Factorio Forums

TL;DR

The ability to have a single physical station, split into multiple logical ones.

What ?

I'm uncertain to exactly what extent this would be useful to take things to, but at a minimum the ability to provide multiple names for a station and then to be able to individually turn those station names on and off through the circuit network would be handy. Some circuit signals would need to control the entire physical station, others just a logical one.

Why ?

A single station can generally only serve one purpose. It can be an ore pickup station. It can be a supply dropoff station. But it can't be both. If a single physical stop was able to have multiple logical stations, you could do some really cool circuit logic to route specific trains to specific stations on demand without the need for multiple physical stations. Have a train specifically carrying armor piercing rounds, another specifically carrying building supplies, another carrying sulfuric acid for uranium, and a 4th to pickup ore. When the outpost is low on ammo, it enabled the ammo 'station' and an ammo train will come. When it needs building supplies for initial setup, it'll send a building train. When it's low on sulfuric acid, it'll send that train. When it's got a full load of ore, the ore train comes by to pick it up. All handled through one physical station. I'm not certain I'd use the ability to have my ore pickup station also double as a supply dropoff as I can't figure out a way to have options for both loading and unloading without throughput sacrifice, but otherwise I'd love the ability to specifically call particular types of trains to outposts that need them. Works particularly well with the ability to specify a station as the destination only when there aren't any other valid destinations

It can be an ore pickup station. It can be a supply dropoff station. But it can't be both.

Sure it can, I feed sulfuric acid and pick up uranium ore with one stop, high-efficiency green chip production uses a single stop (in fact, the same trains) for pickup and delivery, you just have to work out how to do it. Boosting throughput and efficiency with pleasingly-compact designs is almost the name of the game.

You can also put stations directly next to each other and then use the same inserters to unload both. But it's limited to 2 or 3 stops.

Darinth wrote: Thu Oct 25, 2018 2:09 pm A single station can generally only serve one purpose. It can be an ore pickup station. It can be a supply dropoff station. But it can't be both.

Generally, that may be true, but it is possible to build such stations. I have a station that serves both as ore pickup and supply dropoff. The downside to it is, throughput is certainly not optimal because I have the loading part on one side of the train, the unloading part on the other.

There are two stops, a pickup for iron/steel, another for coal. Trains are loaded on the outside of the tracks, in between there is an area with some passive provider chests that supplies are unloaded into if a train carries them and if they are needed at the station. (Moreover, fluid trains pass the coal station on their way to my crude oil pickup. They are routed out via a special exit that is not used by cargo trains.)

The ore pickups request a train if they have at least a train load in store and if anything they provide is requested on the network. If they are out of any supplies, a train with the missing supplies is ordered. If a cargo train arrives, I check if the station has anything that is requested on the network and use combinators to set the filters on the loading filter inserters. Likewise, if any supplies are needed, the filters on the unloading filter inserters are set, and I take care to unload only the amount needed at the station.

You could build a station with multiple stops -- some for loading, some for unloading trains, some with inserters for cargo trains, some with pumps for fluid trains, with single or double side loading/unloading -- the following way:

• Set up a bunch of train stops on parallel tracks; the first track should be a bypass (in case a train arrives because of a request that has been cancelled -- perhaps because another train with the same cargo is already being served), the last an emergency exit if a train couldn't be directed to the proper stop for some reason. All the other tracks have a stop that requests a train if there is no train holding at this stop. It also signals what it needs on both the global and a local network, . All these tracks branch off a line at the input side.
• Before that, you put a kind of routing station that reads what the train carries and sends this information down the lane (using memory cells, so the information isn't lost once the train has left the routing station. At each branch, the signal from the loading/unloading train stop (sent via the local network) is compared to the data from the memory cell. If there is any match (meaning the train carries something that is needed at the stop), the signal for this branch is opened. Once the train arrives at its designated stop, a reset signal is pulsed to the memory cells to clear them so the next train can enter.
• Put a signal in front of the routing station that is on green only if no train is in the routing station or on its way to its destination stop (i.e., it is green if no train is waiting at the routing station and the memory cells have been cleared). Otherwise, the second train could open signals for the first train that is still on its way.

In case you have a multi-cargo train and you have two or more stops needing any of this, both branches will open -- but the train will branch off to the first stop only. It may be that a train carrying copper, iron, and coal has gone on its journey because there was a request for iron, but by the time it has arrived, coal and iron may be needed -- and the branch to the coal stop is the first open one the train reaches. In this case, the request for iron would be lost, so take care to re-request any cargo a train carries that is not needed at the stop it has arrived at. (In my example, the train with copper, iron, and coal arrives at the coal stop, so requests for copper and iron are sent again to the global network.)

A single station can serve for both loading and unloading, but it can't server the purpose of requesting dedicated & specific trains. Yes, you can have a specific train that picks up uranium and drops off sulfuric acid, but that's what that train and it's related stations do. A single station cannot selectively call for specific resources. It either has an 'on' setting that calls all trains that have it as a stop, or an off setting that prevents any trains from going to it. You're also guaranteed reduced throughput to have a single train station performing multiple tasks, but that's not really what I'm interested in. The concept was to allow a single station to call for specific resources or be referenced by multiple trains with different names.

I think both Mrvn and Pi-C at least understands what I'm going for, and Mrvn provides a plausible solution (one that I'd thought of, but really find to be ugly). One side of track has a series of stations, the other side has inserters (which could even be turned on/off and set to filter based on the station that has a train at it, though I think that with proper designing that'd be unnecessary). Pi-C I think is more or less providing the standard solution. A series of train stations on separate tracks, each one capable of calling for specific trains and unloading the contents as needed. Albeit, it sounds like he's using combinator logic to close/open tracks and route trains to otherwise generically named stations which is a really cool and interesting way of routing trains.

I don't like these solutions, but it doesn't look like there's anybody who really wants what I'm looking to do and I generally consider it not worth the time to develop stuff for myself.

To be fair, the LTN mod solves this exact problem.

It does from what I understand. I'd also be perfectly happy to see LTN be made vanilla. It seems really cool. I'm finishing my second playthrough though and like my achievements, so mods are banned until I've got the ones I want.