Factorio Forums

Simple wagon with ONE inventory slot, able to fit eg. 3600 of one type items, plus few filters slot.

PROS:
- Higher capacity for ores and other similar cargo.
- No more annoying tile-by-tile middle-mouse-button filtering/restricting.
- Possibility to get full wagon of ore, drop it at smelting, go for ready plates and get it to factory, without risk of loading accidentally something else. Now You can not filter "full of ore and later full of plates".
- Possibility to design different look for wagon empty/full of ore/plates, or even half-empty. Other stuff may be carried under tilt cover.
- Possibility to read wagons filters by Train Stop.

CONS:
- Impossible to mix cargo.
- Lower capacity for items with bigger stacks than regular wagon.

You can already set up conditions to unload all ores and load all plates, without risk of loading accidentally something else.
You're suggesting a new wagon type with no roof, whose sprites would depends on the carried item type. For which items would you make new spites? Only plates and ores? Anyway in my opinion it's pretty redundant with the alt mode.

You say it's possible to automatically allow wagon to accept ONLY full cargo of copper ore OR full cargo of copper plates, while not allowing to take any fuel at "stacker" stations (with multiple fuel inserters to "service" trains with many engines, both one head and dual head? Teach me*

Sprites for ores and plates may be very simple, it's just clipped texture, that can be clipped more or less to show wagon fullness. Nothing complicated here. IT does not need to even rotate at curves, if it is well "randomized". All other (also modded ores) materials (wagon is basically for ores and plates, it's impractical for other cargo, but can be used with it) just use generic tilt over cargo...


*) My goal is to build universal station, that may load selected goods to selected trains (not just "copper plates station"), and universal trains, that serves multiple purposes, based on various conditions...

Showing cargo as a graphic

Technically, that could work for vanilla trains as well. The 40 slot inventory is just right for showcasing a 4x10 assortment of items. See? That'd look pretty cool on a train I'd bet.

Eh..., I am disappointed, both with Your defeatist attitude and graphic skills...

Most entities in Factorio are just multilayered textures.

Separate layers of graphics, shadows, animations etc.

All You need to this single aspect of this idea is to:
- make simple texture for "pile of plates" or "pile of iron ore" - Similar to iron gravel path in Dectorio.
- Wagon can have only one cargo, so no mixing of different stocks is needed here.
- place it over the wagon texture.
- clip it to fit wagon openings.
- Lower clipping if wagon is emptied, raise if filled.
- Have set of masks and shadows for every rotation (as part of wagon design, one time work, identical for every possible stock).
- If cargo has no proper texture created, use tilt cover. Just insert texture that match the cargo