Factorio Forums

In 12.x, manual rail building was so painful that I always used FARL, and (obviously) loved being able to place 2-way rail with signals and power poles, automatically getting rid of obstacles and even water.

In 13.x, the manual rail building was improved quite a bit, and I figured I would see if the vanilla is workable. For building long stretches of rail through clear land it is fine, but it is really annoying if there are trees or rocks as you need to get out of the train and clear them, or use bots and deconstruction planner. Also, it doesn't automatically place poles (which are easy enough to drag from a moving train) or signals (which are easy to place, but not trivial to place at somewhat equal distances). Also, you need to manually add the 'return lane' in the same fashion.

As an alternative, I tried blueprint construction by having a 3-pole stretch of double rail blueprinted. This goes relatively well as the bots also clear obstacles automatically, and I can drive the train along the newly built stretches and it mostly builds itself, although you have to control your pace to make sure everything is build and you don't lose worker bots.

How do you build your rail systems in 13.x?

If you hold shift and click the rail, it will start ghost planning mode, and if you hold shift it will ignore any trees and deconstruct them if they're in your way:

Yes, I figured that out thanks to the useful tooltip. Great feature, especially for building complex pieces of rail!

However, you can't do this nearly as fast as normal clicking great distances as you need to click, wait for the bots, drive forward, click, etc. In normal rail laying, you can keep going at a decent pace and just repeatedly click in front of the train.

(Also, it doesn't do signals, poles, second lane, etc.)

vanatteveldt wrote:Yes, I figured that out thanks to the useful tooltip. Great feature, especially for building complex pieces of rail!

However, you can't do this nearly as fast as normal clicking great distances as you need to click, wait for the bots, drive forward, click, etc. In normal rail laying, you can keep going at a decent pace and just repeatedly click in front of the train.

(Also, it doesn't do signals, poles, second lane, etc.)

Thats true, but you can't expect us to do all the hard work for you

Klonan wrote:

vanatteveldt wrote:Yes, I figured that out thanks to the useful tooltip. Great feature, especially for building complex pieces of rail!

However, you can't do this nearly as fast as normal clicking great distances as you need to click, wait for the bots, drive forward, click, etc. In normal rail laying, you can keep going at a decent pace and just repeatedly click in front of the train.

(Also, it doesn't do signals, poles, second lane, etc.)

Thats true, but you can't expect us to do all the hard work for you

We don't - we have FARL for that

Sorry if my question was interpreted as whining for features

What I want to know is what the current "normal" approach is: do most people still use FARL, or is a combination or blueprints and the new train features considered good enough for long distance outpost building.

(so, the emphasis in the title was on you, not on how, i.e. how do *you* build rails nowadays?)

New system makes station areas much easier to build. Can even nicely space signals for desired train length (only in forward direction - there is a suggestion to make it show both ways).

For anything longer I'm still using FARL - it's hard to beat autoplacement of poles and signals, tree removal and filling in water as necessary.