Inserters shouldn't take fuel from locomotives

[Chibiabos]

If a fix is planned, I hope it won't disallow removing coal from train /cars/ and mistaking that for fuel from the engine. I've never had to actually use trains to haul coal, but its potentially possible and part of the open world design philosophy, I think, should be to make it as open to as many different playstyles as possible (and I could imagine Arumba or some other professional player possibly challenging themselves with something along the lines of 'Use Only Burner Tech' for which coal trains would probably become a necessity once your complex gets large enough).

[Cordylus]

To me, all the complaints I've read here sound like valid penalties for poor station design.

No. It's a problem on the big stations in the huge rail network with the multiple kinds of trains in motion.

[n9103]

Don't run different length double-head trains at the same station, and/or set any inserters that will be unloading from possible engines to unload specific types of cargo only.

Bad enough that you've extended a monorail system to more than one train and stop, but to make a full system of it? For shame

[Ranakastrasz]

This would be helpful. For now, you can use smart Inserters, and set them all to extract the four ore types. Make sure you use the Copy-settings to save time.

[Nova]

@n9103: That would disallow a big part of trains.


The whole topic will be solved as soon as we can use smart logic on the inventory of trains and waggons. But until then, in my opinion we should disallow taking fuel out of the fuel slot of trains.

[n9103]

You mean it would force a lot of people to stop using an inferior design for their trains.

[Nova]

It would force people to either design big, space-wasting turning circles (I like them, but whatever) or double the amount of stations and tracks. Removing the ability to extract fuel from the fuel slot is simple and easy.
Oh, and you remove one possible design decision. More possible designs = better, in the average case.

[n9103]

Well, preventing fuel from being removed would prevent me from making my own design decision.
I've ended up placing low capacity chests at remote outposts, and have them supply coal to trains. They would also take coal if there was less than 10 coal in the box.
Good way to prevent your trains from being stranded in case you messed up something in your fueling or scheduling system and didn't notice until a good deal later. Or, a decent way to create routes that don't depend on a central refueling point, so long as they get visited by a train that did.
When I decide to set up a general repair/combat/etc supply train, I often use it to stock these outposts as well, not just with supplies, but also with the fuel in the engine. It's like 2 free slots of fuel before you actually have to worry about running out.

[bobingabout]

There is another possible issue from removing fuel from the train.

in the instance where every peice of fuel was removed, the train would leave the station, run out of fuel in it's current burner, then stop in the middle of nowhere to be eaten by biters.


Being able to remove fuel from the fuel slot is a bad idea, if you want fuel somewhere, put it in a cargo wagon instead.

[Tinyboss]

I've used the locomotive to supply coal to an outpost, too, and I thought it was kind of cool. I'm not sure I would have done it that way if I'd known about setting filters on cargo car slots, though. I can see both sides of the argument.


Here's a suggestion: what if we make inserters unable to remove fuel from locomotives (treating it like input materials in assemblers), but then we allow smart inserters to take anything in their filter from any container. So a smart inserter is allowed to take fuel from a locomotive, or alien artifacts from a purple science assembler, or iron plates from a steel furnace, etc.

This way, nobody gets surprised that inserters have stolen their train fuel, since you have to literally tell it to remove coal. But if you want to do that, it's easy to set up. It also gives us some more options (not sure how useful stealing inputs from assemblers would be, but someone might want to), and makes smart inserters behave sort of like the player avatar, who can also steal materials from an assembler. If we want to carry this even further, we could allow smart inserters to put outputs back into an assembler, just like the player can.

[Drury]

You mean it would force a lot of people to stop using an inferior design for their trains.

Funny you should say that, transporting fuel inside fuel tanks is definitely all but inferior design choice.

[n9103]

There is another possible issue from removing fuel from the train.

in the instance where every peice of fuel was removed, the train would leave the station, run out of fuel in it's current burner, then stop in the middle of nowhere to be eaten by biters.


Being able to remove fuel from the fuel slot is a bad idea, if you want fuel somewhere, put it in a cargo wagon instead.

I've literally never had this happen, since all the outposts were limited to no more than 10 coal at a time (in the top-off setup, rather than relay which often uses Solid Fuel instead) and by the time I'd be ready to have a train running to the 11th+ outposts, I've long torn down the earlier ones, so the most a single train could lose per circuit is 100 fuel, and I don't think I've ever built a practical train circuit that used 50+ coal.

[Rahjital]

Honestly, transporting fuel in a locomotive is a silly idea. If you add a single wagon to the locomotive you can transport a lot more without much speed loss, and if you don't want the capacity, why use a train at all?

It really seems to me that the benefits of this suggestion far outweigh the negatives.

[Tinyboss]

No opinions on only letting smart inserters do it?

[Drury]

The unfortunate last post of a page.

There might be an issue when you actually use smart inserters for unloading coal out of multipurpose carriages.

[Tinyboss]

The unfortunate last post of a page.

There might be an issue when you actually use smart inserters for unloading coal out of multipurpose carriages.

By the time a player is using smart inserters on mixed cargo, they probably have enough understanding to deal with it. But I agree, that's the main downside.

[n9103]

No opinions on only letting smart inserters do it?

Sounds like an interesting compromise.
That implementation has my vote.

[The Lone Wolfling]

No opinions on only letting smart inserters do it?

Sounds like an interesting compromise.
That implementation has my vote.

Ditto.

[Tinyboss]

Sounds like an interesting compromise.
That implementation has my vote.

Ditto.

Glad to hear it! I made a thread in the Suggestions forum, if you'd like to support it.

[Yttrium]

I think the game handles the locomotives fine when it comes to fuel extraction using inserters, If you are having problems with inserters stealing fuel from the locomotive use smart inserters with filters to prevent such a problem. You can't go change the entire game around it.