track offset and OCD

[Lothos]

I am in the process of trying to redo my intersections and stackers. What's killing me is when I take a perfect circle and 4 perfectly square tracks and then remove the same number of sections before crossing the legs, I get this:


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=930122328

It's driving my OCD'ness out of this world.

[Caprontos]

North and south vs east and west tracks is also one block wider... If you seprate them by 2 tracks its 4 blocks wide north and south and 5 east to west. This might be why it gets all wierd?

Alos is the circle for show or are you using it? I always did it like this:
http://i.imgur.com/mz9RT30.png

Which looks a bit better but maybe its not efficent?..

[Lothos]

I was trying to incorporate a turnaround into my 4 way but scrapped the above for lack of room for proper signaling. The one you posted was my first intersection when I started playing and is terribly prone to lockup.

I have now made this one to improve upon my sprial one I have been using this game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=930150509

[Caprontos]

Originally posted by lothos:

I was trying to incorporate a turnaround into my 4 way but scrapped the above for lack of room for proper signaling. The one you posted was my first intersection when I started playing and is terribly prone to lockup.

I have now made this one to improve upon my sprial one I have been using this game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=930150509

I see, I never play long enough to get enough trains to lock it up I guess. Usually just stop shortly after making a rocket. Then start over the next time I decide to play it.. I guess if I ever do I'd have to bother to upgrade them.

and that one does look better.

[KatherineOfSky]

It's not actually beneficial to have a "perfect" circle, since you can't fit signals along it. Your second variation is much more functional.

[Lothos]

my ideal goal would be to simply not have trains stop EVER on the open tracks. just a matter of time before i get there.

[Name Lips]

Unfortunately Factorio doesn't have a 3rd dimension which would allow for some really efficient junctions. Every time a track physically crosses over another track, there is the possibility that a train will need to wait for the intersection to clear before it can proceed.

Though honestly I've never had a Factorio rail network where that level of efficiency was needed. I know you CAN build a network with dozens or hundreds of trains, but I've never actually needed more than one per resource.

[Lothos]

well thats the thing. I found out very quickly you can't really have trains stopping at more than a pickup and dropoff. And I see tons of videos of folks with mega train systems and almost always they are using at least a 4 track wide "highway".

I am wondering though if thats only need on your major concentration hub. Also, I am redesigning my smelting outpost atm and soon the other to make better use of approaches and putting a stacker incorporated at the entry. Not to mention locating offload and pickup on the same side of the outpost.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by lothos:

I was trying to incorporate a turnaround into my 4 way but scrapped the above for lack of room for proper signaling. The one you posted was my first intersection when I started playing and is terribly prone to lockup.

I have now made this one to improve upon my sprial one I have been using this game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=930150509

How do you get lockups? I never had a lockup on my roundabouts using proper signals, at least until .15. Now I get a few lockups because a train will apparnently try to reroute in the middle of a turn, resulting in it trying to do a 450 degree turn (1 and 1/4 circle) and end up blocking itself via my chain signals. It NEVER happened to me before, so I think something in .15 did it.

But anyway, I figure if next time I do a larger intersection, or a 4-lane track, this will happen less or not at all.

EDIT: Just had another stupid train lockup for no reason: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=930217691

For it to have gotten stuck like that, actually, it has to have rerouted while in the intersection. Ore trains only come in from the south and want to go north, because iron unload in the northwest corner of the square you see in the upper left of the map. Meaning it came in from the south, decided to go back south because of a blockage. As soon as it misses the turn to go west, it reroutes to try to go west and blocks itself. And as I type this edit, another train blocked it.

[Lothos]

Not sure how I managed it, but that tiny circle always gave me grief.

Something that may contribute to it though is something I am dealing with atm is distancing out my on/off "ramps" from the main. Too close to an intersection and you're asking for trouble.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by lothos:

Not sure how I managed it, but that tiny circle always gave me grief.

Something that may contribute to it though is something I am dealing with atm is distancing out my on/off "ramps" from the main. Too close to an intersection and you're asking for trouble.

Oh, btw, that first circle is not actually a perfect circle. And I'm not referring to how it is impossible to make a perfect circle with the rails in the base game, but that you have 1 more north-south rail than you do east-west rails. You can tell because the parts of the circle between the north and south bound rails is curved, while the rails between the east and west bound rails is straight. Take out the curve sections of the circle and count the straight sections left behind. If they don't match count-wise, then it isn't symmetrical.

[Lothos]

intially i thought that and took the curves away and had the same number of straights left. The last one i posted I think wil work better. I am though considering designing up a 4 lane for my major east/west north/south through the base.

[Warlord]

Ok, well if the circle is fine, then I at least see a mistake with the west->north internal curve. You start it a rail too early, which results in the lopsided look.

[Lothos]

in my first one? probably, but it was still too small for proper signaling.

[Lothos]

ok, one thing that bothers me and maybe its simply the game lacking it is if I use my latest intersection for example, it has all the proper signaling to prevent lockups, trains will not enter ANY part of the intersection if any other train enters ANYWHERE within it even if they could in theory pass right through together and still adhering to the signals.

Is this a game failure to be precise in honoring signals?

[Warlord]

Chain signals work as they are supposed to, but it is really hard to properly separate out a crossing mish-mash of rails like you have with enough chain signals to allowtwo trains to pass.

If, for example, you have two train paths that are parallel to eachother, like
| |
You can have a train on both sides at once. But if you then have another that crosses over both of those like
---|-|---
Then you can have an issue. The proper way to signal this for north-south bound trains would be to chain signal before crossing the single rail, and a regular aftewards.

But that then transforms the middle part
|-| into one block. If one train is on the right=hand vertical band, it is considered to be in the same block as the one on the left side as well. Even though they never cross, having a horizontal track that bridges those two connects them. The solution would be to chain signal the horizontal track in between the two verticals.

Now, back to your intersection. You would likely have to have a dozen or more chain signals in between every single track crossing in order for a train to not block another train on a separate non-crossing line.

It's why I prefer outside-the-loop crosses in roundabouts. Then you simply separate each quarter from the rest, and they will reserve the section of track they need and no more.

EDIT: I know you probably already knew this, Ii see you have a bunch of signals, but I am having a hard time tracing the paths to determine where an issue might crop up and where a chain would need to be. Perhaps there is no good option there.

btw, there is an error with your design. The rail entering from the south should have a chain signal before the splits. You have it set to a regular signal. You got it correct in all the other 3 entrances, but not down there (as far as I can tell.