Factorio Forums

steinio wrote:Wow sounds really great.

This would mean the timetables are obsolete, because on demand a free train would scheduled just-in-time for duty.

siggboy wrote:
I've never managed to make the "Depart" option work in my games. I think it's bugged. Somebody mentioned a few posts ago that "Depart" does nothing if you have a "Refuel" station but the refuel option is not enabled. Maybe you should change the name of your "Refuel" station in the settings, as that is supposed to fix it.

Regarding your oil problem: there's only one good way, and that is to make a combinator circuit that actually checks for oil availability and only then sends a train to the oil outpost. That's not easy to do, however.

If you want an easy solution, just have the train wait "forever until full" at the Dead Oil deposit. It's basically be a mobile oil tank that will go to your station when it's full. Of course that means your train will spend most of its time doing nothing, waiting around at the Dead Oil deposit. Not the prettiest of solutions, but it works.

By the way: you can put two small pumps on each side of the rail tanker, resulting in a flow of 120 oil/second. That fills a tank in 21 seconds.

janook wrote:I'm having a lot of trouble getting my rail tankers to leave stations that have low oil flow.

I have Min flow rate set all the way to 200 for testing but my rail tankers all still stay at stations for their full waiting period. The tankers are assigned to a line with "depart" checked.

Choumiko wrote:The problem is that lines dont work with Depart (right now), i changed some things and nver bothered to test depart again

Xeteth wrote:By default trains check for a signal every 12 ticks. You can change this setting by hitting the "ST Settings" button with a train GUI open. Be warned though - if you make this something like 1-2 ticks it will cause smart trains to use more processing power and may result in lag. I actually have mine set to 60 ticks as losing <60 ticks to a train is minimal in terms of throughput etc of trains.

siggboy wrote:I also have a minor feature request: Can you add a "departed" signal that will pulse the number of the next destination when a train leaves? This would be useful to get a pulse when a train departs, and get the destination at the same time (it might be configured in the UI and not from a circuit, and then this would be the only way to find out where the train is going).

• Train arrives at a station, if it's a smart one, it outputs the current cargo to the combinator and then it registers itself for cargo updates (updating the constant combinator) every 12 ticks
• It checks what rules are set, if only empty/full then it registers to check that rule every 2 seconds ("Interval for checks" in the settings), if signal is set it rechecks every 12 ticks instead of 2 seconds (also checks full/empty every 12 ticks then)

Choumiko wrote:I did a quick test, and only testing whether a signal condition is fullfiled every tick makes the update time go to ~0.3 ms for one train. So ~ 54 trains at a smart station would take all the time you have for 1 tick without ups loss
That is without cargo checks, updating the constant combinator or getting the actual signal value. Depending on what the circuit network update brings in 0.13 some things might get cheaper to poll, but as i see it, the condition check itself is already as fast as it can get.

siggboy wrote:

Xeteth wrote:By default trains check for a signal every 12 ticks. You can change this setting by hitting the "ST Settings" button with a train GUI open. Be warned though - if you make this something like 1-2 ticks it will cause smart trains to use more processing power and may result in lag. I actually have mine set to 60 ticks as losing <60 ticks to a train is minimal in terms of throughput etc of trains.

It's not about the throughput. For my "Logistic Network of Trains" scheduler it's important that the system stays in sync -- because I not only send the train away but I also signal to the outpost that the train is incoming.

And it's a lot easier if you can work with 1-tick signals everywhere, because then you don't need to make registers to hold the signal until some condition becomes "true" (if you look at my current design there are several combinators that I could shave off if 1-tick signals did reliably work).

Furthermore, there's no direct, explicit feedback from the station along the lines of "the train has now left to station #n", it has to be implied/deduced from the fact that (a) train-at-station goes from 1-to-0 and (b) the signal that you've written to the station yourself.

siggboy wrote:The numbers above suggest that it would be no problem at all to at least make the signal check every tick, and thus make it possible to trigger a train departure with pulsed signals. This could then be the default behavior of the smart train station (I'd personally prefer that a lot over having to change a somewhat obscure setting to make certain circuits work).

All the other things you've mentioned don't have to happen every tick (e.g. updating cargo every tick would be unreasonable, since nobody needs that information at such a high resolution).

siggboy wrote:While I have your attention one other thing: When you deconstruct a smart train station with robots, then the two proxy objects (the combinator and the lamp) are not removed from the map. In fact, the only way to remove those is to replace the train station and remove it manually ("mine" it). If you can't do that there's no way to remove the proxy objects at all, without mods or console commands.

Do you think it's possible that the proxy objects will be removed if the thing is deconstructed with robots?

Xeteth wrote:Unfortunately I think we're always going to see at least some performance impact on entities checking for circuit network condition until they change the way the circuit network actually works in the game; that it would work on a 'push' mechanism rather than a 'pull' mechanism (ie. when the condition becomes true it tells all entities connected to it's output that something has occurred, whereas now every single entity checks every single update).

FFF #138 wrote:Train Station - read the contents of the stopped train and control trains by disabling/enabling the station
Train Signals - still in the process of designing it. Basically be able to stop trains or see if a train is about to arrive

Choumiko wrote:Anyways, i'll try to make the individual updates as modular as possible, so that each interval can be adjusted as one wants.

siggboy wrote:Do you think it's possible that the proxy objects will be removed if the thing is deconstructed with robots?

It should be removed with the station, at least the event is registered to do so..

FFF #138 wrote:Train Station - read the contents of the stopped train and control trains by disabling/enabling the station
Train Signals - still in the process of designing it. Basically be able to stop trains or see if a train is about to arrive

makes it into the first 0.13 release. This sounds like it could either make SmartTrains nearly obsolete or at least improve performance by a huge amount

Xeteth wrote:in my current setup I send the signal to the smart station and once the train leaves it waits for a "train is at station = 0" return so it knows that the train is sent. I also need to register that a train has been sent (and where) so that it can be stored in memory cells to keep track of my trains.

Here's a quick run down of how my system works, it sounds like you might have something similar but thought I'd share anyway;

• Your demo maps are really staggering. I was quite amazed when I saw the trains tutorial video that you and ColWill made, because of how much work you put into the map. This is the same, very impressive.
• It's interesting that you actually used a solar farm for energy instead of just hiding a "test mode solar panel" or equivalent somewhere. And by making fake mining outposts with actual ore fields and mining drills you've firmly stepped over the "ludicrous line" . (That's not to say that it isn't very cute.)
• Distributing the train depot over many different stations is quite different from what I've built. You can handle many trains at once, but it seems to me you lose a lot of that advantage because you need to be careful not to send too many orders for the same outpost, and you have that 60 tick delay. In my setup I have only 1 depot, and all trains have to go through there, so there are no such problems. It would be interesting to figure out which approach gives better throughput, or if that never even becomes a concern on real maps.
• I think you've over-engineered the part that distributes the trains. Is it really necessary to make complex calculations involving resource flow so you're able to send several trains to the same outpost simultaneously? You're solving the problem of having to carry 1.5k ore per wagon-minute over a train distance of a minute, per outpost. That's a very extreme edge case. The outpost would need to mine 6k (200 mining drills) and be at least 60 seconds away (one-way) before you'd need a second train on that rail to pick up everything (that's for a 4-wagon train).
• Can your unloading stations request resources? Do you take resource demand into account? In my current setup I won't bring in resources that are not in demand by the factory, because that obviously wastes bandwidth and blocks trains. In my next version I also want to assign the unload stations dynamically to each train, so they would behave much like requester chests.
• You seem to use a lot of combinators, are those general purpose circuits (for example the memory cells)? Do you use any sort of CPU to make the various calculations?

terror_gnom wrote:Can´t you set a internal Variable to the train station, that remembers the stationnumber (and #line) until a train leaves? Should be more easy in Lua than with combinators

When there is written a second number before a train left, just override the old one (or build them up in a stack, would be great, I dont like to build the register for several trains )

siggboy wrote:It only matters if it is the default; if you have to set it manually to "1 tick" and then it comes with all sorts of strings attached ("will hurt UPS after 20 stations") then it's not worth making a change.

siggboy wrote:Nope. If you "mine" the station by hand it gets all removed just fine. But if you deconstruct the station with robots (usually along with other entities), then both proxy objects will remain on the map (and they can't be mined, they only way to remove them is to reconstruct a smart train station on top and mining it).

FFF #138 wrote:Train Station - read the contents of the stopped train and control trains by disabling/enabling the station
Train Signals - still in the process of designing it. Basically be able to stop trains or see if a train is about to arrive

makes it into the first 0.13 release. This sounds like it could either make SmartTrains nearly obsolete or at least improve performance by a huge amount

Choumiko wrote:Probably true. I'm curious how they gonna make sure disabling/enabling train stations via the network doesn't leas to no path issues (e.g. disabling a trainstation while there still trains en route to that station and skipping it has them in a place where they can't get to the next one).

For pulsing the destination: Right now the combinator output gets set to nothing as soon (i.e. same tick) as the train leaves. I think if i set the destination signal 1 tick before it leaves that should be enough to create the pulse.

Tick:               1 2 3 4 5
train-at-station:   1 1 0 0 0    (the "Train Signal" signal)
train-has-left:     0 0 5 0 0    ("5" is the station number)
other signals:      x x 0 0 0    (stuff like wagon count etc.)

siggboy wrote:

terror_gnom wrote:Can´t you set a internal Variable to the train station, that remembers the stationnumber (and #line) until a train leaves? Should be more easy in Lua than with combinators

When there is written a second number before a train left, just override the old one (or build them up in a stack, would be great, I dont like to build the register for several trains )

The mod would still have to check the signal condition every tick (because that's where the value that you want to buffer in an "internal variable" comes from). As I understand it, checking the signal condition once per tick might be a performance problem. Holding the target station number is not the real issue here.

terror_gnom wrote:Ahh, I thought the real problem is the train checking the where it´s journey will go... Is lua that slow compared to the C implementation of the combinators?

siggboy wrote:My system is somewhat different, please take a look at it here. It would be great if you could look at it, any sort of feedback is appreciated (my post has a very detailed explanation of the entire setup).

Importantly, my setup only requires about 15 combinators for the depot and about 10 combinators for each outpost. That's way smaller than what you've built. The circuits are highly optimized to save space, I don't use things like general purpose memory cells, it's more like custom hardware. I wanted to pack as much functionality as possible into a setup that I can still peddle to the "average player" who might be interested in such a setup but is not ready to put a lot of work into setting it up.

siggboy wrote:I have a lot of things to say about your project, and a lot of questions, I'll try to keep it short.

Most important:

1. Can we have a save game of this demo map (from the video)? It's the only way to understand it really, unless you have schematic diagrams (I suppose not, it's a ton of work to make those...)
2. Would it be possible to talk to you on Discord about this?

siggboy wrote:

• Your demo maps are really staggering. I was quite amazed when I saw the trains tutorial video that you and ColWill made, because of how much work you put into the map. This is the same, very impressive.
• It's interesting that you actually used a solar farm for energy instead of just hiding a "test mode solar panel" or equivalent somewhere. And by making fake mining outposts with actual ore fields and mining drills you've firmly stepped over the "ludicrous line" . (That's not to say that it isn't very cute.)

siggboy wrote:

• Distributing the train depot over many different stations is quite different from what I've built. You can handle many trains at once, but it seems to me you lose a lot of that advantage because you need to be careful not to send too many orders for the same outpost, and you have that 60 tick delay. In my setup I have only 1 depot, and all trains have to go through there, so there are no such problems. It would be interesting to figure out which approach gives better throughput, or if that never even becomes a concern on real maps.
• I think you've over-engineered the part that distributes the trains. Is it really necessary to make complex calculations involving resource flow so you're able to send several trains to the same outpost simultaneously? You're solving the problem of having to carry 1.5k ore per wagon-minute over a train distance of a minute, per outpost. That's a very extreme edge case. The outpost would need to mine 6k (200 mining drills) and be at least 60 seconds away (one-way) before you'd need a second train on that rail to pick up everything (that's for a 4-wagon train).

siggboy wrote:

• Can your unloading stations request resources? Do you take resource demand into account? In my current setup I won't bring in resources that are not in demand by the factory, because that obviously wastes bandwidth and blocks trains. In my next version I also want to assign the unload stations dynamically to each train, so they would behave much like requester chests.

siggboy wrote:

• You seem to use a lot of combinators, are those general purpose circuits (for example the memory cells)? Do you use any sort of CPU to make the various calculations?

Xeteth wrote:That's actually a really neat and simple setup, well done! I like how you essentially 'mute' an outpost that has a train incoming; that is certainly easier than using memory cells and having a system calculate trains based on the data.

I am glad you have decided to do it this way; it shows the devs (Twinsen in particular) that adding certain functionality that is in Smart Trains could be adapted and integrated into the base game and allow players to come up with automated train systems without getting too complex.

One question I have though; is there a way of you detecting when an outpost has run dry and needs to be removed (and a final train sent to empty the outpost)? I'm guessing the idea is that the player would take a disposal train of sorts and just manually get the last remaining ore which is not a huge issue.

1. I am currently finishing off the system, there's a little more work to do on it but I intend to release it to everyone once it is finished - I'll let you know when it's done :)

2. Sure! You can find me on Colonelwill's discord server here, I'm always up for talking anything Factorio - https://discord.gg/0kerBVfUSMlHuoqz :)

Thanks! I find it much easier to work with large scale combinator systems when I just have a free space and purpose built world to deal with. I actually have a blank concreted world scenario saved for any future projects haha

These features are mainly the result of the system being built for an RSO map; they are likely very much over-engineered for a vanilla map.

There are multiple unloading stations for the main factory due to the high resource demand and I have come up with a system that dynamically ensures that incoming trains distribute each load to the unloaders as required. Here's a short video of this in action (sorry no sound).

You can see that the trains are waiting in the stacker until the resource count in the unloader drops below a certain threshold and it 'requests' a train load from the stacker. This allows us to keep a buffer of resources in the trains that are waiting in the stacker and that they are distributed as needed.

There is a set limit to how many trains of each resource type can be active at any given time (15 by default) which ensures that you don't end up with 60 iron trains or 60 copper trains etc and this limit is easily adjustable within the controller.

The main controller part uses a lot of combinators, most of which are the memory cells which hold the information for each outpost.

Note that I have absolutely no prior knowledge of computer science and have taught myself a decent amount of basic computer science throughout learning combinators (with the help of some fantastic people in the community I might add!) and as such there is probably more elegant or simple ways of achieving what I have come up with.

I love seeing other setups and how they work as I find there are always multiple ways of implementing these kinds of setups

(check out Hoefni_X's Smart Trains setup, it's also very awesome!).

Thanks for the kind words! It was a great read going through your post about your system. I'll keep you updated on my progress; I'm hoping to be finished with my system in the next week or two at most :)