps with green wires triggering the detection.
that makes sense, but as unsuspecting user, i wanted to save on setting up a separate constant combinator with the "stop is depot" and all the power-of-2 signals for each of 20 depot stops. i was a bit confused at first when i saw you inputting additional signals to the station, but after thinking for a moment, i saw that those signals were not for real items, but only for signals 0-9. thus it was too tempting to directly chain the signals from one combinator to all those stations ...
btw: i also chained one constant combinator to all requester chests and set all requester chests to "Mode of Operation: set requests". by only changing the value in that single constant combinator, i now can reprogram the whole system to fuel trains with one or more other types of fuel, eg when i have too much wood, or when i start working with oil, using solid fuel or rocket fuel, or with some mods even burning alien artifacts. the only problem i noticed when changing the fuel type is on trains that have only one fuel slot or that useup all their fuel slots for long roundtrips since they start refueling with the new type only when the last unit of the old fuel is used up, and that almost always isn't good enough to go back to the depot in time (worst when switching from wood and/or for longer distances)
Optera wrote:I felt like I had to add some protection against short circuiting input and output,
until now, i never had problems accidentally connecting input and output. but a few times, i misclicked and connected wires to the station itself instead of the input or output because the station partially overlaps input and output.
btw: really nice that you gave proper names to those components, eg "Logistic Train Stop Input" instead of "Lamp" :-)
SHiRKiT wrote:Now that I started using this mod, I can't play without it, as my setups are 300% more efficient IMO.
it takes a bit away from the challenge of managing everything yourself and setting up huge contraptions with hundreds of combinators. but i won't miss that challenge and instead keep on watching other people who do that (there is a thread about this).
I might try to do some other challenges instead, maybe a megafactory with almost no belts (at least no mainbus) and no robots (at least reducing robot range to single roboports, one for each station), and for any transport using only trains with this mod :-)
