Quality should increase train wagons capacity.

[zzy8570860]

Without trains limit control, trains would arrive to the closest train stop and ignore the actual demand, resulting in resource overflow in some places and starving in other, i.e. they might arrive to almost depleted mine and wait there for two minutes (together with 4 other trains), or never deliver iron ore to steel production because all is delivered to plates production (for example!)

I'm just making a suggestion. Let the developers decide what to do.

[Mavets]

I absolutely support the author: trains need quality for slots.
not everyone and not always use logic in trains, to sacrifice 99% of the benefit for everyone, for the sake of the dubious 1% who can reconfigure trains and make them even better for themselves, is not a very effective solution.

[Stargateur]

I would say train are too small for stack mechanic, thus, with elevated rail you can have way more train running. I would still like a small buff to wagons that quality could offer.

[Dreepa]

Yeah, I had the same impression.

[TiemDuJardin]

Can you explain the topic more?
Why do you think they are too small for DLC?
Why do you think this should be changed?
What items do you want to transport on rails?

In my opinion trains are used to transport items over medium or long distances: They load enough items so the buffers have just enough time to fill back up till the next train comes and unload enough items so the buffers last long enough till the next train comes. I think the important factor is the uptime (load/unload) to downtime (arrive/depart) ratio.

With the DLC, stacked belts and quality inserters have insane throughput and buildings require a lot more items per second (with quality buildings, beacons, modules, ...), so trains are filled/emptied way too fast now and they don't provide enough items that make up for the time they spend arriving, departing and traveling. This can be solved by either making the trains longer (they are big entities and it makes them slower + slower depart so this is not always desired) or spamming more trains (more traffic is also not desired and this is capped by the depart time).

A huge upgrade that would feel in line with the other upgrades is more wagon slots with quality. More items means the buffers get filled/emptied more so the uptime/downtime ratio is better. Chests and cargo bays already get more capacity with quality so why not wagons? Belts have 4 times throughput, pipe throughput is nearly infinite and legendary inserters are 2.5x faster. It feels like trains as a logistic part of the game are left behind in the DLC. Faster locomotives with quality would be nice, similar to quality fuel, but this would only decrease depart time and I think we really need more load/unload time to make trains simularly powerful to other parts of the late-game.

Also, about quality -- it's dual-edged blade. On one side, you add higher-tier wagons. Countrary, it requires changing logic on train stops for calculating dynamic train limit as one wagon can now be > 40 stacks.

Quality is optional, if the logistics is too annoying you don't have to engage with it. You can choose to only use normal quality trains, you can choose to only use uniform quality trains or you can choose to use mixed trains. Each choice has its upsides and downsides.
For almost all cases a higher quality train would be an upgrade without any downsides. Trainconditions like full cargo would behave very intuitively (all slots of each cargo filled with full stacks) and other conditions would be entirely the same, even with mixed quality trains.
The only problem i can think off is circuit conditions that depend on the capacity of the train, which would only fail with mixed trains. I've never needed anything like this before and for that edgecase you could just use normal or uniform trains while enjoying the upgrades everywhere else.
Quality has always been a dual-edged and required some rethinking and redesigning for the upgrades to work. I don't see how this is any different.

[PESOKOTiK]

True, i was so glad they added quality buff to chests and i was so dissapointed when i checked and saw that cargo wagons didnt got it. Therefore ig it should have more capacity with higher quality

[Dr. Dog PhD]

I actually think that not having bonus slots for quality for cargo wagons is a good thing that leads to more interesting factories.

I assume the reason why trains (locomotives, cargo wagons, and fluid wagons) don't benefit from quality is to encourage higher throughput rail systems and requiring more trains overall. A 2.5 times increase in capacity would effectively cut the number of needed trains in a rail network by over half. If the player wants a higher throughput of items, they need to 1. design a rail network capable of handling that increase in traffic and 2. ensure loading/unloading stations can handle this throughput.

To solve issue 1, the player was given tons of fun tools to design higher throughput rail systems from elevated rails, train interrupts, train groups, and additional circuit conditions for train stations/train schedules.

Issue 2 is largely mitigated by higher quality inserters/buffer chests. Although I often found these not to be enough, so I'd design my stations capable of handling multiple trains at the same time. This problem can also be helped by productivity bonuses/the new production buildings so resources can go further.

Overall, I think Wube liked the idea of large factories needing a giant and bustling train network to support it and not adding quality bonuses to wagon slots is a nudge to encourage players to make good use of all the fun new tools. Being able to upgrade wagon capacity would permit the easy, but less fun option.

[Hares]

Partially covered by 125641: Version 2.0.29

Modding

• Added CargoWagonPrototype::quality_affects_inventory_size.
• Added FluidWagonPrototype::quality_affects_capacity.

Not included in the game, but now possible by mods.

[rosilisk]

I'm not sure if this post is the 'canonical' post to recommend that cargo wagons should increase cargo size with quality, but +1 from me. Given the high throughput of inserters and belts, plus the stone and coal requirements for late-game research productivity research, trains no longer feel like the obvious best way to get high throughput input for megabases. I have a 'good' 2-8 layout with train stackers and legendary nuclear fuel, and it only sustains about 2 fully-saturated stacked green belts per station. Yes, with more careful input and output buffering I could probably get around 4 lanes per station, but even that is nowhere near the impressive 'wow' of trains in 1.1.

I agree that this change needs to wait for a minor version bump for a few reasons:

• If a pre-change save state already has high-quality wagons and the network relies on the wagon being a specific size (eg. mixed train with filtered slots, or using the loaded cargo to determine when to depart), this change would break those setups. This problem could be mitigated with a migration script to block off cargo wagon slots if they get expanded, and I also guess that high-quality wagons are not widely in use.
• If high-quality wagons are in demand, there should be some automated way to upgrade them, probably with the upgrade planner. The development and testing for this probably goes along with a more significant update.

I personally don't see the need for meaningful upgrades to the locomotives themselves, at least not in terms of acceleration. (Maybe they consume less fuel, so upgrading can be done on multiple independent axes?) But to me the main issue with trains currently is the cargo size.

[rosilisk]

+1 from me, see also viewtopic.php?p=666022#p666022 and viewtopic.php?t=124077.

[J-H]

I think a quality locomotive going faster would be great!

[CyberCider]

I think a quality locomotive going faster would be great!

Quality fuels already increase speed. What’s missing is braking force to make that speed more efficient. That would be a much better quality effect for locomotives, imo.

[quineotio]

I have a 'good' 2-8 layout with train stackers and legendary nuclear fuel, and it only sustains about 2 fully-saturated stacked green belts per station. Yes, with more careful input and output buffering I could probably get around 4 lanes per station, but even that is nowhere near the impressive 'wow' of trains in 1.1.

Not sure if it will help, but the way I'm doing it at the moment is that I have two stations feeding into the same belts, and I have a waiting station close-by for each drop off. I use elevated rails for all incoming traffic and ground for all outgoing. I also have two pickup stations for every ore patch, and use a circuit to only open stations when they have enough for a train. I also eventually upgrade bulk/stack inserters to a higher quality when available.

I also set the priority for one of each station to be higher so that the trains will tend to spread out before doubling up on a single station. I use interrupts for the stations so that they only go to the waiting stations if the main stations are full, but this means I can have up to four trains inbound to a single drop point, and up to two unloading at the same time. This gives me a lot of throughput.

[Tekillaa]

Just +1 the original post, 40 slots is really not enough fot the new "standard"

Peace!

[The Phoenixian]

Weird thought on this topic: Instead of more slots, how far would reducing vehicle weight/roll resistance with quality go towards solving the same problems?

Part of it is that I just find longer trains more aesthetically pleasing. This wouldn't make signaling or station design any easier but it would ease on the locomotive to wagon ratios.

Even outside of builds and into more general cases, one of the notes here is that trains in a buffer have difficulty moving into the station fast enough and at least from intuition I'd guess that reducing the wagon weight would also help trains in that position accelerate from the buffer to the station more easily.

I am biased of course, but I just think that, rather than an upgrade that pushes for shorter trains with fewer cars, it might be possible to do so in a way that both makes trains of all sizes more responsive to acceleration and removes some of the downsides of longer trains.

[mmmPI]

Weird thought on this topic: Instead of more slots, how far would reducing vehicle weight/roll resistance with quality go towards solving the same problems?

Not that i think it's necessary , but more slots would be a very very strong options compared to reducing vehicle weight/roll resistance which would unfortunatly not have a strong impact is my conclusion after previous studies :

Updated this graph to make the weight of loco and wagon and roll resistance slider you can move that shows optimums
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/hqa9wpvv2w

this one was made to simulate train behaviors over time :
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/kdrwrvrzk8

I have quite the confidence in my graphs because they match the one i can't explain from :

Updated throughput graph

[The Phoenixian]

Weird thought on this topic: Instead of more slots, how far would reducing vehicle weight/roll resistance with quality go towards solving the same problems?

Not that i think it's necessary , but more slots would be a very very strong options compared to reducing vehicle weight/roll resistance which would unfortunatly not have a strong impact is my conclusion after previous studies :

Updated this graph to make the weight of loco and wagon and roll resistance slider you can move that shows optimums
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/hqa9wpvv2w

this one was made to simulate train behaviors over time :
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/kdrwrvrzk8

I have quite the confidence in my graphs because they match the one i can't explain from :

Updated throughput graph

From the looks of the provided graphs and the math in the sidebar... Rolling resistance is nearly irrelevant, but reducing cargo and locomotive weight to 40% of it's original value to 400 and 800 (IE: by the 2.5fold that's standard for legendary parts) would have a very significant impact on throughput. The acceleration formula is divided by mass, so a reduction in weight is an proportional boost to that. Time to reach top speed for the provided train parameters would jump from nearly ten seconds to less than four. (From ~590 ticks to ~235)

Alternatively, even with this just applying to cargo wagons, the same acceleration stat could be reached with double the total number of wagons (from 5 to 10) More than that for both, (about 2.5 fold total length) but it looks like more factors come into play there that make things weirder than just weight.

In the context of a player having issues with their train buffer being the limit as it cannot pull from the buffer to the station fast enough, either of those outcomes seem very significant. Especially given it's a situation where inertia and acceleration dominate, rather than top speed.

Even if it's not the same kind of change as extra inventory size, it does in fact look like it would be a significant change for both startup time and train length. (Plus I like the idea that a higher quality transport container might be one that was rationalized to remove excess components and pare it down to the bare essentials.)

[mmmPI]

From the looks of the provided graphs and the math in the sidebar... Rolling resistance is nearly irrelevant,

From the first graph i made yes, the rolling resistance is not relevant, but that's because those trains are considered at many different "constant speed", varying the weight impact mostly braking distance (in the graph), which impact the optimal speed for a particular train composition. Or in other words lighter trains could increase throughput "in general" even without considering acceleration because it would allow train to be closer to each other for the same speed.

Rolling resistance would have more impact in the way that you suggest if train were considered arriving and departing from station unlike in my graph. But it would reduce throughput of the whole network if it was decreased and train were allowed to reach their max speed.

This need interpretation of the graphs, if you consider its shape as an inverted U for the throughput, then the right most part, when trains are the fastest, is not the "optimal for throughput", because their "braking distance is too high", this goes with the square of the speed.

So lowering rolling resistance would have a positive effect on throughput at station, but detrimental at large speed where the braking distance for any given particular train at X speed would be longer, causing less train density overall.

but reducing cargo and locomotive weight to 40% of it's original value to 400 and 800 (IE: by the 2.5fold that's standard for legendary parts) would have a very significant impact on throughput. The acceleration formula is divided by mass, so a reduction in weight is an proportional boost to that. Time to reach top speed for the provided train parameters would jump from nearly ten seconds to less than four. (From ~590 ticks to ~235)

Reducing the weight of trains has no adverse effect on throughtput unlike rolling resistance, unless i haved missed something in the interpretation of the 2nd graph, they were not made exactly for this purpose but can be used somehow. I think you are correct stating the magnitude of the increase 2.5 fold if you reduce to 40% of its original value , the time to reach top speed would reduce by almost as much as the air-resist and friction force are quite low compared to the weight and proportionnal to speed and it's only that preventing the train from reaching infinite speed.

It would be difficult to explain to a player though that quality decrease the weight so train goes faster, but train weight the same when you try to put them into a rocket

Alternatively, even with this just applying to cargo wagons, the same acceleration stat could be reached with double the total number of wagons (from 5 to 10) More than that for both, (about 2.5 fold total length) but it looks like more factors come into play there that make things weirder than just weight.

If you increase the number of wagons, you also increase the distance between 2 trains, not their head-to-tail distance but their head-to-head distance. That increase the distance the 2nd train has to cover before replacing the "unloading train" in a station.

In the context of a player having issues with their train buffer being the limit as it cannot pull from the buffer to the station fast enough, either of those outcomes seem very significant. Especially given it's a situation where inertia and acceleration dominate, rather than top speed.
Even if it's not the same kind of change as extra inventory size, it does in fact look like it would be a significant change for both startup time and train length. (Plus I like the idea that a higher quality transport container might be one that was rationalized to remove excess components and pare it down to the bare essentials.)

"very significant" is not quantitative x), if you compare to the effect of adding more slot which would act with AT LEAST as much impact/magnitude. But then since increasing amount of slot doesn't rely on increased speed for throughput, it will in most cases some degree more effective because no air_resist will comes into play. And for the general network it cannot have any negative effect on throughput to have more slots on wagons whereas increased braking distance due to higher speed is a risk with faster trains depending on how it's achieved.


To conclude :

I don't know what people consider "significant", i think the weight reduction could work achieving stated goal to a certain extent but has other issues that increasing slots doesn't have, i don't think changing rolling resistance with quality would work to achieve stated goal.

I too like the ideas that higher quality transport are made in more efficient shape to rationalize weight or lighter alloy or something but that should then also be indicated in the weight of the item in silo and/or be weird :s .

In the end i don't think any of that is necesssary because there's already quality fuel in game for increased acceleration !!

[Chrisdasdasd]

+1 for rolling stock capacity scaling with quality.
+1 for locomotive speed/break scaling with quality.

and I will add one more:
+1 for train speed/break scaling with quality of rails.

[Chrisdasdasd]

+1 for rolling stock capacity scaling with quality.
+1 for locomotive speed/break scaling with quality.

and I will add one more:
+1 for train speed/break scaling with quality of rails.