Fuel Wildcard condition should be true if no valid fuel is found

Post your ideas and suggestions how to improve the game.

Moderator: ickputzdirwech

Post Reply
Copy link
engineersmurf
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Aug 15, 2024 1:32 pm
Contact:
Contact engineersmurf

Fuel Wildcard condition should be true if no valid fuel is found

Post by engineersmurf »

What did you do?
I was testing a new refuelling station. In order to test it I removed all fuel from the locomotive - I had a refuel condition "Fuel(any) Fuel(wildcard) <=1)".
Factorio wildcard.jpg
Factorio wildcard.jpg (29.21 KiB) Viewed 176 times
What happened?
Nothing
What did you expect to happen instead?
As the locomotive has no fuel left and the condition is to avoid that it runs out of fuel, I expected the refuel interrupt to fire.

Does it happen always, once, or sometimes?
It happens always.

I would suggest that either
  • the Fuel(wildcard) condition becomes true if no valid fuel is on the locomotive.
  • a new interrupt condition "Empty fuel", that returns true if all fuel slots are empty

------------------------------------------------------------

A workaround is a second condition that checks if all fuel types =0. So (Fuel(any) Rocket fuel =0) AND (Fuel(any) uncommon Rocket fuel =0) AND (Fuel(any) rare Rocket fuel =0) ,... + coal, solid fuel, nuclear fuel, all burables, ... Which becomes a really long list.
Factorio wildcard workaround.jpg
Factorio wildcard workaround.jpg (57.09 KiB) Viewed 176 times




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blueprint to display behaviour:


The locomotives are setup to alternate between the two lower stations. The middle station removes all fuel from a locomotive, the upper station refuels if refuelling is triggered - It has to be provided with fuel - the requester chest is set to request 120 rocket fuel.

Observable behaviour:
  • Both locomotives start out with 1x rocket fuel, triggering the refuel condition "wildcard <=1".
  • Both will refuel and start alternating between the 2x lower stations.
  • The middle station will remove all present fuel from any locomotive
  • The "broken" locomotive will alternate the lower stations and never trigger a refuel, even it has no fuel left and the fuel wildcard is empty
  • The workaround locomotive that manually checks if any quality rocket fuel, nuclear fuel is 0, does refuel after visiting the middle station
TL/DR: An empty fuel set should trigger a true refuel condition to prevent a train running out of fuel.
Last edited by engineersmurf on Tue May 13, 2025 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Top
robot256
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 1178
Joined: Sun Mar 17, 2019 1:52 am
Contact:
Contact robot256

Re: [2.0.47] Fuel Wildcard condition should be true if no valid fuel is found

Post by robot256 »

This probably belongs in Suggestions since the fuel wildcard is functioning as it is currently intended. This is a very good writeup of why the feature needs to be refined. Based on the number of threads on the topic, everyone trying to use it discovers the same thing when they try to use nuclear fuel for the first time.

The current implementation is taylored specifically for the case where you have trains with different fuel types and you want each train to visit a different refueling stop to get its specific type. But in order for it to work, the fuels also have to have similar stack sizes/energy content, because you can only set the threshold as an item count (not energy-remaining). In which case, why do you care which fuel the train uses? So you have to set a different threshold for different trains, and there is very little value in having a wildcard at all. It should just be a "low fuel energy" interrupt.
Top
engineersmurf
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Aug 15, 2024 1:32 pm
Contact:
Contact engineersmurf

Re: [2.0.47] Fuel Wildcard condition should be true if no valid fuel is found

Post by engineersmurf »

I am working on a "universal" quality refuel station. And the fuel type check is a problem as you have pointed out. A fuel type wildcard like "any nuclear" "Any rocket",... would be helpful - or "remaining burn energy" to make this process easier (as seeds, spoilage, rocket fuel and nuclear have different millage). E.g. for rocket I would like <10, but nuclear with 3 will always be true - thus the <=1.

So there is no "easy" way to upgrade fuels - it will require manual setup for each fuel type transition. :cry:
Top
Post Reply

Return to “Ideas and Suggestions”