Factorio Forums

80% of the time, I'm playing games which feature only basic trains. Those trains merely do 1 thing: Load at a given station and drop off at another. They repeat the same task over and over: Go to Station X, wait until empty or inactive for 5 seconds, go back to Y. Wait there until full or inactive for 5 seconds and go back to X.

This is however, a pretty annoying process to set up, especially for new players. It would be really nice if such a basic train setup could be clicked through an interface and the trains optimize them self. Let's say I have 3 stations, 2 coal station where I load coal and 1 where I unload.

I would mark the 2 coal stations to be Coal + Load and the unload station I would mark as Coal + Unload. Then I would take the 2 trains and "connect" them to those 2. This means that if a train goes from Unload to Load X, the other train could detect that and head to Load Y. To take it even further, this could be connected to a network and read the station contents to automatically decide which station would be the best loading station. To take it another step further, it could even decide where to unload based on availability.

I don't get how setting up a train to pick up from X and deliver to Y is an annoying process to set up. The worst is building the first rails, especially if you don't have a personal roboport yet. Setting the trains is easy, and in fact if you want to move the outpost you don't even have to touch the trains, simply remove the old train stop and rename the new one to the same name.

Beside that, 0.15 will probably have a way of reading train contents which should enable all the functionality you've requested.

As for how you're asking for it to be done, it's not in the spirit of the game. Factorio is "you can set it up however you want but you really need to think for it to be efficient". I mean two trains unloading to a single outpost is no problem, and if you want to take it further you can connect the outposts with the unloading area and use a coal signal to trigger a delivery. Simple. For more complex networks you'll need more complex circuits, and yeah it's not a simple straightforward process but that's the gameplay, and it allows you to do it however you want. Also maybe coming in 0.15 is skipping stops that aren't currently applicable, allowing for a totally customisable train route, and radars transmitting circuit signals long distances so you don't need to circuit your entire rail line.