Factorio Forums

TL;DR: allow additional train wait conditions to be added to stations.

Often you have a few or even many trains visiting the same station in their routes (eg a fuel station or a iron plate pickup station). The wait conditions are often the same for every train at one station. Instead of having to set these conditions for every train, it’d be easier to just be able to set wait conditions in the station menu. These conditions would be additional to the conditions set for this train station in the train menu.

The conditions would be “train conditions OR station conditions” or “train conditions AND station conditions”. This could either be fixed by the developer or an option to the user. The wait conditions should be synced across all stations with a matching name.

If no conditions are set in the train menu, only the station’s conditions would apply.

The progress bars visible for wait conditions shown in 0.17 could show the progress for the train currently in the station when the station GUI is opened.

Thanks for reading and thanks for the game!

ikkentim wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 1:06 pm TL;DR: allow additional train wait conditions to be added to stations.

Often you have a few or even many trains visiting the same station in their routes (eg a fuel station or a iron plate pickup station). The wait conditions are often the same for every train at one station. Instead of having to set these conditions for every train, it’d be easier to just be able to set wait conditions in the station menu. These conditions would be additional to the conditions set for this train station in the train menu.

Not quite what you hope for, I'm afraid, but you can achieve something like this already with combinators. In the stations, check the boxes "Send to train", "Read train contents", and "Read stopped train". Then set "Inactivity > 120 AND Circuit: GREEN > 0" as waiting condition for all stations in all trains. That was the easy part. Now you only have to set up combinators that check for whatever leave condition you want and send a GREEN signal to the station when it is fulfilled. If a station is waiting for iron plates, you could check if a train has some and activate the unloading inserters if it does. If a train without iron plates arrives, don't activate the inserters but send a GREEN signal immediately. A GREEN signal could also be sent immediately when a train with iron plates arrives but the station already has more than it can handle. The only problem is, it involves a lot of combinator magic, and even more so if you want to check for more complex conditions.

BTW: I have made good experiences with "Inactivity > 120" in my last game. In 0.16.51, that much time was needed for pumps to hook up to fluid wagons. I had used "Inactivity > 60" before as that worked with normal cargo wagons. Then I ran out of oil and noticed that oil trains had visited that station but left before they could be emptied. It could be different in 0.17, though, but I haven't tried yet.

I'm not sure if it is necessary to introduce the new concept of "station conditions", since we already have the concept of a circuit network, which allows for local station conditions.

However, since many players find the circuit network too complicated, your suggestion may make it easier for these players.

Also, you are right that it would make things easier if the wait conditions for all trains visiting a station would default to station conditions, so that, in most cases, you wouln't have to set individual wait conditions for the train.

Gotta say, I really like the idea of having "default conditions" for a station, set that and whenever you add the station to a schedule those get added automatically, to do with as you please afterwards.