Factorio Forums

TL;DR

When putting the "anything" signal in a train stop name in a schedule / interrupt, it should act as a wildcard signal and choose any stop with "any icon at all" in that corresponding location of the stop name.

What?

You can currently add the "anything" wildcard signal to a train stop name when making an interrupt, as shown below.
However, when you do this, it acts as a normal icon. I propose that when this is done, it will act as an actual wildcard signal and choose all train stations with "anything" in the corresponding location in the stop name.

This could have essentially the same functionality as when two train stations have the same name, except it would apply to all train stations who pass the wildcard condition.

Why?

This would allow for one iron train to service ANY train stop with "Iron" in its name, instead of the current implementation in which you can only service iron stations with identical names.

This would allow for multi-item requester stations. For example, if I had a "iron+copper requester" and a "iron+steel requester", I could set my interrupt to target "iron+anything requester" and it would service BOTH stations.

This would give extreme flexibility in how you can define target train stations, and would function identically to how the current "any signal" wildcard works. However, this would add new functionality that you cannot replicate with the current system.

This is already something we are allowed to do (place "anything" in a train stop name), it just does not function as an actual wildcard. I think the propsed change would be more intuitive than the current version of having the "everything" signal be selectable, but not function.

I would also like this (or some other way to say "I don't care about this character in train station names") to happen. When having multiple different train management systems in the same rail network they can sometimes have conflicting requirements in naming sheme for the same stations and this could be a way to create compatability.

+1, this makes so much sense and i wonder why it isn't already included

+1!

I'm trying to set up "don't repeat yourself" stations where you set the desired product of an assembler and it automatically requests up to four solid materials from neighboring train stops. It's currently achievable by also redundantly setting what should be delivered at those stations--but it would be awesome if the stations were able to read the replacement of this character from circuitry.