Help, Something is ailing my rail lines!

[Hadriex]

I've been making a LP of Factorio, trying as much as possible to NOT look at what anyone else has done and figure the game out for myself (well, with help from the wiki), rather then just copying what other have done. However I've run into a problem which solidly prevents further expansion, and I cannot figure out on my own.

I set up some rail lines to handle multiple trains at once, and as far as I can tell all the signals are set up properly. But for some reason my trains refuse to run.

Here is fragment of the video I'm working on now, it should start right as I began a test of my rail lines and things failed for me. https://youtu.be/g0T0UPewk9I?t=10m16s

I would be very grateful to anyone who can point out what terrible noob mistake I have made. I literally have no idea what stupid I have done here.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'm not an expert on trains, but from various mistakes I've been making when setting up my own tracks, I might be able to help.

Generally, two-way tracks require setting up two-way signals - that is, one on each side of the track.
Also, you have all chain signals with no regular signals anywhere. This is probably less important overall, but you'll probably have your entire rail network close up to traffic the moment any train at all enters any part of it. Chain signals copy the state of the signal ahead of them, so having some regular signals to break the track up into logical sections would be a good idea.

[Hadriex]

Ah. Is that what chain signals do!

Thank you.

I'll try your tips right away and let you know if they worked.

[Hadriex]

YES!!!

https://youtu.be/SHvp2xE4guY

Thank you very much Sean Mirrsen.

Not everyone appreciates having their username shouted out so I thought I'd ask first. Might I include a thank you to you in my video's description when it's finished?

[Sean Mirrsen]

YES!!!

https://youtu.be/SHvp2xE4guY

Thank you very much Sean Mirrsen.

Not everyone appreciates having their username shouted out so I thought I'd ask first. Might I include a thank you to you in my video's description when it's finished?

Eh, sure, why not.
Though it has a particular pronunciation, since I made it up for some RP universe way back when. "Sean" is more "see-an" than "shawn", and the "ir" in "Mirrsen" is like the "ir" in "dirty".

And you're welcome.

[ratchetfreak]

One general hint I'll give you about chain signals:

For every signal you do not want a train to wait at go back and replace all signal going to that signal with chain signals.

[Shokubai]

A couple tips.

• Since you are doing a video series you may consider viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6082
  Pairing signals is only necessary on one way track.
  Two way track maintains a small footprint but one way track is often easier to deal with and expand. You may consider redoing your junction and making incoming and outgoing lanes.

If you want to keep it like you have it, it can still be fixed but in your current implementation, if both trains leave opposite stations at the same time there is no way for them to resolve passing. They will just get stuck. If we assume that there is no more room for more track you could simply make the entire route chain signals. Then a train would stay in the station until it had a clear path to the other station. If you want to do some bulldozing, then a Terminus station with a crossover to one way track in/out would work better. Your crossovers would need to look like this to keep trains from stopping in the crossover. Note the Chain signals before the junction in the traveling direction. The first regular signal AFTER a chain denotes a train could stop AFTER the regular signal.

Crossover.png (461.2 KiB) Viewed 4885 times

I would love to look at your save and suggest some improvements if you care to post it.

[Hadriex]

Sure.

Let me say this in my defense before you see my confusing wreck of a factory. This is my first time playing, I am figuring it out as I go. And I have yet to master wrangling the flying bots, they have a tendency to stick stuff wherever they feel like confusing my whole storage system. (at least I can just ask the bots to just bring me whatever I need).

There is a set of requester chests on the East side where finished products are placed. You'll find everything from rail signals to tracks there.

Also, all the lights along the roads might start blinking. That means there was a power failure and the backup generator had to kick in. The greater part of the factory is shut down until the 'switch' (some copper plates in a box) is manually reset.



Currently the rails are a box running around the factory, and entering into stations meant to unload up to eight trains at once for iron. eight for copper, two for stone (currently not in use) four for oil (currently not in use, I haven't even attached this station) and four for coal (I actually don't have much need for coal, so I haven't bothered setting these us just yet). I have not yet installed gates to go outside the factory walls.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5-olk ... sp=sharing

[Shokubai]

HadriexB.zip

(6.28 MiB) Downloaded 118 times

With respect to your factory...A working factory is a good factory. Really some nice ideas all around. A few things though...

• *SOO MANY STORAGE CHESTS. Why? This is really a preference but I only put storage chests where I want the bots to put things. Putting them everywhere means that everything can go everywhere.
  *Prioritize upgrades to bots if you are going to use them so heavily. Everything will become much more efficient.
  *Get more "everyday" items into Passive Provider Chests (or Storage). It's so much nicer to tell your logistics inventory to keep you stocked with 100 rails than to go looking for the box those are in.
  *You have a huge amount of resources invested into defense. Clear out the bases nearby and you will get attacked less frequently. A simple technique available to you is the "Turret Plop". Make a Blueprint with say 6 laser turrets, a standard power pole to power them and a big pole to help you connect power to the thing. Then just get a little close....plop it....get closer...plop another...play leapfrog. Just make sure your power is up to the task of the drain this will put on it. (i.e. don't try at night). This will also open you up to more resources as you are steadily getting lower.
  *Sometimes the best thing you can do is start over. I don't mean a new game...I mean a new base or parts of a base. You could move things like smelting to a new location then deliver the plate to your existing infrastructure. This opens up the space smelting USED to occupy for further development. Any number of components could be farmed out to new homes this way.

With respect to your rails...

• *I converted the track around your base to one way rail.
  *There was a section in the north where you had mining on your main line. I moved the main line north a few spaces and put a roundabout in the corner up there.
  *The interior of your base is tight. This limits how much track you can squeeze in there. I think i have it fixed so trains wont get stuck on the two way track entering and exiting the center of your base but you may consider bulldozing a path for a second rail in there.
  *You will also notice I got rid of a bunch of pieces of rail that went nowhere or weren't in the path of any trains. Generally you want to plan ahead and make sure any train could go anywhere but I removed them for problem solving. You could add them back if you like.

Anyway, I hope this helps. For your first game, you are already leaps ahead of what I accomplished my first run.

[Shokubai]

And I have yet to master wrangling the flying bots, they have a tendency to stick stuff wherever they feel like confusing my whole storage system.

This goes back to the whole storage chest thing and is one of the reasons I personally don't use them for offload storage. In your case, unloading trains into them or surge storage off your smelters. They are like trash cans that never get emptied and those pesky robots put anything in any one of them.

If you think you need such a gigantic amount of storage then I would consider more of this style using passive providers to force resources where you want them.

Storage.png (248.24 KiB) Viewed 4788 times

[Hadriex]

They storage is one of those things that sort of evolved.

Each 'zone' had it's own separate storage area. And it was all arms and steel boxes. One raw iron, one for raw copper, one for iron plate one for copper plate, coal, steel ect. I made the storage areas large on purpose because I didn't want things to ever bog down due to lack of space.

Then I discovered logistic robots. Which I thought to be the coolest thing ever. So I started mass producing them. And when I converted those storage areas they suddenly had around four times as many chests since there were no longer any arms involved.

And the bots just started dumping stuff everywhere. I desperately need to overhaul the whole storage system, if you have a tip for telling the bots things like 'please use these boxes for iron only' it would make my day.


Turret Plop. Good name for it. I uh, discovered that one on accident and after clearing a few bases that way swore to my Subscribers I wouldn't use it again as it's such an unfair strategy. I've been teching up and as soon as my rails are sorted out I should be able to head out and start clearing the nests though. Really that's the only reason I stopped upgrading my bots was to prioritize military for a bit (I found aliens in the middle of my factory one day and decided it was time to redo the walls)


I'll think about moving the smelting area. My next big project, once I got resources flowing in on rails, was to build a major science area and focus heavily on that. Currently my science is a slow trickle, looking ahead I'm going to need something more impressive.

[Hadriex]

Thank you so much. I've been looking over the rails and can tell I'll have to study what you did for awhile. Particularly with the signals.

Mind if I thank you in my next video's description. (Well the next next video, as the next video is already uploaded and schedules, so I can't show off the new rails in that one.)

Also crap, my power system really isn't cutting it now that I've got all these resources flowing in. I knew it needed to be bolstered, but now that I see just how far behind it is... Either I need to double my solar panel count, or else start using steam generators again.

[Shokubai]

Feel free to throw me in the stream.

Power is an interesting beast. With the tone toward tons of walls and canons you could just say "screw" it and stick with steam. It will mean more biter attacks but It's not like they can get to you. Solar is my go-to but it needs TONS of space. One good thing about it is that it does not draw aggro from biters. They would only attack it if they couldn't path around it. This means you can put it outside your base. Just clear an appropriate area and essentially forget about it.

So much of this is personal preference but I tend to focus more on throughput than storage. I have some storage for surge production but (pretend numbers here) If I can only produce 100 iron plate per second and I can produce 150 iron ore per second, why do I need to store hours and hours and hours worth of ore? It's just going to take up space and never get used. Basically I try to keep track (mostly from experience) of what I can produce and use. I fill bottlenecks and expand production as needed or in anticipation of expansions. The "Factoratio" tool on http://factorio.rotol.me/pack/base-f11/factoratio/ is a great resource for figuring out how many widgets are needed to make X thingamagigs per minute.

If you want some tips on combat the "non-cheese" way, I basically use this tactic https://youtu.be/Ui0i_ZtEOeI?list=PLOx2 ... H2_uNmP9rg courtesy of MangledPork. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwTLrd ... BZ3Z0kzX0g.

[Hadriex]

I like solar panels because they don't burn any resources. Though I had NO IDEA I could just leave them outside my walls. The massive amount of space they take up was the main reason I built my walls out so far.

I really can't wait to finish my first game here. Then check out what everyone else has done, I've been intentionally avoiding watching Youtube videos and such so that I have to figure things out for myself.Though this rail thing, when my trains refused to move at all, that was just too much.

I'm also really looking forward to exploring the mods

Anyway, thank you again.