Circuit network help

[rikkitikki]

So after much trepidation I finally decided to take the plunge into circuit networks. I feel like I understand the basic concepts and can do the beginner stuff like wire a lamp to a chest to give a warning when I'm running low on something, but after that things get confusing for me and usually don't work.

For example, I have 2 trains arriving at a train stop, but only one of the trains needs the cargo stored there (specifically, electric engines). If the other train takes them they will go to the wrong location and will not have room to pick up the cargo they DO need at other stations down the line.

I couldn't think of a way to get the circuit network to ID the correct train per se (is there a way?), so my thought was to connect the train stop with a piece of belt that would be enabled if the stopped train contained items that were appropriate for the intended train. (By this point in the schedule the target train would be carrying plastic and batteries).

So I set the train stop to "read train contents" and "read stopped train" (though this choice was confusing to me. What else would a train stop be reading other than a stopped train's contents?)The signal defaults to "T" but I set it to an item icon of the correct train (I chose plastic). I then set the belt with the yellow scanner thingy to "plastic > 0" on the "plastic" channel. So if a train showed up carrying plastic, the belt would be enabled.

It didn't work. Switched the station stop and betl signal back to the T channel in case that was it. Still didn't work.

I then tried it again putting a decider ocmbinator into the mix. Since all i needed was an off to on switch, I checked the "1" box rather than send an item count value. Still no dice. Basically, the belt either never turned on or worse, only stayed on and loaded the wrong train as well as the right one. The red wires between train stop and betl, or train stop, combinator and belt, were clearly connected via power poles.

At that point I decided to reach out. Feel free to talk to me like a dummy about this stuff, cause that's how I'm feeling. :)

TIA

[Malidictus]

引用自 rikkitikki：

I certainly agree that taking advantage of the game's abundant space is generally a good idea, but I'm curious to know exactly how in this case a bigger area helps. How, specifically, would you suggest building the train stop area to be "simpler" and more effective?

I can't speak to "more effective" but I can definitely speak to "simpler." I tend to only ever handle a single item through a single train station, meaning I create multiple train stations with their accompanying buffer storage for facilities which need multiple inputs, or which produce multiple outputs. I realise this isn't always realistic with some more complicated mods like Bob's stuff and Angel's Stuff and such. However, it works a treat in vanilla.

My current design is an almost entirely decentrallised series of connected rail stations, each interfacing with a dirt simple facility. For instance, I have an Iron Smelter. A single train station receives Iron Ore, 144 Electric Furances smelt the ore into Iron Plate, which is then shipped to a single other train station which provides Plates to the rail network. Because I'm playing Rail World where resources come in MASSIVE clumps with lots of "quite literally nothing" in-between, I'm able to set up very basic and very large facilities to produce simple goods, then other facilities to produce other goods. And if I'm short on any specific thing (like Gears), I can always just build another gear plant somewhere else, provided I've optimised the existing one (which I have, for my current speed of belt).

The LTN and Warehouse mods help tremendously here. LTN takes care of managing trains for me, essentially in the same way as Robots. As long as I can provide enough available trains, the system takes care of linking output to input and keeping my "city" running.

Obviously that's not to say "DO IT MY WAY!!!" Far from it - my way is wasteful :) I was just pointing out that for as powerful as Factorio's logic circuits are, sometimes it's simply easier to take up a bit more space and accept a bit of inefficiency in return for stuff that's easier to mass-produce and troubleshoot. Which - I'm told by friends - is anathema for the Factorio community :)

引用自 rikkitikki：

As for that lifter problem when using reserved slots on trains, I'm not sure (since I never got that reserved feature to work until now) but I would think as long as you didn't reserve the entire wagon and and left a few slots free for the unwanted odds & ends things would work fine. You can always filter out the "impurities" later elsewhere down the line, no?

The problem with train cars partially filling with crap might not be as much of an issue with Vanilla train handling. If your trains only ever run specific lines, then they aren't likely to accumilate too much crap. It is an issue for large automated train systems, however. I've had train backlogs for miles because a single unit of Steel ended up in the cars of an Iron Ore train, which then never met its "unload all cargo" objective and became stuck at the station. There are ways around this (LTN will just kick trains off the station after 5 minutes, regardless of circumstances), but you can end up with trains delivering the wrong goods to the wrong lines. Filter Inserters can help here, if you can build large quantities of them. Bob's Inserters simply upgrades the Filter ones to be equivalent to the highest tier Inserter you have so that's not a bad idea. Never unload cargo to a station that it shouldn't have :)

You also have the option of limiting the stack size of inserters to some kind of divisor of your stack sizes, though that has the unfortunate side effect of limiting loading/unloading speed. There's the Logistics Train Cars mod which hooks trains into the Logistics network to be unloaded via bots, though I've yet to research that. For my own use, though - the only approach I had which didn't consistently cease up was one train station per resource, and only the train carrying that resource will EVER pass through that rail. It's a brute-force approach, but Rail World gives me ample space for it :)

[dragonsphotoworks]

If unload from one side only. You can put a filter on other side to remove anything not supposed to be on train?

[rikkitikki]

引用自 Malidictus：

I can't speak to "more effective" but I can definitely speak to "simpler." I tend to only ever handle a single item through a single train station...

Thanks for walking me through your setup. Always useful to hear how others roll. As you guessed, I am a vanilla freeplay guy and my rails tend to be mostly single purpose, though my train stops are sometimes multi. (Both incoming and outgoing trains). I could live with the occasional impurity since I would insert some sort of filter between the off-load and the next assembler input.

引用自 dragonsphotoworks：

If unload from one side only. You can put a filter on other side to remove anything not supposed to be on train?

Of course, why didn't I think of that? Do both unloading and filtering at once. It's so simple! (Hm, maybe that's why I didn't think of it :)) Though I would probably still unload from both sides, but I could leave just one lifter set to the blacklist removal. That should still work fine.

[Malidictus]

引用自 rikkitikki：

Thanks for walking me through your setup. Always useful to hear how others roll. As you guessed, I am a vanilla freeplay guy and my rails tend to be mostly single purpose, though my train stops are sometimes multi. (Both incoming and outgoing trains). I could live with the occasional impurity since I would insert some sort of filter between the off-load and the next assembler input.

Even without mods, though, you can do some creative stuff with trains. There's a design concept called the Vanilla Train Network which mimicks a lot of the LTN functionality purely through circuit networks. I did that for the longest time in my own rails. Still have the green and red wires hanging in some places :) The idea, at least as I implemented it, was to connect all stations via either red or green network, give each train a fixed path, then trip this path if some signal for "delivery available" is sent. I sent requests as units of a specific resource (1 Coal for one station needing Coal, 2 Coal for 2, etc.) over the red network and supplies over the green. A train would only run a network if it received at least 1 Coal over Red AND Green, another might wait for 2, another for 3, etc. This way the trains could scale with demand.

The limitation I ran into with this approach was that you're committing trains to JUST a single, fixed line. This can be worked around by routing all resources through a central depot bottleneck, such that all requesters can vicariously pull from all providers. It's doable, just more complex, more time-consuming and harder to troubleshoot. I swapped to LTN because it does most of the same stuff, just automatically.

With all of that said, though... I would still recommend grabbing at least the Warehouse mod. That's so convenient it's hard to explain :)

引用自 dragonsphotoworks：

If unload from one side only. You can put a filter on other side to remove anything not supposed to be on train?

Or alternately, you could set up inserters to empty trains at their off-site depots, ensuring that any errant cargo which wasn't delivered ends up in a discard pile. Mods exist to destroy unwanted items, or circuits can be set up to notify the player when storage fills up, so chests can be manually emptied (or shot and replaced). That's actually something I set up for my own trains initially, for this very reason. I've since removed those systems due to redundancy... And have consequently had trains gridlocked due to inappropriate cargo a few times :)

But yes - force-emptying trains before they can do another run is a good way to get around errant cargo in the cars.

[rikkitikki]

引用自 Malidictus：

Even without mods, though, you can do some creative stuff with trains. There's a design concept called the Vanilla Train Network which mimicks a lot of the LTN functionality purely through circuit networks. I did that for the longest time in my own rails. Still have the green and red wires hanging in some places :) The idea, at least as I implemented it, was to connect all stations via either red or green network, give each train a fixed path, then trip this path if some signal for "delivery available" is sent. I sent requests as units of a specific resource (1 Coal for one station needing Coal, 2 Coal for 2, etc.) over the red network and supplies over the green. A train would only run a network if it received at least 1 Coal over Red AND Green, another might wait for 2, another for 3, etc. This way the trains could scale with demand. .

Sounds great, and is exactly the kind of thing I would like to try doing at some point. Unfortunately I'm still something of a dummy with circuit networks and that setup is a little beyond me right now. I mean, I get the gist of what you're saying and how it works conceptually, but other than creating very basic stuff like a warning lamp when a chest is empty something about my circuit logic goes awry and usually never works as intended. But ideas like that inspire me to push through it, so hopefully I will have a breakthrough soon. I found rail signals difficult to get in the same way, but well worth the effort once I understood them. (I am EXTREMELY proud of my last game, nearlyy 40 trains with almost no gridlock by game end).

引用自 Malidictus：

With all of that said, though... I would still recommend grabbing at least the Warehouse mod. That's so convenient it's hard to explain :) .

Maybe this is just me, but I'm strangely reluctant about trying mods for some reason. At least right now. I think maybe because I still consider myself a noob and want to "master" the vanilla game first even if some of the tasks are tedious. I just want to be sure if I do use them that they are merely saving me from the labor, not the accomplishment of learning how to make things work in the first place. That said, I'm sure once I have "earned" this knowledge I'll be like, screw this, gimme those mods now!! :)

[AlexMBrennan]

Or alternately, you could set up inserters to empty trains at their off-site depots, ensuring that any errant cargo which wasn't delivered ends up in a discard pile.

So we are going to need hundreds of extra filters, thousands of belts, dozens of chests, and worst of all manual player intervention to... marginally reduce the size of your loading station?

That does not seem like a good trade to me.

[dragonsphotoworks]

引用自 AlexMBrennan：

Or alternately, you could set up inserters to empty trains at their off-site depots, ensuring that any errant cargo which wasn't delivered ends up in a discard pile.

So we are going to need hundreds of extra filters, thousands of belts, dozens of chests, and worst of all manual player intervention to... marginally reduce the size of your loading station?

That does not seem like a good trade to me.

my way to do it is have one filter set to remove junk straight into a void chest. it destroys it so only 1 filter and one box. no 1,000s of belts :-) Unless want to recover the items that is.

[Malidictus]

引用自 rikkitikki：

Sounds great, and is exactly the kind of thing I would like to try doing at some point. Unfortunately I'm still something of a dummy with circuit networks and that setup is a little beyond me right now. I mean, I get the gist of what you're saying and how it works conceptually, but other than creating very basic stuff like a warning lamp when a chest is empty something about my circuit logic goes awry and usually never works as intended. But ideas like that inspire me to push through it, so hopefully I will have a breakthrough soon. I found rail signals difficult to get in the same way, but well worth the effort once I understood them. (I am EXTREMELY proud of my last game, nearlyy 40 trains with almost no gridlock by game end).

To be honest, the circuit network isn't actually all that complex, so much as it's poorly documented. Granted, I'm not claiming to be able to build 8-bit computers out of wiring like some people, but simpler stuff is usually just limited by how much clutter you're willing to put up with. One of the reasons I gave up on my VTN was the rat's nest of cables and combinators at stations. I actually did a fair bit of Barotrauma modding before I got into Factori, and and that game's wiring is quite a bit more user-friendly (if buggy) because each device has multiple explicit input and output pins. That's out of scope for the discussion, though.

In essence, the biggest issue in more complex Circuit Networks in Factorio is keeping your data isplated, either broadcasting on different channels, different wires or just entirely different networks. That's why VTN uses red wires for "request" and green wires for "supply" (or was it the other way around?), after all. If you're having issues figuring out what's going on, it's usually best to push output to a power pole and track the information there. Fiddle with it until you get the result you're after.

And yeah, I just took a head count. I have 80 trains (small ones, engine + 3 cars) in my network, and ~70ish of them are constantly on the move. I have Biters disabled and I've still died dozens of times to my own trains...

引用自 rikkitikki：

Maybe this is just me, but I'm strangely reluctant about trying mods for some reason. At least right now. I think maybe because I still consider myself a noob and want to "master" the vanilla game first even if some of the tasks are tedious. I just want to be sure if I do use them that they are merely saving me from the labor, not the accomplishment of learning how to make things work in the first place. That said, I'm sure once I have "earned" this knowledge I'll be like, screw this, gimme those mods now!! :)

Yup, that's absolutely fair enough. Get a sense of how the game works before you start to change it. For me, though - I ran out of patience pretty early on. More or less started with Bob's Inserters because I couldn't be arsed manually balancing lanes on a belt, then got a Belt Balancer mod anyway :) Some feel that the point of Factorio is to come up with complex solutions to simple problems with limited tools. Me, I'm happy to grab a kit solution to some of the more tedious problems. The reason I swar by warehouses is because it avoids having to load-balance multiple boxes when unloading trains. I have absolute nightmares of boxes being unevenly unloaded and trains waiting forever with 2 of 3 cars unloaded and the 3rd backed up. Oil Tanks didn't have this issue since they're self-levelling and I couldn't be arsed to make a self-levelling system for chests, so I just grabbed a "warehouse," which is ostensibly a really large chest what looks like a building.

If I ever start a new campaign, I'm probably going to look for some kind of early game bots system, as well, because placing items by hand almost got me to rage-quit Factorio on multiple occasions. I may offer mods here and there, but if you choose to play Vanilla, then I can respect that.

[Malidictus]

引用自 AlexMBrennan：

So we are going to need hundreds of extra filters, thousands of belts, dozens of chests, and worst of all manual player intervention to... marginally reduce the size of your loading station?

Everything you said applies to the loading station as well. If we're clearing errant items from trains and we don't want a Flare Stack destroying them, then it doesn't matter whether we do this at a station or at a depot - items still need to be stored and still need to be manually sorted. Unless you have another way to deal with, say, steel and engines at a copper smelter. Putting this at a central location means that any kind of manual intervention can be done in one place, as opposed to having to clean the bins at multiple stations.

Of course, this is all academic. My solution was to only ever route a singe resource type through each station. No threat of cross-contamination then. Not unless I manually screw something up and feed the wrong resource to the wrong belt - which has happened.

I'm also not sure why you'd need filters. To me, it's pretty safe to assume that if a train is at a depot, that train ought to be empty. Any cargo the train brought with it is to be stripped and stored or discarded. I suppose it's more complex if you store trains full of cargo, but I stopped doing that pretty quickly. Even without LTN, being able to repurpose bulk cargo train cars for whatever cargo needs moving saves trains. As I said before - I have 80 trains running near-constantly WITH LTN generating their routes ad-hoc. If I had to have one train per line, that would be a substantially larger amount of trains. Storing trains empty does slow transportation somewhat, but it saves on infrastructure.

[KatherineOfSky]

引用自 Malidictus：

With all of that said, though... I would still recommend grabbing at least the Warehouse mod. That's so convenient it's hard to explain :) .

The warehouse mod is worse than useless in vanilla Factorio. Any sort of buffer delays knowledge of a problem. I can understand its use in complicated modpacks like Bob/Angel's for reasons of sorting byproducts, but in vanilla... eh... I don't know of any good reason to use it.

It's far better to calculate items produced per second and increase production if you are lacking.

[rikkitikki]

引用自 Malidictus：

To be honest, the circuit network isn't actually all that complex, so much as it's poorly documented.

Ha, it is truly refreshing to hear someone say that. I kept thinking it was me (and I'm sure it IS, partly) but damn, thel wiki seems to be written by Math Club nerds for other Math Club nerds. And the YouTube tutorials speed through things so quickly I miss critical concepts even with pause and rewind to help me out. Even just a few sentences here and there written or spoken in everyday bar talk now and then, just to summarize for us liberal arts types would have helped.

引用自 Malidictus：

If I ever start a new campaign, I'm probably going to look for some kind of early game bots system, as well, because placing items by hand almost got me to rage-quit Factorio on multiple occasions. I may offer mods here and there, but if you choose to play Vanilla, then I can respect that.

Funny how "placing items by hand" is so aggravating to you, while to me it's one of the more fun aspects of the game, kind of like solving the IQ-test-like visual puzzles. Then again I'm still pretty new to the game. Ask me how I feel a year from now and I might be a raving bot zealot!

[Fel]

引用自 rikkitikki：

Ha, it is truly refreshing to hear someone say that. I kept thinking it was me (and I'm sure it IS, partly) but damn, thel wiki seems to be written by Math Club nerds for other Math Club nerds. And the YouTube tutorials speed through things so quickly I miss critical concepts even with pause and rewind to help me out. Even just a few sentences here and there written or spoken in everyday bar talk now and then, just to summarize for us liberal arts types would have helped.

Some examples of very basic uses for all players, maybe in the mini-tutorials would definitely be good.

But at its core the whole circuit network is a very flexible but "complex" part of the game that is mostly not needed by a majority of players.
The problem is that in uses more advanced than "link 2 things and have one enable on a specific condition based on the other's content" any mis-placed wire or mistaken sign can lead to a widely different result that can be hard to track without a good knowledge of how everything works.

Unlike rail signals that are very simple once you understand how they work the circuit network remains very technical and complex even with good knowledge about it.

[dragonsphotoworks]

引用自 KatherineOfSky：

I have made a simple video tutorial on a circuit setup, if you would like a visual guide. I use this variation on all my outposts, including unloading building supplies for new outposts, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVc-ALMWYq4&list=PL4o6UvJIdPNpm9szThfI-2y3Bv0c3rPlB&index=4

They linked this to me dealing with my own logistic issue. Im sure she has other videos can check out for info, sadly i didnt ask so not 100%. And for me she explains pretty clearly. Was not too hard to follow along. So this MIGHT give you an idea.

[Malidictus]

引用自 KatherineOfSky：

The warehouse mod is worse than useless in vanilla Factorio. Any sort of buffer delays knowledge of a problem. I can understand its use in complicated modpacks like Bob/Angel's for reasons of sorting byproducts, but in vanilla... eh... I don't know of any good reason to use it.

As I said - it's useful in designing larger train stations. Temporary storage helps unload trains fast even if their resources aren't needed at the speed of unloading. After all, trains have travel time, so each facility is ideally using resources slower than they're being unloaded, to avoid gaps in supply. Having a buffor also means that trains can make large bulk deliveries and be freed up to do other things while a facility processes the material. I personally like keeping, say, 20K Iron Ore on stock for a Smelter.

Me personally, I don't try to design a facility which is always operating at maximum capacity at all times. I'm perfectly fine having mines backed up waiting for more ore to be requested, or large stockpiles of resources sitting in storage as a facility uses them at a slower pace. I'd rather have surplus so my little town can keep working even when individual production experiences issues.

I also tend to produce items in bulk. "Increase production" is simpler said than done, because it involves building an entirely new facility, as old facilities are typically working at the maximum throughput that the stations can support. This is why I tend to build in surplus, with resources waiting at stations for when they're needed. And yes, that can be a bit hard to judge, but I did recently found the LTN Manager mod[mods.factorio.com], which serves me far better than the default production and consumption stats ever did. I can see what's being provided, what's being requested and what's missing. If a lot of a thing is being provided, that means I need another mine or another facility.

Like I said - to each his own. The overwhelming majority of my resource transportation happens by train. Belts usually move fairly short distances and handle fairly limited throughput, because each facility is self-contained.

引用自 rikkitikki：

Ha, it is truly refreshing to hear someone say that. I kept thinking it was me (and I'm sure it IS, partly) but damn, thel wiki seems to be written by Math Club nerds for other Math Club nerds. And the YouTube tutorials speed through things so quickly I miss critical concepts even with pause and rewind to help me out. Even just a few sentences here and there written or spoken in everyday bar talk now and then, just to summarize for us liberal arts types would have helped.

The reason it's explained like that is because most logic systems in pretty much any game out there are "heavily inspired" from binary math and programming languages. Factorio's logic circuit is honestly on the simplistic side because the values for same-channel signals are automatically combined and automatically pushed to all connected entities. It limits what you can do a little bit, and makes it a bit more complicated to do isolated things. Ultimately, though, it's a very simple visual programming language focused around parsing data.

I'd argue you probably have an advantage over me. My background is in mathematics and programming, so I'm constantly running into issues like "Where's my AND Combinator?" and "Where's my for loop?" having to search around to figure out how people have constructed these out of Combinators. If I ever need to do anything complex, I'm probabyl going to grab a Logic Circuit mod of some kind. I know there are some with AND/OR/XOR gates and more complex combinators, etc.

Honestly, the best thing you can do is keep trying, keep posting questions and figure it out as you go. I teach programming at the local university. Trust me - the BEST thing you could possibly do in this case is ask if you're having issues. Beating your head against a problem is never superior to having a solution that you then reverse-engineer using your own knowledge.

引用自 rikkitikki：

Funny how "placing items by hand" is so aggravating to you, while to me it's one of the more fun aspects of the game, kind of like solving the IQ-test-like visual puzzles. Then again I'm still pretty new to the game. Ask me how I feel a year from now and I might be a raving bot zealot!

For me, that lost its charm pretty early on. Yes, solving the puzzle of building an efficient smelter once is fun. Absolutely. Doing it six times, though? Not so much. Once you know the solution, the rote repeition of it over and over again starts to get annoying, especially with fiddly bits like directional splitters, inserter orientation, assembler recipes, etc. That's where blueprints help. Figure it out once, write it down, insert it wholesale afterwards. Except without Robots, you still have to manually click on every single thing. At this point, I have probably over 100 individual facilities with over 50-ish buildings each. I was spending HOURS building those things and getting nowhere until I finally got bots. It's still pretty slow because they're pretty terrible without research, but at least it's some level of automation.

Factorio's general design expects you to automate micromanagement and focus on an increasingly larger scale of production. In the beginning, I was placing small smelters of like 4-6 forges. These days when I get to it, I tend to plop down 6 Furnaces per stack, 3 stacks long and 5-6 stacks wide for a total of 90 Furnaces and not even think about it, becaus I have a warehouse with several thousand furnaces waiting to be used. Doing all the little power poles and grabbers and belts and so on by hand would take far too long, which is where robots and blueprints really help.

[rikkitikki]

引用自 Fel：

But at its core the whole circuit network is a very flexible but "complex" part of the game that is mostly not needed by a majority of players.

Which, in a way, is why I want to learn it :)

I've come to understand different people enjoy and take from this game different things. I'm sure it has special appeal for math- or logic-oriented thinkers and people who take pride in their organizational abilities. In my case, though, I happen to be particularly bad in those areas (I was once described by a coworker as "the most disorganized person I know") but what I love about this game is that it forces me to confront my demons safely while enjoying the many fun rewards along the way when I succeed. In that sense, understanding circuit networks has become a bit of a grail for me. A trophy in my journey to becoming a better thinker. :)

引用自 dragonsphotoworks：

They linked this to me dealing with my own logistic issue. Im sure she has other videos can check out for info, sadly i didnt ask so not 100%. And for me she explains pretty clearly. Was not too hard to follow along. So this MIGHT give you an idea.

Thanks for the linke! I do find her videos to be helpful, usually. I'll chedk it out.