Item filters for off loading train stops?

[ZomBeGone]

I wanted to build a large loop train track near all the temples to deliver crystals to each of them. What I wanted to do was have a train stop at each of the 4 temples to unload "it's" crystals.

1. Trains stop near red temple unloads only red crystals.
2. Train stop near yellow temple to unload only yellow crystals.
...

I could find no way to set a filter on a stop. Is there a way that I missed?

Edit: Now that I typed all this out, I wonder if a barn with item filters as the train stop would work?

[ZomBeGone]

YES! it works. So you can have more than one destination train stop on a train loop if you use a building as a item filter.

This opens up a whole bunch of new uses for the trains for me. :D

[legend_slayer]

You can filter items if offloading to a structure such as a barn by setting the filter on that building. Sadly, there are still some major issues with trains/carts that prevent them from being truly interesting:

- You cannot filter packaged items. This makes delivering packaged items a one-item-type-per-track ordeal, which, honestly is easier to do with a conveyor.

- You cannot set filters on the carts themselves, and they only carry one type of item. This leads to situations in which you have multiple pickup stops on a track that get ignored as each cart only grabs a single item from the first mostly-empty stop instead of bypassing it to get the next stop which is overflowing with a different item type. Again, this makes multi-item track setups difficult to utilize and pushes the player toward a single-item-per-track setup.


I would much rather see Erik spend some time making QoL improvements to carts and trains than messing with functional core game mechanics at this stage!

[ZomBeGone]

You can set item filters on mine carts! That is what make it all work. You will need a filter on every mine cart, and at least one cart for every product. Only make a product at one place on a train loop.

I converted everything over to mine carts, and I am pretty happy with it now, and a few belts. It simplified everything. I even combined all 4 stores, so I can just make a factory to make whatever, put it on the track loop, assign a few mine carts, and forget it.

I set up 4 independent loops so it makes lots of room for production factories. I have a another loop around the entire area to move the magic stuff around, as it was a huge gigantic mess before.

I am not using the packaging.

[Anson]

in addition to what zom wrote:
to load and unload carts, i use a pusher on the main track to split off a specific type of cargo. and at the station itself, i have a blocker that stops carts while their contents is either !=0 (unloader) or <20 (loader), which eliminates those partially loaded (or partially unloaded) carts. either directly at that splitoff or if the unloader is a little away from the main track, then (also) at that station, a pusher 2 or 3 tiles in front of the blocker can cause carts to be diverted back to the track so that only 2 or 3 carts are waiting to be fully loaded or unloaded.

the above applies to production, and unloading at markets usually doesn't need any additional logic since they can accept large (almost unlimited) quantities.

blocks on the track: blocker, train stop, none/one/more free tiles for the waiting queue, and a pusher into the setup so that additional carts are diverted. the logic blocks are easy to setup too: inventory sensor besides the track (with offset on top of the train stop), connection from that sensor to math block (condition set as described above), connection from math block to the blocker. done.

[rusticisland]

Videos of all this from each contributor please? or at least Screenshots? Would be very helpful. Thanks.

[Anson]

it's difficult to show all the filters in a simple pic, but here is my station to make xxx-crystals from xxx-stones and mana crystals which has 4 train stops (2 unloading, 1 loading, all of them with filters and conditions, and one with filter and without condition) :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1705855875
(btw: still building magic rails, only part of all tracks are converted yet)

the above screenshot shows my setup to unload the two ingredients, an optional third unload stop in case i want to get rid of xxx-ether which accidentally got into my base, and a loader for the final product. the entire track is a big oneway loop around the whole world.
there is one barn with filters set to xxx-stone, xxx-ether, xxx-crystals and mana crystals. the rail stops have no filters of their own, but they will only unload items that can be put into the barn according to the barn's filters. similarly, all carts have filters so that they only take specific cargo, elsewhere, and here from the barn.

one of the 4 loaders/unloaders in detail: since mana crystals are used at all temples i didn't want to queue too many of them at each temple, but only three. to achieve that, a pusher pushes carts with mana crystals (could be improved: currently pushes empty as well as partially loaded or full carts which have mana crystals loaded or are filtered to only transport mana crystals) into the short U-turn which has 2 free tiles, the third tile is the train stop and the last tile has the blocker. thus at most three carts can wait there. having a mana crystal as filter on the blocker should allow all other carts to pass through it (in case of errors or manually editing the filter of a cart on that track) so that the rails are not blocked forever (not yet tested, this is my latest improvement :-)
i use pushers instead of sorters to guarantee that no jams happen. maybe rarely a cart might pass that station but then will come back on the next round around the big loop, but that is better than jamming the whole system because too many xxx-stone carts are waiting and don't let the mana crystals pass that are needed to get rid of xxx-stone and produce the xxx-crystals. with a constant flow of mana crystal carts, and max 8 xxx-stone carts and 4 xxx-crystal carts, this should be safe with either pushers or sorters.

to the right of the track are the three related logic blocks: an inventory sensor which gets its input from the tile with the rail stop (the green connection line in the picture, showing where the offset of the inventory sensor is). then there are two logic connections, one to a number block (simply as feedback when debugging, to show how many items are still in the cart), and a second link to the math block which is set to "!=0". and finally a logic link from that math block to the tile with the blocker (link not visible in the screenshot). the blocker will stay active and thus block the cart while its contents is not zero ("!= 0"), but because of its filter should only block carts with mana crystals (see above). when the contents of the cart becomes zero, the math block disables the blocker and thus enables travel for the cart. because of this, the additional filter on the blocker might not be needed (any other cart would have zero crystals anyway), but i use the same setup also for loading stations where the condition is to enable the blocker while the count is <20

for the stones, the setup is identical, with its logic blocks to the left of its track, and with 8 spaces in front of the blocker to have space for up to 8 waiting carts with stones. and further down the main track there is the pusher to send carts for loading the produced crystals: once again the same setup, with space for up to 4 waiting carts and a condition to block trains while count is <20.

i have a single cart that travels around past my base and this station, in case some ether got into the base. sooner or later it will grab it and get it to the fourth (unloader) train stop. but since that rarely happens, i have no dedicated complicated station for it and simply unload it into the silo which has its filter set to that ether and which can buffer up to 100 ether. that's also why i have a condition of "<28" someplace (writing this, i just notice that because of using a silo as buffer now, i could set it a bit higher, maybe up to 47; not 48+ since up to 2 ether could get from the refineries into the barn simultaneously) to enable the output from the refineries only when there is some space in the barn to slowly empty that buffer silo with priority.
the two "sensor and number" pairs near that silo only show the contents of the silo and the ether contents of the last cart, eg for debugging and are not really needed.

and finally i don't use a big mana transport system, but only a small local loop. the cost to build it might be higher for having three buildings everywhere instead of having a central recharging station, but what i spend additionally for mana blocks is saved on the cost of mana pipes. jams in this small loop are very unlikely, and jams on recharging won't disable the whole world. the receiver, recharger and transmitter are located behind the two refineries. i also don't fill it with many crystals manually but have another logic setup :-) as long as the silo between recharger and transmitter is empty, a belt pulls mana crystals from the barn which are there anyway. in the screenshot, that silo currently buffers 20 mana crystals since there was a usage spike recently which pulled more crystals. but with a lot less than 100 mana pipes (maybe 20 or max 50), that silo is large enough and i don't need to take care of it (neither when starting the setup nor when running the mana loop). and as last part of all this setup, there are 4 more pairs of inventory sensor and number block on the roof of the barn to show the contents of the barn without need to select and open the building :-) (one of those sensors is also used for the "<28" or "<48" test)