Jabor posted:

If you grab a train signal and stand next to the intersection, you can see how the existing signals divide up the rails into blocks.

This sort of area is a problem:


Because it's all one block, a train on the inner loop ends up conflicting with every other train traversing that same arc - what you'd need to do is place a chain signal before the crossover point to the south line, so that trains only on the inner loop only need to reserve the inner loop and the not the crossover - and similarly on the middle track, you'd want a chain signal before each merge or crossover so that the blocks only cover the paths that the train actually takes. But as you can see, there's no room to place those signals - the only way to fix it is to make the intersection bigger.

Xerol posted:

Since you have mid-block lane swaps available, is there a reason to have paths for trains to change lanes mid-intersection? I think you could cut down on complexity significantly by having the outer lanes only able to make right turns. Only other way I could think of getting the room to fix the intersection in general would be to move the stations back, and I'm not sure if you have room in your system for that.

Darox posted:

If you're using a dozen pumps and tanks in an amalgam like that then there's no benefit. If you're using a 1 or 2 wagon train it doesn't matter. If you're using 4+ wagon trains with a compact design then you need some basic circuits to stop the system being dumb when a train is loading because otherwise as the outer tanks are drained the pumps will start stealing from the inner tanks to fill them and not fill the train fully.

That's what a fluid balanced station is and why you'd want it. Directly pumping to/from tanks is also a lot faster than trying to pump into pipes and waiting for fluid spread.

e: the same is true in reverse, for unloading if you don't balance it the outer tanks start pushing into the inner tanks and block the train from unloading fully, significantly slowing down the unloading speed.

M_Gargantua posted:

Ok going to post some stuff about fluid stations to simplify your lives.

VictualSquid posted:

The only actually not optimal thing here is not using beacons and modules.

necrotic posted:

There is a mod to disconnect and connect to rolling stock! The core game has a hotkey for it (v by default iirc).

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Automatic_Coupling_System

Never used it so can’t speak to how well it works.

Filthy Lucre posted:

Instead of bringing the materials to the center, send them to their respective sides. So plastic would go towards the left side of your screen shot and green circuits to the right.

Then build a 4 to 6 balancer vertically on each side.

Run the unloaded material into the vertical balancer and make a 90 degree turn towards your factories. Run the plastic left to right and the green circuits right to left, side loading each onto the blue belt.

M_Gargantua posted:

Well, just to give you an alternative, this is what that looks like with Warehousing + Loader Redux

Manyorcas posted:

celestial teapot posted:

By the way, one green inserter can fully compress half of a red belt all by itself, if you have it unloading directly onto a splitter!

Bhodi posted:

factorissimo's gain when it comes to organization and reduced travel time / factory size is heavily offset by having to manage the input/outputs and space constraints which can get surprisingly tricky. Some might think of it as a bit cheaty but if you get deep into using them you'll find they have their own logistical challenges, where an entire chain won't fit in a single one so you then need to decide how to separate them, and then route the belts and pipes properly. It's absolutely a tradeoff most of the time, not even considering the research and materials to make the factorissimo building itself.

Arrath posted:

I'm assuming that's your actual framerate and not some artifact of giffing it.

SettingSun posted:

I am extremely interested in how much of SE they're going to bring into the expansion. A fair amount it seems from just the pre-release material, but they must be tossing out some of the groggiest stuff.

M_Gargantua posted:

So the Factorio surfaces aren't infinite, you'd have to do the thing where the background is scrolling and it just appears that you're moving.

I'm thinking thematically i'd have to be something like a deep space generation ship, rather than a terrestrial train? Like I know enough LUA to make this happen, and can mockup stuff in Solidworks to export to blender and render, but would need to figure out the render options to make things look correct but i'm sure there are plenty of tutorials on the forums. There is no reason you can't make it land based, but like snow piercer it just seems weird to keep a linear train in motion for decades at a time, (or in movie/game runtime lengths at least)

Your goal would be to make things to feed fuel into the engine, in the front car. And build things to upgrade the engine. You'd be able to place more cars, factorisimo style, further and further to the left. Whatever happens inside the car 'surface' would be reflected in the top level map, same as factorisimo, but you're always "inside" the vehicle from the start.

Maybe unlike real factorio there is an actual lose condition - if you don't keep up enough speed whatever is chasing you starts destroying your rear most carriage and working its way up the train. That could easily result in a failure spiral, but also losing carriages would speed you up again so maybe theres a good way to balance it.