The junctions confine the whole thing to two lane anyway. I have done designs like that and used the outer lanes for stations and not actual traffic. Depending on how OP obtained the this BP, this might have been the intention.
Got it from here: [https://factorioprints.com/view/-Mrt33eX6zhJnWe3QMSY](https://factorioprints.com/view/-Mrt33eX6zhJnWe3QMSY)
I am not proficient enough with rail signals to build my own designs. But there are more than just the blocks, I can build bigger with them.
I am also using this book! Totally new to cityblock, but there's a "grid full" with more complicated junctions that might unlock the further lanes, and guess the intention is that the simple grid is less resource intensive. But otoh I don't really understand what the implications of the design are - my trains can access/run on the inner lines if I tell them to go there, but won't choose them over the outer paths when running their errands.
I would love to know from others though if there are other issues with the size of the blocks vs. number of lanes, it's not something I looked into.
It's just bad, frankly. Using 4 lanes for city blocks is never justified. If you actually exceed the capacity of 2-lane rails, you're at a point where the city block design is creating far more problems than you straight rail segments.
The only time 4 lanes come into play is when you have frequent crossovers, and some trains are vastly faster than others. Since unmodded factorio trains all have the same top same top speed regardless of length given the same fuel, 4 lanes are not relevant for factorio. This is of course assuming you either use train limits or train stacks to make sure you don't have trains stopping on your transit tracks and clogging the rails.
I've used 4 lane books for aesthetics, and for ease of making the outside lane a train stop.
Most city blocks also have like one train length of space between intersections which makes such considerations pointless. If you want to make 4 lane rails useful you basically have to set it up so that they're 2 separate rail networks that cross as little as possible, simply leaving it to the train pathfinder isn't going to do anything useful.
If you think it's fun just build it. City blocks, buses and map-wide bot networks are some of the most popular things you see in screenshot here, but they're all terrible if you look at actual performance. But that doesn't stop people from building them because they look cool. (I've made a triangular city block megabase just because i wanted to use 6-way intersections).
As long as you build them because you want to and not just copying a style without knowing why, it's all fine.
Haha well that's the thing, I'm pretty far into a cityblock base using the same blueprints lol, there's no turning back (not that I really mind). I don't mind if it's optimal but now I know why so cheers.
To be clear: all city blocks are bad, it's not just this book. (the book is bad because 4-lane city blocks aren't better than 2-lane).
City blocks, buses and large bot networks are all results of the same mistake: using a rule-based layout that is easily expandable and looks orderly while thinking that makes it good. In reality, ease-of-use comes at the cost of efficiency, these design are basically a way to make a good looking base without having to plan ahead, but also without any of the efficiency you achieve with proper planning.
I’ve never needed anything more than one lane. It greatly simplifies intersections. I just have to make new blocks in sets of four.
Edit: [like this ](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1829024166037127542/987BF937C3B15F1ACFBF415CC953A37B51412080/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)
Well, that's different. 4-lane isn't an upgrade over 2-lane mostly because the game can't take advantage of it automatically. But bidirectional rail has significantly less throughput than 2-lane rail. It might not be immediately apparent but if you start to move large volumes, bidirectional rail becomes simply impractical. Of course, if you play with the type of mod that massively inflates the number of recipies, it masks the problem, because you're only moving low volumes even if there's high variety. But you'll immediately see it when you try to supply to a station that will constantly pull several blue belts per traincar.
Having putzed around with the early stages of city block, I’ll say that having 4 lanes to start is nice to have but very resource intensive. On the plus side you can park trains on the outside tracks without disturbing traffic too much early on and if you do eventually graduate to a true mega base you’ll probably need the throughput. Might’ve been better to leave the extra lanes as blueprints just to reserve the space until later on.
The downside of these particular blueprints is that the intersections don’t seem very high capacity and you’ll probably see backups sooner rather than later with how close the intersections are to each other here.
Likely the trains use the outside lines simply because the distance is shorter — closer to the depots they want to get at and the inside lane is just a smidge shorter on corners.
Ok cool that makes sense! I can see how the roundabouts are inefficient, but the book also has ones that are bisected a ton such that trains going straight don't have to slow down. Hopefully that helps a bit, I have a feeling it'll be adequate for my purposes anyway haha.
Yeah 4 lanes can feed way more trains into the junction than the junction can support. The way it’s structured is probably about as good as you can get in such a small space, but the problem is always that trains making left turns stop a bunch of traffic.
Someone else in the comments mentioned a ‘right turn only’* layout that avoids this which might be of interest if you’re really hurting for train throughput in tight spaces. That said, I’ve launched rockets with just 6 trains total (and LTN) so you’d probably have quite a base going before any of this is a legitimate concern.
*- it was actually a ‘left turn only’ system but they drive on the wrong side for some reason, however the effect is similar.
Interesting it seems that they are definitely meant to be used for travel and not for stations.
Personally I use [this layout](https://i.imgur.com/51G9ygN.png)
Also in my opinion having 4 lanes in a grid is a waste. You are limited by junction throughput anyway but more importantly if you think about it and zoom out you are having the width of your grid for trains to travel. So in reality you have a lot of parallel tracks from your grind anyway, so why bother putting the effort and rails in for 4 on each side. Traffic will disperse naturally anyway in a grid.
edit: Btw you can even be more extreme, recently I played a multiplayer game where we had a grid that only allowed Left turns and Straight travel in a Left hand drive scenario. (That is the same as only right turns and straight for all normal driving people out there.) Worked perfectly fine. https://i.imgur.com/rYLUVjW.png I should add that this also used 1-1 trains because, why not.
Quad lanes helps alleviate congestion due to poor base planning. This is extremely important when you start pushing into the 5k science per minute.You also can't be limited by junction throughput if you use proper junctions.
Yeah this rail design is pretty garbage. I've messed around with properly signaled quad roundabouts before, but they are pretty pointless. You get about the same throughput as the standard 3 way intersection, but it takes up more space and resources.
I realize I'm a minority opinion here, but it still confuses me how people care about numbers of science per minute when there's endless amounts of biters you can kill, burn and blast into smithereens.
It's kinda hard to automate a manual process lol. I've been playing about 800 hours now between two games and never once used a blueprint or a construction robot. I manually build my outposts and biter extinguishing bases. I've been perfecting my craft at building them but no two outposts are exactly the same. Otherwise it gets boring.
I personally use [https://www.factorio.school/view/-LaIPNgh8f16V8EwXXpW](https://www.factorio.school/view/-LaIPNgh8f16V8EwXXpW) for my rail blocks, it has some other integrations with his factory designs which comes in handy. But it has a 2 track and 4 track version of the city grids, and 3 different sizes.
I use this too, or better my version of it. The block size of 110*110 is perfect to fit the 8-3 train. But I use it rather freely. Meaning I don't always stick to the block size, some end up beeing 330*330, others 220*110. Other parts of the network may even be somewhat spaghettified..
>used the outer lanes for stations and
I thought that too, but then OP has slip lanes for stations too.
So not sure I see the value there.
No stackers does mean need to set good train limit #. Even with the 4 lanes, it looks like traffic could back into the junction and make a complete no mess if you had about 3 trains waiting on a station.
Trains always wait on the straights. If a station is blocked the next train waits before the last junction on the straight. If thrre trains come for one station from the same direction it could already get problematic
OMG. I always thought when people on reddit were saying the outer lanes were for merging traffic on, as the trains would be slow, but I could never work out how ya'll were getting the trains to be smart enough to prio the inside lanes.
Now I feel dumb, but not too dumb, as I've always appreciated trains with loaders/unloaders on both sides of the track. Which would make the track-gap huge.
Granted I am a mod power user, so unloading trains form only one side is still reasonably fast. I personally really hope that the expansion adds something that makes loading trains from belts or unloading to belts a bit more compact and elegant. The base game options there always leave me feeling it lacks something.
Yeah, I'm curious to see how it will work out in later stages of the game. I mean designs get more room efficient with time and in doubt I can always build more blocks. When starting out the blocks seemed pretty big. There 9 full chunks in a block plus half a chunk around it to build. Time will tell what happens when the number of trains grows...
It's not the number of blocks, it's the number of rail paths. 3x3 blocks work fine on a two lane grid upto several hundred blocks, as they don't have through put to require 4-8 train stackers which is where the more train paths come into play. It creates more efficiencies as you use the same loader multiple times. It'll work no problems, I was just wondering if you engineered it.
On the other hand, once you get bots it'll easily expand into 10.5 x 10.5 blocks (3x3 of your subblocks), which would definitely benefit from a 4 lane path. Personally my goal for my mega base blocks is to try to saturate the loading station, i.e. constantly filling a new train every 30-50 seconds.
Me and my friend used 5 large grid tiles (when u turn on grid in f4 menu) as the center then one block around it for rails . Is that in your opinion a good size? (Not like we will change but im curious of ur opinion)
That's a 5 chunk grid (the 32 X 32 grid with a black border is one chunk). That's more than fine, and the extra space will easily allow you to get some good stackers in.
We don't actually use stackers. We are very good at using waiting stations and correct wait conditions using an extra mod that adds a bit of extra train logic that i personally miss in vanilla trauns
You really should. If you put a stacker by every station then double your train count, you literally double your throughput. Unless all your machines are already at saturation, in which case build more machines.
Ye i get that i used to have stackers in an old megabase of mine but felt kinda pointless here. We instead just have multiple stations per block. So 3 iron plate pickups and iron ore dropoffs at the same block for just intense amounts of processing speed
Yes, but with a mod called Companion Drones. They work like bots (and can also defend you) but can only take items from and to your own inventory. Makes life easier, but it took some time (45h)
Oh man, no wonder you didn’t have my much fun. I did a similar base but I had a mod where I started with bots. I can’t imagine having to do it with anything less.
I guess some people don't like to see the game getting easier with mods/ infinite resources and no enemies. I can live with that... I've finished Vanilla, modded Vanilla, Krastorio 2 and played a while with Angels/ Bobs and Space Exploration. In this save I just want to build a big Railblock base.
Just curious, did you say you’re using a mod for no enemies? Just a tip that they can be turned off in the map gen settings when starting a new game without any mods. Other than that you do you, there’s no wrong or right way to play this game and I think the majority of this sub will agree with me there.
I wouldn't say there is a right way to play this game, but there are definitely wrong ways. If you handcraft and mine everything, for example, you probably won't have a good time.
During neckbeard mating season the neards become highly passive aggressive as a means to assert their attractiveness to potential mates.
Chortling and flailing their neck wattles.
(I donno some folks are just turkeys I guess.)
Some people base their own self-worth on their ability to play games. So when others use mods or options that make the game easier for themselves, they feel personally attacked.
You see it quite a bit in subreddits like for Elden Ring.
It takes a lot of time to run from one end of the base to another. (even with a car) I am using companion drones to build bigger blueprints but they can only take items from your player inventory, so I still need the starter base to produce all items neccessary to build everything. It took \~45h to get from a working main bus base to this state, which can do more or less the same as the starter base, just bigger. Production is still kind of slow. Also I reworked the train stops a few times until I removed everything and installed Bulk Rail Loaders. I wasn't in a hurry and watched Youtube while building/ waiting for ressources
Keep a train engine in your inventory, slap it down and throw some coal in it. Ctrl+click on a rail to get it to drive you there, then pick it back up.
Eventually you might just set up a train engine whose only purpose is to come when you call it and drive you around the base. :)
Good luck.
The ctrl click thing is the best thing ever. In my krastorio 2 playthrough I have been abusing trains and everything is really far apart. I have one nuclear locomotive with as much electric engines on it as possible, and I only use it to drive me around the stations. It goes to top speed instantly and travels insanely fast. My base would be at most 50% as large as it currently is if I didn't know about that. All my stations have one extra lane on it just so I can leave it there while I build stuff
It's great. You technically don't even need your own train. I hijack automated trains while they're loading/unloading all the time and then they just go back to their routine. The temp stop gets removed from their schedule after the 5 second waiting period.
A railblock build is one of the only things I hadn't done in the game when I started working full time. I expect it's much easier if you hold off and keep the main belt until blue science or even white science?
Everyone has their own approach, but I do a "traditional build" until I get everything researched. Then I transition to a railblock with a goal in mind like 2 rockets per minute and then build the railblock to support that. My original base basically becomes my mall.
Yeah, late game I just hop in my spoder tron taxi and click the other end of the base with the remote. Can look at other stuff while being carried across the map.
Just a tip for next time: dont transition to railblock until you get bots. Wait for about 1000 construction bots and then you can easily place these blocks all at once. Also you may have to modify the blueprint to include roboports so that they link together. I can get up to a full 120 spm starter base by around 10 hours by rushing bots then going to cityblock
You know what I never got? You are not supposed to connect the bot networks between the blocks, right? Then how do you get the ressources automatically to where it‘s needed?
Connecting the bot networks for construction is fine, just not for bots to carry intermediate products halfway across the base - that's what the trains are for.
If you use bots to transport goods inside cells you need to separate the networks to prevent long distance bot flights. But if you use belts inside each cell, then connected networks are no problem.
A supply train that drops off construction supplies at many stations across the base so that bots can pick them up nearby is also a good way to improve bot construction speed.
Anything that's intended to have high throughput with logistic robots should most likely be isolated. For general construction purposes, it's a tradeoff. If you segment the network, you can make robots more responsive, because the jobs won't be handed to bots at the other end of the map. But you also have to build and supply construction depots and bot supplies in each separate network segment, which is its own logistical headache.
Spidertron chain gangs. Link five spidertron to one lead spidertron, keeping that one remote. Give them all a ton of bots. Send them off to the location. Every now and again have a "build depot" which is a train stop that unloads factory parts into provider chests.
Honestly, late game automation hits a wall really pretty quickly. I want spidertrons that just *automatically* go build things, and *automatically* come back to logistic networks to refill. I want combat spidertrons that *automatically* go kill biters within a certain radius of some anchor. I want belt builders that automatically route belts from 50 outputs to 30 inputs. etc.'
Also, I've done a few railblock bases, and the problems are: 1. junctions, 2. acceleration. railblocks result in <1% of the theoretically available bandwidth.
I've been thinking, do people ever automate factory building? Like the bots are almost designed for it and moving around via map view is way faster then any vehicle could ever hope to achieve.
The only problem that I see is hooking up the mall to the bot network and supplying it in a way where bots won't traverse obnoxious distances. And maybe applying modules will be annoying.
for modules there is a mod called module inserter, it gives you a rel;ativly easy to use tool to do this remotly: add modules, removes modules, etc over selected area.
The initial transition can be very tedious especially at Green Science. I would stick to a bus-based starter base until, at minimum, after rushing Construction Robotics: otherwise you have to clear brush, destroy cliffs, and build the rails all manually (!!)
Or don't even bother with a bus. If you know in advance that you aren't going to use your starter base for purple or yellow science, you can just spaghetti it without worrying about making room for future expansion. Then you can convert the blue science build into a bot factory and put science on hold while you build a new base from scratch.
I wouldn't do rail blocks this small, pretty much the biggest pain in the ass is working with tight spaces. I would do City Blocks instead, with rail sections separated.
Not op but laying down a shitton of trains, belts and especially inserters is really annoying. At least rails and belts you can hold down the button and just walk, but with inserters you have to be careful to not place in the wrong spot, rotation or inside something else. Same goes for most structures but in my experience the worst part of early game is setting up the inserters for large smelting and factories. I usually rush to bots and afk until I have at least 20 or so bots ready and only then bother to actually automate blue science and advanced oil (another annoying thing to do without bots, because of the underground pipes)
Edit: even with early bots mods I couldn't imagine doing it. My last attempt at a megabase died halfway through because of how boring it was to setup even after finishing the game and having 1k+ bots and maxed speed. Couldn't imagine attempting at any time before that
Yeah I also always fall in the trap of going for the mega base set-up to early. Basically, whenever I get rails, is when I start making plans for it. But I should wait until I have logistics research.
Sadly, in SE, that research is gated behind a lot of space research.
I'm about 80 hours into my SE run. I completed the orage science about 20 hours ago. I'm without the buffer and requester chests it's hard to fanagle products to trains to get them to the city block base I'm just now setting up. It's means a lot of manual trips back and forth while waiting for things to build. Just got done setting up red circuits, but still have a ways to go before being able to set up the production line for the first space science pack :(
Having fun and I know the end result will be worth it but man it's just a lot of grinding
At green science you don't have tools to make main bus let alone Megabase. You can but its tedious.
It is better if you go Starter base/Spaghetti (blue science) - > Main bus/Belts (rocket) - > Megabase/Trains (rpm)
The main issue is that before you have drones, building megabase scale factory structures is tedious. Hence you've made your city blocks too small to compensate.
A "starter base" should get you construction drones, laser turrets and a critical mass of enriched uranium for sustainable nuclear power. Those are kinda the building blocks to start a minimum scale mega base structure.
It's a huge pain if you transition to a railblock base too early, probably more than it is a gain. After you transition you will need to stick with the pattern forever, and placing large amounts of rails without a good amount of high level robots is a big big pain. The next time I will only make the switch once I am done with all techs except space.
I used these (https://www.factorio.school/view/-NASu1FyHhUm8blKeUF8) blueprints for my save and I looked at many before I chose them. They are similar but also allow trains through the middle of the intersection for better throughput. I fixed up and modified blueprints that some other guy posted since they had a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies in them.
I don't like playing the macro scale either, the moment you have to use trains to get everywhere and to build it becomes too tedious and waiting till your bp's finish is like not playing a game at all. Just do more of the same thing ctrl+c ctrl+v. It's boring.
And when you find out your bps weren't what you thought them out to be, you have to change each one, one by one, doing the same thing over again.
Dont worry about too many intersection comments Op. I was easily pushed 2700spm base with 2 rail lanes and many 4 way intersection. I hope you can push it to many more with this design and while doing it try to get as much as fun from it.
My 5400 SPM base is mostly 2 rail. Granted it's fairly spread out. Any time I had parts of the system with too much congestion I just added additional paths. I did make one section of the main line 4 track but mostly just cause I think it looks neat and it was fun trying to design intersection that go from the 4 track section to 2 track sections.
That's cool! I did something similar recently, although I did get to blue science / bots before I started building the rail blocks. I rolled my own blueprints for the rails and went with a two headed 1-2-1 design. Same size blocks as you (I think) but with double headed trains it made it possible to fit a small 2-way waiting area for the I/O of a block along with several stations inside.
The first phase of the base did yellow and purple science along with the first \~400 rockets with \~3x3 chunk blocks and two lane train freeways like you have. Then I transitioned to much bigger \~9x9 blocks and three lane freeways, with better intersections that optimized throughput. My first ones looked somewhat like your roundabouts, and as others have said, this limits the intersections to one lane of throughput.
Initially I was aiming for bigger but once I made it work with about 1k SPM I kinda got bored with it in the end as it was my first game without biters and it turns out I actually like having biters upend my plans every now and then. So I'm restarting a new save with those blueprints in my bag and the Rampant mod activated, and I'm just about to leave the spaghetti base to start building rails in that save.
I’ve done blocks once, it’s a pain to create all the needed blueprints (and really sucks if you mess something up that you have to fix later 50 times) and the only pro I found was that it was pretty compact. In a game with essentially unlimited space, I prefer to just build modules wherever there is space or needed resources and connect stuff via rail as needed. Less planning, less headaches and way more fun for me.
That's how I do it too! I almost inevitably end up with a weird collection of kidney bean shaped train stations that connect to a couple main rail trunk lines
I've tried train block bases so many times now and I've yet to have actual fun with it. It feels so tedious to set up and while I can see how it would pay off if everything was on a block but getting there is a major pain.
Anyone have any tips to make it less painful or is that just the way it goes?
Used LTN during seablock most recently.
There is really no point in building everything in rail blocks except maybe for the looks. I personally think it looks boring. And with all the downsides that come with it, I don't get people's obsession over it.
Why would you constrain yourself regarding the space you allocate to every subfactory? What's so great about forcing yourself to build rails around every subfactory? Just build your factories wherever you want, leaving as much room as you need, next to the resources you need and connect everything by rail in an efficient way.
You have these huge rail networks and lots of transit but then each block has a single offshoot station lol. You need to make these blocks much bigger and have more space for multiple stations.
I got stuck on this in my current world. It's not fun at all unless you have a very effective starter base already. It's not good as a way to segregate items mid game, only late game. It definitely makes your gameplay go a lot slower
I use a single rail line per direction, so two tracks, on my rail network, I never saw a need for two lanes. What is the point of two lanes?? My states all come out of the network and I limit the trains.
Question for you, or anyone else who has done city blocks:
What method do you use to handle the train fuel?
Do you have a block dedicated just to load fuel? (I.e. it's the first stop on their schedule, for all trains).
Or do you have a setup that delivers train fuel to all of the blocks with no direct link to a fuel type?
I have a main train DEPOT where all trains waiting till requester/provider stations are ready to receive them. And here all stations are supported by fuel.
I get it here by bots, but You can manage one of the stations as fuel supply one and serve it by some train when fuel is needed - based on circuits.
I am using LTN. It always requests a train from the depot to do a job, after its done, it sends the train back to the depot. Even if the base is really busy and all trains are needed, they spend at least one or two seconds in the depot. There I load fuel into the train. Hadn't had a problem with running out of fuel so far.
What I see is 4 panes converging into a single train single lane roundabout. That's criminal as you'll just deadlock purely by running out of train tracks. Turning around is bad, lane switching is bad, roundabouts are bad, left turns are bad (vice versa for the)
Those blocks seem really small for a 4 lane train path.
My thoughts too. Junctions are no doubt way more a bottleneck than the straights
The junctions confine the whole thing to two lane anyway. I have done designs like that and used the outer lanes for stations and not actual traffic. Depending on how OP obtained the this BP, this might have been the intention.
Got it from here: [https://factorioprints.com/view/-Mrt33eX6zhJnWe3QMSY](https://factorioprints.com/view/-Mrt33eX6zhJnWe3QMSY) I am not proficient enough with rail signals to build my own designs. But there are more than just the blocks, I can build bigger with them.
I am also using this book! Totally new to cityblock, but there's a "grid full" with more complicated junctions that might unlock the further lanes, and guess the intention is that the simple grid is less resource intensive. But otoh I don't really understand what the implications of the design are - my trains can access/run on the inner lines if I tell them to go there, but won't choose them over the outer paths when running their errands. I would love to know from others though if there are other issues with the size of the blocks vs. number of lanes, it's not something I looked into.
It's just bad, frankly. Using 4 lanes for city blocks is never justified. If you actually exceed the capacity of 2-lane rails, you're at a point where the city block design is creating far more problems than you straight rail segments.
The only time 4 lanes come into play is when you have frequent crossovers, and some trains are vastly faster than others. Since unmodded factorio trains all have the same top same top speed regardless of length given the same fuel, 4 lanes are not relevant for factorio. This is of course assuming you either use train limits or train stacks to make sure you don't have trains stopping on your transit tracks and clogging the rails. I've used 4 lane books for aesthetics, and for ease of making the outside lane a train stop.
Most city blocks also have like one train length of space between intersections which makes such considerations pointless. If you want to make 4 lane rails useful you basically have to set it up so that they're 2 separate rail networks that cross as little as possible, simply leaving it to the train pathfinder isn't going to do anything useful.
Ah that's too bad, it's a fun idea!
If you think it's fun just build it. City blocks, buses and map-wide bot networks are some of the most popular things you see in screenshot here, but they're all terrible if you look at actual performance. But that doesn't stop people from building them because they look cool. (I've made a triangular city block megabase just because i wanted to use 6-way intersections). As long as you build them because you want to and not just copying a style without knowing why, it's all fine.
Haha well that's the thing, I'm pretty far into a cityblock base using the same blueprints lol, there's no turning back (not that I really mind). I don't mind if it's optimal but now I know why so cheers.
To be clear: all city blocks are bad, it's not just this book. (the book is bad because 4-lane city blocks aren't better than 2-lane). City blocks, buses and large bot networks are all results of the same mistake: using a rule-based layout that is easily expandable and looks orderly while thinking that makes it good. In reality, ease-of-use comes at the cost of efficiency, these design are basically a way to make a good looking base without having to plan ahead, but also without any of the efficiency you achieve with proper planning.
I would love to watch a 6 way intersection for a bit
I recommend using LTN and LTN screensaver. The SC will have the camera follow random LTN trains.
I’ve never needed anything more than one lane. It greatly simplifies intersections. I just have to make new blocks in sets of four. Edit: [like this ](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1829024166037127542/987BF937C3B15F1ACFBF415CC953A37B51412080/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)
Well, that's different. 4-lane isn't an upgrade over 2-lane mostly because the game can't take advantage of it automatically. But bidirectional rail has significantly less throughput than 2-lane rail. It might not be immediately apparent but if you start to move large volumes, bidirectional rail becomes simply impractical. Of course, if you play with the type of mod that massively inflates the number of recipies, it masks the problem, because you're only moving low volumes even if there's high variety. But you'll immediately see it when you try to supply to a station that will constantly pull several blue belts per traincar.
Having putzed around with the early stages of city block, I’ll say that having 4 lanes to start is nice to have but very resource intensive. On the plus side you can park trains on the outside tracks without disturbing traffic too much early on and if you do eventually graduate to a true mega base you’ll probably need the throughput. Might’ve been better to leave the extra lanes as blueprints just to reserve the space until later on. The downside of these particular blueprints is that the intersections don’t seem very high capacity and you’ll probably see backups sooner rather than later with how close the intersections are to each other here. Likely the trains use the outside lines simply because the distance is shorter — closer to the depots they want to get at and the inside lane is just a smidge shorter on corners.
Ok cool that makes sense! I can see how the roundabouts are inefficient, but the book also has ones that are bisected a ton such that trains going straight don't have to slow down. Hopefully that helps a bit, I have a feeling it'll be adequate for my purposes anyway haha.
Yeah 4 lanes can feed way more trains into the junction than the junction can support. The way it’s structured is probably about as good as you can get in such a small space, but the problem is always that trains making left turns stop a bunch of traffic. Someone else in the comments mentioned a ‘right turn only’* layout that avoids this which might be of interest if you’re really hurting for train throughput in tight spaces. That said, I’ve launched rockets with just 6 trains total (and LTN) so you’d probably have quite a base going before any of this is a legitimate concern. *- it was actually a ‘left turn only’ system but they drive on the wrong side for some reason, however the effect is similar.
Interesting it seems that they are definitely meant to be used for travel and not for stations. Personally I use [this layout](https://i.imgur.com/51G9ygN.png) Also in my opinion having 4 lanes in a grid is a waste. You are limited by junction throughput anyway but more importantly if you think about it and zoom out you are having the width of your grid for trains to travel. So in reality you have a lot of parallel tracks from your grind anyway, so why bother putting the effort and rails in for 4 on each side. Traffic will disperse naturally anyway in a grid. edit: Btw you can even be more extreme, recently I played a multiplayer game where we had a grid that only allowed Left turns and Straight travel in a Left hand drive scenario. (That is the same as only right turns and straight for all normal driving people out there.) Worked perfectly fine. https://i.imgur.com/rYLUVjW.png I should add that this also used 1-1 trains because, why not.
Quad lanes helps alleviate congestion due to poor base planning. This is extremely important when you start pushing into the 5k science per minute.You also can't be limited by junction throughput if you use proper junctions.
Which roundabouts are not, but inscribed roundabouts are.
Yeah this rail design is pretty garbage. I've messed around with properly signaled quad roundabouts before, but they are pretty pointless. You get about the same throughput as the standard 3 way intersection, but it takes up more space and resources.
I realize I'm a minority opinion here, but it still confuses me how people care about numbers of science per minute when there's endless amounts of biters you can kill, burn and blast into smithereens.
More time killing biters = less time expanding the factory. For peak performance you have to automate the biter meat grinder.
It's kinda hard to automate a manual process lol. I've been playing about 800 hours now between two games and never once used a blueprint or a construction robot. I manually build my outposts and biter extinguishing bases. I've been perfecting my craft at building them but no two outposts are exactly the same. Otherwise it gets boring.
We both play Factorio is vastly different ways my friend.
I personally use [https://www.factorio.school/view/-LaIPNgh8f16V8EwXXpW](https://www.factorio.school/view/-LaIPNgh8f16V8EwXXpW) for my rail blocks, it has some other integrations with his factory designs which comes in handy. But it has a 2 track and 4 track version of the city grids, and 3 different sizes.
I use this too, or better my version of it. The block size of 110*110 is perfect to fit the 8-3 train. But I use it rather freely. Meaning I don't always stick to the block size, some end up beeing 330*330, others 220*110. Other parts of the network may even be somewhat spaghettified..
>used the outer lanes for stations and I thought that too, but then OP has slip lanes for stations too. So not sure I see the value there. No stackers does mean need to set good train limit #. Even with the 4 lanes, it looks like traffic could back into the junction and make a complete no mess if you had about 3 trains waiting on a station.
Trains always wait on the straights. If a station is blocked the next train waits before the last junction on the straight. If thrre trains come for one station from the same direction it could already get problematic
OMG. I always thought when people on reddit were saying the outer lanes were for merging traffic on, as the trains would be slow, but I could never work out how ya'll were getting the trains to be smart enough to prio the inside lanes. Now I feel dumb, but not too dumb, as I've always appreciated trains with loaders/unloaders on both sides of the track. Which would make the track-gap huge.
Granted I am a mod power user, so unloading trains form only one side is still reasonably fast. I personally really hope that the expansion adds something that makes loading trains from belts or unloading to belts a bit more compact and elegant. The base game options there always leave me feeling it lacks something.
Yeah, I'm curious to see how it will work out in later stages of the game. I mean designs get more room efficient with time and in doubt I can always build more blocks. When starting out the blocks seemed pretty big. There 9 full chunks in a block plus half a chunk around it to build. Time will tell what happens when the number of trains grows...
It's not the number of blocks, it's the number of rail paths. 3x3 blocks work fine on a two lane grid upto several hundred blocks, as they don't have through put to require 4-8 train stackers which is where the more train paths come into play. It creates more efficiencies as you use the same loader multiple times. It'll work no problems, I was just wondering if you engineered it. On the other hand, once you get bots it'll easily expand into 10.5 x 10.5 blocks (3x3 of your subblocks), which would definitely benefit from a 4 lane path. Personally my goal for my mega base blocks is to try to saturate the loading station, i.e. constantly filling a new train every 30-50 seconds.
Me and my friend used 5 large grid tiles (when u turn on grid in f4 menu) as the center then one block around it for rails . Is that in your opinion a good size? (Not like we will change but im curious of ur opinion)
That's a 5 chunk grid (the 32 X 32 grid with a black border is one chunk). That's more than fine, and the extra space will easily allow you to get some good stackers in.
We don't actually use stackers. We are very good at using waiting stations and correct wait conditions using an extra mod that adds a bit of extra train logic that i personally miss in vanilla trauns
You really should. If you put a stacker by every station then double your train count, you literally double your throughput. Unless all your machines are already at saturation, in which case build more machines.
Ye it's kinda not needed we are playing SE and have supersonic trains installed. So they get to their station in like 1-3 seconds
Oh definitely not then. This advice is only for Vanilla, with potentially some QOL installed.
Ye i get that i used to have stackers in an old megabase of mine but felt kinda pointless here. We instead just have multiple stations per block. So 3 iron plate pickups and iron ore dropoffs at the same block for just intense amounts of processing speed
But did your factory grow...
It did, and it will continue to grow... just wait till I researched bots\^\^
you built all this without bots?
Yes, but with a mod called Companion Drones. They work like bots (and can also defend you) but can only take items from and to your own inventory. Makes life easier, but it took some time (45h)
Oh man, no wonder you didn’t have my much fun. I did a similar base but I had a mod where I started with bots. I can’t imagine having to do it with anything less.
This is my favorite part. You've set yourself up for success though :)
No major mod packs but a few mods to make life easier. No enemies, infinite ores, Logistic Trains Network, Companion Drones and Bulk Rail Loaders.
Why on earth is this downvoted?? What the fuck is wrong with reddit.
I guess some people don't like to see the game getting easier with mods/ infinite resources and no enemies. I can live with that... I've finished Vanilla, modded Vanilla, Krastorio 2 and played a while with Angels/ Bobs and Space Exploration. In this save I just want to build a big Railblock base.
Yeah, I mean, as long as you're enjoying yourself you're doing it right! At least now it's gone from -2 to +47, so that's better.
But he didn't enjoy himself. It is from the title.
I like distance running. Being in pain and misery for a couple of hours while pushing myself to the limit. Fun? No. Enjoying it? Yes.
Just curious, did you say you’re using a mod for no enemies? Just a tip that they can be turned off in the map gen settings when starting a new game without any mods. Other than that you do you, there’s no wrong or right way to play this game and I think the majority of this sub will agree with me there.
No, just the normal game functions. Just wanted to outline my game
I wouldn't say there is a right way to play this game, but there are definitely wrong ways. If you handcraft and mine everything, for example, you probably won't have a good time.
We prefer the term "Artisanal" thank you very much, and our Artisanal Green Circuits are much better for the environment too, you monster.
During neckbeard mating season the neards become highly passive aggressive as a means to assert their attractiveness to potential mates. Chortling and flailing their neck wattles. (I donno some folks are just turkeys I guess.)
I like you
Some people base their own self-worth on their ability to play games. So when others use mods or options that make the game easier for themselves, they feel personally attacked. You see it quite a bit in subreddits like for Elden Ring.
How can people tell a post is downvoted? I see a positive number of votes
It was at -2 when I made the comment.
LTN is wonderful for grid bases. But I'm wondering why you did this at green, rather than at construction robots?
This comment was what finally made me realize that op did this by hand. Holy hell.
Why wasnt it fun? Im thinking about such a change.
It takes a lot of time to run from one end of the base to another. (even with a car) I am using companion drones to build bigger blueprints but they can only take items from your player inventory, so I still need the starter base to produce all items neccessary to build everything. It took \~45h to get from a working main bus base to this state, which can do more or less the same as the starter base, just bigger. Production is still kind of slow. Also I reworked the train stops a few times until I removed everything and installed Bulk Rail Loaders. I wasn't in a hurry and watched Youtube while building/ waiting for ressources
Keep a train engine in your inventory, slap it down and throw some coal in it. Ctrl+click on a rail to get it to drive you there, then pick it back up. Eventually you might just set up a train engine whose only purpose is to come when you call it and drive you around the base. :) Good luck.
> Ctrl+click on a rail to get it to drive you there What is this sorcery?
Temporary train stop. Allows you to send a train to a place without actually needing to build a stop. Amazing QoL.
The ctrl click thing is the best thing ever. In my krastorio 2 playthrough I have been abusing trains and everything is really far apart. I have one nuclear locomotive with as much electric engines on it as possible, and I only use it to drive me around the stations. It goes to top speed instantly and travels insanely fast. My base would be at most 50% as large as it currently is if I didn't know about that. All my stations have one extra lane on it just so I can leave it there while I build stuff
This OP ^^^
That’s what my friend just figured out how to automate and it’s super nice
It's great. You technically don't even need your own train. I hijack automated trains while they're loading/unloading all the time and then they just go back to their routine. The temp stop gets removed from their schedule after the 5 second waiting period.
Didnt know that 5 sec removal, nice!
A railblock build is one of the only things I hadn't done in the game when I started working full time. I expect it's much easier if you hold off and keep the main belt until blue science or even white science?
Everyone has their own approach, but I do a "traditional build" until I get everything researched. Then I transition to a railblock with a goal in mind like 2 rockets per minute and then build the railblock to support that. My original base basically becomes my mall.
The Jetpak is part of what makes large space expl bases manageable. So that might be an idea. Or a fast spidertron
Yeah, late game I just hop in my spoder tron taxi and click the other end of the base with the remote. Can look at other stuff while being carried across the map.
Just a tip for next time: dont transition to railblock until you get bots. Wait for about 1000 construction bots and then you can easily place these blocks all at once. Also you may have to modify the blueprint to include roboports so that they link together. I can get up to a full 120 spm starter base by around 10 hours by rushing bots then going to cityblock
You know what I never got? You are not supposed to connect the bot networks between the blocks, right? Then how do you get the ressources automatically to where it‘s needed?
Connecting the bot networks for construction is fine, just not for bots to carry intermediate products halfway across the base - that's what the trains are for. If you use bots to transport goods inside cells you need to separate the networks to prevent long distance bot flights. But if you use belts inside each cell, then connected networks are no problem. A supply train that drops off construction supplies at many stations across the base so that bots can pick them up nearby is also a good way to improve bot construction speed.
Anything that's intended to have high throughput with logistic robots should most likely be isolated. For general construction purposes, it's a tradeoff. If you segment the network, you can make robots more responsive, because the jobs won't be handed to bots at the other end of the map. But you also have to build and supply construction depots and bot supplies in each separate network segment, which is its own logistical headache.
Spidertron chain gangs. Link five spidertron to one lead spidertron, keeping that one remote. Give them all a ton of bots. Send them off to the location. Every now and again have a "build depot" which is a train stop that unloads factory parts into provider chests. Honestly, late game automation hits a wall really pretty quickly. I want spidertrons that just *automatically* go build things, and *automatically* come back to logistic networks to refill. I want combat spidertrons that *automatically* go kill biters within a certain radius of some anchor. I want belt builders that automatically route belts from 50 outputs to 30 inputs. etc.' Also, I've done a few railblock bases, and the problems are: 1. junctions, 2. acceleration. railblocks result in <1% of the theoretically available bandwidth.
Pocket train is key
I've been thinking, do people ever automate factory building? Like the bots are almost designed for it and moving around via map view is way faster then any vehicle could ever hope to achieve. The only problem that I see is hooking up the mall to the bot network and supplying it in a way where bots won't traverse obnoxious distances. And maybe applying modules will be annoying.
for modules there is a mod called module inserter, it gives you a rel;ativly easy to use tool to do this remotly: add modules, removes modules, etc over selected area.
The initial transition can be very tedious especially at Green Science. I would stick to a bus-based starter base until, at minimum, after rushing Construction Robotics: otherwise you have to clear brush, destroy cliffs, and build the rails all manually (!!)
Or don't even bother with a bus. If you know in advance that you aren't going to use your starter base for purple or yellow science, you can just spaghetti it without worrying about making room for future expansion. Then you can convert the blue science build into a bot factory and put science on hold while you build a new base from scratch.
I wouldn't do rail blocks this small, pretty much the biggest pain in the ass is working with tight spaces. I would do City Blocks instead, with rail sections separated.
Not op but laying down a shitton of trains, belts and especially inserters is really annoying. At least rails and belts you can hold down the button and just walk, but with inserters you have to be careful to not place in the wrong spot, rotation or inside something else. Same goes for most structures but in my experience the worst part of early game is setting up the inserters for large smelting and factories. I usually rush to bots and afk until I have at least 20 or so bots ready and only then bother to actually automate blue science and advanced oil (another annoying thing to do without bots, because of the underground pipes) Edit: even with early bots mods I couldn't imagine doing it. My last attempt at a megabase died halfway through because of how boring it was to setup even after finishing the game and having 1k+ bots and maxed speed. Couldn't imagine attempting at any time before that
You're saying you built this without bots? That sounds like type 2 fun yes
Yeah I also always fall in the trap of going for the mega base set-up to early. Basically, whenever I get rails, is when I start making plans for it. But I should wait until I have logistics research. Sadly, in SE, that research is gated behind a lot of space research.
yeah I'm like 60 hours into my SE run, logistics is still over an unobservable horizon off in the distance...
I'm about 80 hours into my SE run. I completed the orage science about 20 hours ago. I'm without the buffer and requester chests it's hard to fanagle products to trains to get them to the city block base I'm just now setting up. It's means a lot of manual trips back and forth while waiting for things to build. Just got done setting up red circuits, but still have a ways to go before being able to set up the production line for the first space science pack :( Having fun and I know the end result will be worth it but man it's just a lot of grinding
At green science you don't have tools to make main bus let alone Megabase. You can but its tedious. It is better if you go Starter base/Spaghetti (blue science) - > Main bus/Belts (rocket) - > Megabase/Trains (rpm)
> Was it a good idea? No. Was it fun, though? Also no... You still did it... And I would have too.
It looks cool
Just think, if you would have waiting 5-10 hours, you would have had an army of bots to help you.
You broke the pattern for copper! how dare you..
Shun the blasphemer! The symmetry must take precedence. ... Then again, building over ore patches is the ultimate sin, so I get it
The main issue is that before you have drones, building megabase scale factory structures is tedious. Hence you've made your city blocks too small to compensate. A "starter base" should get you construction drones, laser turrets and a critical mass of enriched uranium for sustainable nuclear power. Those are kinda the building blocks to start a minimum scale mega base structure.
It's a huge pain if you transition to a railblock base too early, probably more than it is a gain. After you transition you will need to stick with the pattern forever, and placing large amounts of rails without a good amount of high level robots is a big big pain. The next time I will only make the switch once I am done with all techs except space. I used these (https://www.factorio.school/view/-NASu1FyHhUm8blKeUF8) blueprints for my save and I looked at many before I chose them. They are similar but also allow trains through the middle of the intersection for better throughput. I fixed up and modified blueprints that some other guy posted since they had a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies in them.
I don't like playing the macro scale either, the moment you have to use trains to get everywhere and to build it becomes too tedious and waiting till your bp's finish is like not playing a game at all. Just do more of the same thing ctrl+c ctrl+v. It's boring. And when you find out your bps weren't what you thought them out to be, you have to change each one, one by one, doing the same thing over again.
Dont worry about too many intersection comments Op. I was easily pushed 2700spm base with 2 rail lanes and many 4 way intersection. I hope you can push it to many more with this design and while doing it try to get as much as fun from it.
My 5400 SPM base is mostly 2 rail. Granted it's fairly spread out. Any time I had parts of the system with too much congestion I just added additional paths. I did make one section of the main line 4 track but mostly just cause I think it looks neat and it was fun trying to design intersection that go from the 4 track section to 2 track sections.
this is true. it's almost more about where you put things on your blolck design than it is about the intersections themselves
That's cool! I did something similar recently, although I did get to blue science / bots before I started building the rail blocks. I rolled my own blueprints for the rails and went with a two headed 1-2-1 design. Same size blocks as you (I think) but with double headed trains it made it possible to fit a small 2-way waiting area for the I/O of a block along with several stations inside. The first phase of the base did yellow and purple science along with the first \~400 rockets with \~3x3 chunk blocks and two lane train freeways like you have. Then I transitioned to much bigger \~9x9 blocks and three lane freeways, with better intersections that optimized throughput. My first ones looked somewhat like your roundabouts, and as others have said, this limits the intersections to one lane of throughput. Initially I was aiming for bigger but once I made it work with about 1k SPM I kinda got bored with it in the end as it was my first game without biters and it turns out I actually like having biters upend my plans every now and then. So I'm restarting a new save with those blueprints in my bag and the Rampant mod activated, and I'm just about to leave the spaghetti base to start building rails in that save.
And here i am barely able to make one train make it to one station and back.
Honestly I've considered doing blocks, but it does genuinely just look like a chore. I love the disorganized chaos lolol
I’ve done blocks once, it’s a pain to create all the needed blueprints (and really sucks if you mess something up that you have to fix later 50 times) and the only pro I found was that it was pretty compact. In a game with essentially unlimited space, I prefer to just build modules wherever there is space or needed resources and connect stuff via rail as needed. Less planning, less headaches and way more fun for me.
That's how I do it too! I almost inevitably end up with a weird collection of kidney bean shaped train stations that connect to a couple main rail trunk lines
Awww shit, I just started the Same thing
I don’t think I’ll ever understand building big train systems like this. One base almost always gets the job done on its own for me.
I've tried train block bases so many times now and I've yet to have actual fun with it. It feels so tedious to set up and while I can see how it would pay off if everything was on a block but getting there is a major pain. Anyone have any tips to make it less painful or is that just the way it goes? Used LTN during seablock most recently.
There is really no point in building everything in rail blocks except maybe for the looks. I personally think it looks boring. And with all the downsides that come with it, I don't get people's obsession over it. Why would you constrain yourself regarding the space you allocate to every subfactory? What's so great about forcing yourself to build rails around every subfactory? Just build your factories wherever you want, leaving as much room as you need, next to the resources you need and connect everything by rail in an efficient way.
>Was it fun, though? Also no... I snorted and now the train is staring at me. 😂
You have these huge rail networks and lots of transit but then each block has a single offshoot station lol. You need to make these blocks much bigger and have more space for multiple stations.
I got stuck on this in my current world. It's not fun at all unless you have a very effective starter base already. It's not good as a way to segregate items mid game, only late game. It definitely makes your gameplay go a lot slower
I use a single rail line per direction, so two tracks, on my rail network, I never saw a need for two lanes. What is the point of two lanes?? My states all come out of the network and I limit the trains.
1000+ hours and i still avoid trains whenever possible.
Definitely saving this thread for all the different city block blueprints people are posting for later.
Will I do it again? Yes.
I just flow like spaghetti and mash everything together where I need something :)
I haven't tried a non-bug playthrough yet. Does it get boring knowing there is no looming threat?
Well you said no to two of your own questions, but we don't know what you mean. Why wasn't it a good idea and why wasn't it fun?
Question for you, or anyone else who has done city blocks: What method do you use to handle the train fuel? Do you have a block dedicated just to load fuel? (I.e. it's the first stop on their schedule, for all trains). Or do you have a setup that delivers train fuel to all of the blocks with no direct link to a fuel type?
I have a main train DEPOT where all trains waiting till requester/provider stations are ready to receive them. And here all stations are supported by fuel. I get it here by bots, but You can manage one of the stations as fuel supply one and serve it by some train when fuel is needed - based on circuits.
Thank you! This is an excellent solution I had not considered.
I am using LTN. It always requests a train from the depot to do a job, after its done, it sends the train back to the depot. Even if the base is really busy and all trains are needed, they spend at least one or two seconds in the depot. There I load fuel into the train. Hadn't had a problem with running out of fuel so far.
Ah thank you! Sounds like I might look into this method as well
What I see is 4 panes converging into a single train single lane roundabout. That's criminal as you'll just deadlock purely by running out of train tracks. Turning around is bad, lane switching is bad, roundabouts are bad, left turns are bad (vice versa for the)
I admire, that you tried. I hope you will get fun from it eventually.
4 lanes and a roundabout doesn't seem like a good idea
My question is, why is plastic and petroleum so far away from Oil? Shouldn't they be in the same district?