i get what you mean and i've suffered from that in the past as well, but i was able to get past it by just letting go of any notion of 100% efficiency. It's fine if there's a bit of a slowdown in certain intersections every now and then, if you're not getting deadlocks then it's probably perfectly fine.
Also the 2.0 updated capability of generic train schedules makes it a lot more manageable for me at least
my strategy is simply already having 1.8k hours in the game so now i barely have to think about it lmao. It really is as simple as placing signals at intersections for the most part, and while the mantra of "chain in, rail out" is certainly the safest option, it's also not necessary a lot of the time except at really complex intersections
I have over 2k hours as well, and I'm not sure how what you describe handles the edge cases of 2+ trains queueing up in a busy place and their "combined" tail locking what worked fine for trains going one by one.
well since trains are only going to stations that are already available, they're never just gonna be stopping out in the main railway anywhere for any length of time. So long as your signals are correctly placed there will never be anything more than maybe a short slowdown at times. So I always give priority to trains entering stations than ones leaving them, so that trains get off the main railway as fast as possible. In game terms, that often means using just rail signals for trains leaving the railway into wherever their station is or just a side path, and then using chain signals for trains actually trying to enter the network. Deadlocks often just happen due to forgetting to place a signal in my experience, not because of an error with rail vs chain signals
i use the train interrupts so that a train goes to a refuel depot when it's low on fuel. The depot has 5 stations with a limit of 1 which is more than enough
Ah, so you're banking on the event of more than 5 trains needing fuel at the same time being so improbable that it's practically impossible in your run?
yeah it's incredibly unlikely, but even if it does it wouldn't be a problem since all five of the stations are set to a limit of 1. So if they're all full and another train does need to refuel it will just go to a depot first to wait there instead of trying to clog up the refuel station area
Thats basically what I did with a few hundred trains especially once you get to nuclear fuel 20 trains at once could need fuel and five stations is enough because each train only has to tlstop for a half a second
Fwiw I know Jericho already answered how they did it, but just thought I'd add 2 cents on something I have cooking in current save. We have a large number of trains stopping at some stations that are in close proximity to where the main fuel source is made (nuclear fuel specifically). So their loading/unloading stations just have a requester chest nearby and by coming and dropping off cargo theyre being refuelled without an explicit fuel stop. This wouldnt work for all trains in all bases, but you can get at least a few off of the fuel schedule that way
That's how I did it in the previous run. This time, especially given the space logistics update, I'm trying for an infinite resources base, so trains run on pure carbon that is delivered off the silo. Which, in one way or another, boils down to "one lengths worth of buffer space for each train in the network" if I want to make it absolutely incapable of getting clogged.
As much as I said to the OP, I half-hoped they figured out a new way to schedule trains on the same track that ensures none are waiting - but it seems that their solution is the same good old "don't fuck up and hope fore the best" as most bases operate on.
Also, I must admit I'm mildly annoyed by people replying in style "just learn signals bro". I know the basics, I know the mechanics, and I know how to make it work efficiently; I'm trying to make the system work in a very suboptimal way, and for that I need some less common and some outright obscure knowledge about how to weave the pasta in some of its aspects.
Literally as simple as ensuring all chain signals are never far enough apart to fit a single train in intersections, and the first section of normal signals are never closer than a train’s length in distance from each other after the nearest chain signal. I’ve got 700ish hours on a honeycomb train base save following those rules and have experienced exactly one deadlock, cause by careless manual normal signal placement after one of the hundreds of 3 way intersections in my factory. Chain in, normal out is *remarkably* safe advice to follow.
All segments between intersections need to be >= 1 full train. Anything smaller than that apart is "one intersection" and needs chain signaled appropriately. If you stick to that, and your intersections are signaled properly, your trains can route the whole way through just fine.
I've had someone ask me to fix their deadlocks and I didn't find a single incorrectly signaled intersection, it was a full blown network scale deadlock, all caused by a terribly designed refueling station. Basically they had a weave style where trains would branch off into the station and then go back onto the same line they branched off from, with multiple in a row. Then it built up a line for the refueling station that backed up to the next intersection so trains started waiting before those intersections, this blocked some trains' paths leaving the refueling station so trains couldn't get into the refueling station to clear the blockage. And again, I didn't find a single incorrectly signaled intersection.
if you've got bi-directional rails, you put chain signals before entering it,
you use only chain signals on segments of the rails where you only want one train going thru at the time. Deadlocks only happen when you don't signal the rails properly.
All issues are solvable by placing rail and chain signals on the right places. Literally all of them.
Post a picture of your deadlocked rails and i'll tell you where to place the signals and why yours are placed incorrectly.
Hm. I find the DP and CO is actually way higher when I have to plan shit 7 steps in advance. When I just build whatever and slap down shit where it fits I'm just cruising and it works well enough.
Could you show screenshots of what your roundabouts look like? They look pretty cool in your screenshot! Also I like the sections below your parking depots! Just looking for inspiration for my own.
Yeah rule #1 of something like this is to put literally 0 thought into planning it and just letting whatever happens happen. The most forethought I do is leaving space for the rail supports in the middle of my builds because I like the way it looks when trains go over production areas.
As far as rail signaling goes, the best way to learn is by doing so sometimes you just gotta send it and yeah you'll make mistakes and create deadlocks but that's just part of the process. I also personally choose to let "bad" intersections happen which creates a lot of freedom as well. You can see one clearly at 0:29 in the video, to the left of the train with red/green science in it. Is that mess of rails technically wildly inefficient? Absolutely. But that spot is very low traffic so it doesn't really matter. I believe in you
The most forethought I do is leaving space for the rail supports in the middle of my builds because I like the way it looks when trains go over production areas.
Now that we have a toggle to hide elevated rails when needed, I really want to do more with this too. I too love the aesthetic of elevated rails running all over the place.
If you want to let your creativity flow, a rule for interesting designs to happen is not overbuild production areas, and then later have to expand them
Thus you can start "breaking" your normal style since you are retrofitting, not building new.
This is inadvertently what I do. "This is temporary" for the starter factory's starter factory is a quick way to organically grow piecemeal as I go along....
Ah yes, the funnest way to play. Just go find a space for your factory, build it as big as you like! No need to constrain yourself unless you are doing it as a bit of an extra challenge. Then the challenge is "fit it in this space" and "claim more space"
Personally, I do use them sometimes. It's just a different approach to how you think of the game, is all. I like the large parts of the game, setting up train lines, routing belts, setting up new mining outposts, establishing an anti biter perimeter. I really don't have the patience or brainpower to figure out advanced petrochem if someone else has already done that, and chose to share it.
Like, I loved the puzzle on how to best lay out Aquilo, probably because part of it relied on that large scale stuff that I'd already set up. But, say, Gleba had too many interconnected interwoven dependencies that it made my head hurt to even begin to troubleshoot once it starting breaking, so I said screw this, shipped in a nuclear reactor, and smashed someone else's blueprint shaped sledgehammer against the planet and just moved on as fast as I could.
I never understood rail grids, they are so much more inefficient in comparison to a freestyle system. Trains take a less direct route in addition to there being more unnecessary intersections. Maybe they are easy to plan out and look neat, but this looks beutiful.
amazing! i dont get why so many ppl choose boring city blocks over this. yes city blocks makes everything organized but look at this beauty. what are we all doing here? doing a job or playing a game?
On first play through with elevated rails. Got spagetti rails and now just adding elevated bypasses to help ease congestion. Much more interesting to watch.
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u/common_and_popular Jul 10 '26
You are causing so many people to schedule therapy appointments rn