Factorio Forums

TL;DR

When placing signals along a train track, let us have a modifier that automatically places a rail signal blueprint every so often so we don't have to do it manually.

What?

If you've ever played Transport Tycoon you'll know exactly what I mean. When placing signals on the train tracks there you can hold ctrl (IIRC) and drag it along the tracks for a bit and it will automaticly place signals with a set distance between them until the next intersection. This could be added to the automatic rail placing when holding shift for instance. Could have a setting in the menu for how far it should be between signals, though I suggest just using the same setting that currently sets the length of the displayed train when placing signals now. I'm not talking about signalling the intersections themselves, but the long stretches of track between them.

Why?

The reason I'm asking about this is because placing the signals is a tedious and laborious task when placing down rails, thus I gravitate towards using rail blueprints, but that makes for a less exciting base design with straight rails everywhere.

There's a similar mechanism in OpenTTD that does exactly this, but the main difference with Factorio is that in OpenTTD you only need money to buy them and in Factorio, you'll need the items in your inventory (though ghosting them could also fix that, which could then be placed by robots)

https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Buil ... of-signals

Yeah, I'm talking about a ghost of the rail signal, I called it a blueprint, perhaps ghost is the right terminology. And the mechanism I'm talking about is the one you mention from OpenTTD, I thought it already was in the original, but it's been years since I played that so it's hard to remember .