Change station name in schedule?

[pat]

This is something that happens a lot. Let's say, for example, that I have 8 trains transporting copper plates from the mine up over there, to my green chip factory. The mine isn't producing fast enough and I've got trains lined up waiting for copper. So I need to make another copper mining facility in another place. That's up and running and I'd like half of the trains to start getting copper from there instead.

I'd like the schedule details to remain the same, but pick up from this new train stop. I'd be wonderful if I could just go in and change the train station from "copper pickup 1" to "copper pickup 2" and leave the details (wait for full, wait 15 seconds, etc.) the same. But as far as I know, my only option is to completely delete that train stop and recreated it from scratch.

Is there a more efficient way to do this?

[Nero]

If the train stations have the same name then the trains will use all of them

Example: our copper mines are named „copper in“(with ore symbol) and have logic to activate or tell the trains when enough ore is ready for transport to „copper out“(smeltery)

That way you can run the system with less trains that are moving all the time

[pat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Nero:

If the train stations have the same name then the trains will use all of them

I don't doubt that it's a good idea. I just don't understand the logic. I try to transport stuff the shortest distance. Just to make things easier, let's say my land is the United States. If I need to transport copper to my factory in Florida, I'd like to have trains running from the mines in Georgia and Louisiana. In your setup, what's to stop them from going up to the mines in Oregon or Maine?

[Kura]

Add the new stop in the schedule with the conditions you want, delete the old one, click and drag the ||||||||||| marks to move the new stop where the old stop was in the schedule.

[pat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Kura:

Add the new stop in the schedule with the conditions you want, delete the old one, click and drag the ||||||||||| marks to move the new stop where the old stop was in the schedule.

That's exactly what I'm trying to get around. It just seems to tedious to go through that with several trains.

[Nero]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Nero:

If the train stations have the same name then the trains will use all of them

I don't doubt that it's a good idea. I just don't understand the logic. I try to transport stuff the shortest distance. Just to make things easier, let's say my land is the United States. If I need to transport copper to my factory in Florida, I'd like to have trains running from the mines in Georgia and Louisiana. In your setup, what's to stop them from going up to the mines in Oregon or Maine?

Trains will always target the nearest possible station

[Khaylain]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Nero:

If the train stations have the same name then the trains will use all of them

I don't doubt that it's a good idea. I just don't understand the logic. I try to transport stuff the shortest distance. Just to make things easier, let's say my land is the United States. If I need to transport copper to my factory in Florida, I'd like to have trains running from the mines in Georgia and Louisiana. In your setup, what's to stop them from going up to the mines in Oregon or Maine?

They try to go to the shortest distance away station first anyway, so naming all the stations the same allows you to have trains going to the further stations when the nearer ones can't supply enough, which was what your original post was asking for. Use the Train Limits on stations to have more granular control over how many trains can go to a specific station as well.

[pat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Khaylain:

They try to go to the shortest distance away station first anyway, so naming all the stations the same allows you to have trains going to the further stations when the nearer ones can't supply enough

Ok. This is probably something I'm just going to have to try and see how it works. I've always assume that the trains are mindless. But there *are* often cases where one copper mine facility has oodles of copper plate and the smelters and miners are sitting idle while another mining facility can't come close to keeping up with the load. Perhaps I'm trying to micro-manage too much.

[Kura]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Kura:

Add the new stop in the schedule with the conditions you want, delete the old one, click and drag the ||||||||||| marks to move the new stop where the old stop was in the schedule.

That's exactly what I'm trying to get around. It just seems to tedious to go through that with several trains.

Just do it for one train, then shift-right-click that train and shift-left-click the others. The colors and schedule copy over.

[brian_va]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Khaylain:

They try to go to the shortest distance away station first anyway, so naming all the stations the same allows you to have trains going to the further stations when the nearer ones can't supply enough

Ok. This is probably something I'm just going to have to try and see how it works. I've always assume that the trains are mindless. But there *are* often cases where one copper mine facility has oodles of copper plate and the smelters and miners are sitting idle while another mining facility can't come close to keeping up with the load. Perhaps I'm trying to micro-manage too much.

This is where a circuit condition to count the ore waiting to load and enable/disable the station as well as using train limits works really well.

[pat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Kura:

Just do it for one train, then shift-right-click that train and shift-left-click the others. The colors and schedule copy over.

It's not always that simple. I gave an example, but sometimes it's just one train. Or it's three trains that are scheduled for:
copper pickup 1 -> green factory
copper pickup 1 -> red factory
copper pickup 1 -> rocket factory
...and I have to change each of them to get their copper from the new location.

[schnappkatze]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Kura:

Just do it for one train, then shift-right-click that train and shift-left-click the others. The colors and schedule copy over.

It's not always that simple. I gave an example, but sometimes it's just one train. Or it's three trains that are scheduled for:
copper pickup 1 -> green factory
copper pickup 1 -> red factory
copper pickup 1 -> rocket factory
...and I have to change each of them to get their copper from the new location.

I am not sure if I get your problem. The usual solution that the game offers would be, that you name the new copper location also "copper pickup 1", because then the trains will automatically also get copper from there.

If no train is going to the new "copper pickup 1", that is probably because you have too few trains and the trains are already busy with the existing stations. So, if you add a new train station it makes sense to also add a new train or two for each station. The beauty is that for the new trains you can just copy and paste the schedules of the other trains, since the copper station's name is the same everywhere.

So in practice, whenever you add a new copper mining station you can just name it the same as the others, add two trains which schedules you copied from other trains and voilà, no fiddling around with small schedule changes.

Keep in mind that you can restrict how many trains a station allows. If you have always 3 trains waiting their turn in a mining station, waiting while one train is filled up slowly and they just stand idling in line, maybe restrict this train station to only allow 1 or 2 trains. Then, while there are already two trains at the station, no other train will target that station but will go to a different one farther away.

Does that make any sense? If not, could you describe why it doesn't solve your problem, or what new problems arise? Because, it does sound tedious when you micromanage all your train schedules like this and I will gladly help make trains (more) fun to you.


Bonus tip:
You also don't need to name every copper receiving station differently, no need for "green factory" or "red factory". I named them all "copper off". Every copper train has only two scheduled stations: "Copper On" and "Copper Off". That way I don't need to micromanage anything here. Every copper train with that schedule will drive to the nearest free station where it can load copper, and then drive to the nearest free station to offload that copper.

The key is to restrict your stations to only allow one or two trains. That way the trains will serve also stations far away when the ones nearby are full.


2. Bonus, since I am procrastinating what I am supposed to do, I will describe from the example in your initial post what you need to do:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

This is something that happens a lot. Let's say, for example, that I have 8 trains transporting copper plates from the mine up over there, to my green chip factory. The mine isn't producing fast enough and I've got trains lined up waiting for copper. So I need to make another copper mining facility in another place. That's up and running and I'd like half of the trains to start getting copper from there instead.

So you have currently 8 trains for 1 mining station and you add a second one with the same name, and you notice that none of the trains go to the second. The super simple thing is to restrict your mining station to only allow 4 trains, because then the other 4 trains have no other choice than to go to the mining station further away. When a train leaves the "green factory" it checks where it can go, and when the nearby mining station has already 4 trains waiting and its limit is 4 trains, then our train will treat this station as not available and will go to another one.

[pat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von schnappkatze:

I am not sure if I get your problem.

The problem is that when I ask a question, I should never ever offer an example to illustrate what I'm trying to do, because almost everyone will prefer to come up with an alternative way to achieve the end goal of that example rather than to just answer the question. There are certainly better ways to do what I'm doing, and I appreciate the willingness of people to share their knowledge, but sometimes I just want to know something specific, and a simple "No, that option isn't available" would be fine.

[brian_va]

No, you can't simply change the scheduled stops name in the schedule without recreating the conditions. It would be nice, but we can't.

The solutions offered will allow you to achieve a more dynamic setup that can help solve the problems you are asking about though. Maybe going forward you should preface your questions with a clear indicator you don't want advice on solving the problem, just an answer to your question.

[pat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Khaylain:

They try to go to the shortest distance away station first anyway, so naming all the stations the same allows you to have trains going to the further stations when the nearer ones can't supply enough, which was what your original post was asking for. Use the Train Limits on stations to have more granular control over how many trains can go to a specific station as well.

Well, I tried that and it's not working for me. I named all of the copper mining facilities the same and all of the trains are going the nearest station that is almost out of copper ore.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3048737728

Meanwhile, my more remote copper mining facilities are chock full and have stopped working because no trains are visiting them.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3048738200

This is how I expected it would work. I'm going to go back to naming them differently.

[schnappkatze]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pat:

sometimes I just want to know something specific, and a simple "No, that option isn't available" would be fine.

That is fine, although when you struggle to achieve something that the game has a rather easy way to do that you don't use, it is hopefully understandable that people point out the easy solution instead of trying to think on how to make the more convoluted solution easier.

Like, when someone asks if there is an easy way to feed coal to all the burner inserters, because it got very tedious to feed them since they have now several hundreds, people would probably suggest to switch to electric inserters. Which is not the solution the other person asked, but solves the problem in a much easier way with a game mechanic (inserters that don't need coal) that is specifically designed to not have the problem that the asking person faces (having to feed coal to all of them).


Note: This example doesn't apply to the Legendary Burner inserter that Drizzt is all about.