Train stations should output the train's color

[doppelEben]

hey there

I just brainstormed about some new 'styles', how I will play my next bobs'angels .16 playthrough...
Then I had the Idea with a train-circuit, the trains stop N seconds on every station on their ciruit; and the stations behavior depends on the color of the train.

f.E. if the locomotive is red; it starts to load copper into the train
if the locomotive is blue; it starts to load iron into the train
if the locomotive is black; it starts to load coal into the train
if the locomotive is yellow; it starts to load tier1-stuff into the train
if the locomotive is green; it starts to load tier2+-stuff into the train

the same with the liquids. if we can read the colors in a hex-format; it would even be possible to run trains for each different type of liquid on the same track; with the same stations.
So it wouldnt be a big headache to setup XXXX train-conditions, if a new startion should be integrated into the ciruit; one can just use the color-read-magic-thingy and all trains are fine.
and the same aswell for unloading-stations. if red; the inserters to north start; if blue; the east one start; if black; the south ones and all other color going to west, for a simple example...

Is it possible, maybe with some combinator-magic; to read the color of a locomotive, and force a seperate reaction for each color?

[ManaUser]

I got this idea while reading the discussion of train IDs. Now that the ID is shown in a tooltip, I guess it's not so bad, but it's still not super user-friendly. So I was thinking, what if the train's color acted as a secondary ID? Stations would simply output any stopped train's RGB color as those three signals. The appeal is three-fold:

• It's an "ID" you can set manually, and the interface for doing so already exists.
• You could use it for categories, as well as unique IDs, e.g. load blue trains with iron, red with copper.
• Lastly, I just like how it neatly ties in the cosmetic color with the nitty-gritty we all love in this game.

Now I realize testing all three signals would require a little extra work, but unless you've actually got 256 trains, it would be easy to pick colors so that one component (e.g. Red) is enough to distinguish them.
The only downside I can think of is that it would conflict with the color values from train signals, if you for some reason had them both on the same circuit, but I assume people normally wouldn't. Or there could be a check-box to turn it on/off, just in case this is ever really a problem.

[rldml]

This stuff sounds unnecessary and somewhat complicate for me. At least, some of the colours look very familiar to each other. If you want to avoid this, you can only use a few colours. Additionally there are colour blind people out there...

To see the train id as human is a nice to have - generally i don't care about my train ids. My circuit logic has to handle with it, not me.

[Zavian]

Actually this sounds cool. Though if I was doing this, I'd send the trains colour as an RBG value on the R,G and B signals. That would give people effectively 3 8 bit numbers to encode various things about the train or it's cargo (or 24 bits total, if you want to use combinators to decode the RGB values). I can see players doing cool things with that. If you are doing that, then I don't see colour blindness as a significant issue, since most users of this feature will want to define the exact colour of a train as an exact RBG value.

[rldml]

Actually this sounds cool. Though if I was doing this, I'd send the trains colour as an RBG value on the R,G and B signals. That would give people effectively 3 8 bit numbers to encode various things about the train or it's cargo (or 24 bits total, if you want to use combinators to decode the RGB values). I can see players doing cool things with that. If you are doing that, then I don't see colour blindness as a significant issue, since most users of this feature will want to define the exact colour of a train as an exact RBG value.

If you going this way, there is no need for colours either. Just add an additional 24-bit-integer-field to the properties of a train. There is no need to couple it with colours.

[aaargha]

I'm pretty sure that this is not possible in vanilla. I'm also pretty sure that it should be possible to make a mod that allows for this, but I have not really worked with generating circuit signals so I can't say for sure.

As an alternative you could use one cargo slot to carry some kind of item (that you do not remove from the train) that can act as a signal for what the stations should do.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into very similar suggestion