Factorio Forums

I'm working on a big rail base and I have eight stations on Advanced Circuit setup. Some reason when the first station is hooked up it ignores the 8th station. Until I manually drive the train pass the first station. but when the first station is disconnected it works fine and it goes to the 8 station. i don't believe it's a signal problem because all the stations have the same signals and i have no problem with station 2 through 7

There could be several causes for this, but the most likely one is, that the distance between the stations is just too great. You essentially provide the pathfinder with two choices, a close station that is currently occupied or a far away station that is available, at some point the distance penalty outweighs the occupied penalty.

so what you are saying it only looks so far ahead for open stations before it gives up. One thing i don't get why does it work fine when i disconnect the first station it's the same distance

jaront2008 wrote:so what you are saying it only looks so far ahead for open stations before it gives up. One thing i don't get why does it work fine when i disconnect the first station it's the same distance

No, it looks at all options, it just prefers the closer one.
Because now the 8th station is competing with the 2nd not the 1st, making it more attractive.

You can probably beat the pathfinder into submission by sticking a signal just before the first train stop (the in-game physical "train stop" object, not the logical station) and wiring that signal so it turns red when there is a train at that stop. This will add a large penalty to the first station when it's occupied, encouraging trains to continue to the eighth.