Requesting Artillery Train via Circuit conditions

[Doctor Script]

I don't normally play with biters enabled, but I wanted to do a Rail World factory similar to Scarhoof's Marathon Rail World, or Mangled Pork's Towns series.

I'm planning on having a modular entry/exit rail way and figured I could land some achievements in the process that are normally disabled when you turn off biters (Namely, Raining Bullets (No Laser Turrets) Steam all the Way (No solar panels), and Logistics Embargo (No Requester Chests)).

I am planning out 10 ports for the trains, which will be a uniform 1-2-1 load out. I will be barrelling my fluids to make the ports uniform (Likely, taking in steel barrels and unloading full ones where necessary).

3 ports are going to be uniform across each outpost - 1) Engineering/PAX train (With Gate to detect that I am waiting at the station to call the train forward immediately), 2) Fuel trains with priority Nuclear Rocket Fuel, Rocket Fuel, Solid Fuel, Coal to refuel each train and associated steam engines at each base and 3) The Ammo Train DFENSE.

When I unlock Artillery trains, however, things get tricky...

What I want is the circuits to count the ammo in the buffer chests and for sake of simplicity, we will say 100 is the max. When it drops to 80, we send in the new Ammo Train.

If it drops far lower, say 50, I want it to give a signal that the base needs the Artillery train, the train unloads a fresh supply of Ammo, and Then sends the Artillery Train to clean up any bases that may have popped up unexpectedly.

Problem is that I can... see... how this should work... but I'm failing to grasp how to work it out.

I think I need an SR Latch to continuously give a global signal for train while the Artillary train has a wait condition for being fully loaded with shells and the Global Signal, and breaking the latch when an Artillery Train Arrives. but I'm not sure how to direct the Artillery train to the correct port at the right base. I don't want all the Artillery Trains suddenly departing to each station and raining hell on my ammo production and creating a positive feed back loop.

Thoughts?

[Fel]

Logistics train network is among the most complex things you can do with circuit network.
I would absolutely not recommend going into that unless you have a fairly solid understanding of key concepts in programing and networking.
Specifically unless you make a system that is very hard to expand you will need to understand how to combine binary signals into a single one and how to fetch the information from it and how to properly separate networks in order to avoid signal pollution.

But if you don't have the knowledge on how to do it, it is usually easier to set the artillery trains on a loop around a few stations each, maybe de-activating the stations if you only want they to go when they are "called".

[AlexMBrennan]

Rail world doesn't have enemy expansion so the scenario you describe cannot happen; if you don't plan on enabling enemy expansion then you don't have to worry about it.

If it drops far lower, say 50, I want it to give a signal that the base needs the Artillery train, the train unloads a fresh supply of Ammo, and Then sends the Artillery Train to clean up any bases that may have popped up unexpectedly.

This seems unnecessarily complicated - the artillery train is far better at moving artillery shells then cargo wagons, so just use the artillery train to deliver ammo and clean up any nearby bases when necessary.

[Doctor Script]

Originally posted by Fel:

Logistics train network is among the most complex things you can do with circuit network.
I would absolutely not recommend going into that unless you have a fairly solid understanding of key concepts in programing and networking.
Specifically unless you make a system that is very hard to expand you will need to understand how to combine binary signals into a single one and how to fetch the information from it and how to properly separate networks in order to avoid signal pollution.

But if you don't have the knowledge on how to do it, it is usually easier to set the artillery trains on a loop around a few stations each, maybe de-activating the stations if you only want they to go when they are "called".

Logic I'm fine with; it's the hyper-ethos of programing that gives me issues. I learned as much from playing with RPGMaker and trying to master Ruby. But I am willing to learn for sake of completion into a true Factorio Engineer.

I have made train stations before with enabled/disabled conditions on a global network and can successfully call them or send them out; and with an IDLE dock that they will all go back to in the event that I have to do work on the network and don't want to worry about getting hit by trains.

[Ex; Each station has an enabled condition of <Red> signals <1, and are locally connected via red wire to a decider combinator. If, say Iron Plates, are more then half way full, the combi sends out a <Red> signal, so the trains go to a station that is enabled.

I have a power switch in my main base that powers a Constant Combi to the global network via a green wire and out puts a <Red> signal. all the stations are connected to the global network, and turning on the power switch will immediately disable all the stations except the IDLE stations, sending all the trains to the only open stations they have available to them.]

This keeps trains moving to their appropriate stations regularly, but I've never tried it with trains that share a target station and was looking for insights on how to accomplish that.

I was planning on 10 stations due to the Research Station requiring a drop off of 7 packs and knowing I was going to need three stations for Ammo, Fuel and Engineering. I suppose I could make it 12 and add a dedicated PAX and Artillery Train to the load out, but the more space I use in the modular design, the more walls and turrets I have to allocate to each station.

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Rail world doesn't have enemy expansion so the scenario you describe cannot happen; if you don't plan on enabling enemy expansion then you don't have to worry about it.

If it drops far lower, say 50, I want it to give a signal that the base needs the Artillery train, the train unloads a fresh supply of Ammo, and Then sends the Artillery Train to clean up any bases that may have popped up unexpectedly.

This seems unnecessarily complicated - the artillery train is far better at moving artillery shells then cargo wagons, so just use the artillery train to deliver ammo and clean up any nearby bases when necessary.

I wasn't going to play the Rail World setting, but I suppose I could. I kind of want to make use of the Artillery train, and it seems to be a nice cure-all for Biter Expansion specifically. Currently I only use it to scout which isn't all that fun. I was just going to use default and crank up the frequency of ore patches and reduce the size. I was going to limit the scale of the water and up the coverage. This makes it hard to produce a bus and makes trains more appealing (Which I learned from Scarhoof's Marathon Railworld series).

Since I'm going for the Raining Bullets achievement (And unless I'm mistaken, Artillery trains can't be loaded with the various types of magazines), I need an ammo train to deliver the Uranium ammo to each base. I don't want to destroy bases and send in a wave automatically without having adequate munitions to clear them out as they attack.

I think I may just go with 12 stations per base and incorporate a dedicated Artillery Station.

...

and maybe a universal speaker to give off a siren as it calls in the Damocles Train...*Cue Evil Laughter*