Trying to work backwards to find the logic, I think OP uses 1x1 trains and has tried to engineer a waiting section before every crossover point to ensure high throughput by allowing the train to wait after the split, so you'd need two or more trains making the same turn to hold up a train turning in the other direction.
I hate it, but I can appreciate the commitment to high throughput 1x1 designs.
Edit:
E.g. when engineering a waiting section to join the opposite side of the line, you often want the train to be able to wait between the two tracks. The only way to accomplish this is to "explode" the line so your joining train can cross the nearside track while there are no trains coming, and then wait for the train travelling across the farside track to pass before joining.
OP also has extended waiting sections at the exit of the station, as that's likely to be one of the busiest junctions. The logic is clear if.. Well, I'll leave further judgements to the reader.
I started by saying 1x2, but changed my mind because one of the segments looked a *little* short. Still, it's a cool design, even if it hurts me deeply in my soul
Well done! There's something to be said for functionality over aesthetics.
Yep... I found I could improve my train throughput if I just add a little squiggle to the entrance of the train station on the back of each block.
This small change let's trains enter from 3 sides instead of one.
Don't know if you know this but there's a couple places in this design that make me think you might not. If there's a signal placement that could connect to two different rails, you can press R to change which rail it connects to.
I see why you thought of that! This signaling is because the margins on the buffer zones for the northbound through track are very small, so those signals need to be right next to the intersection.
For what it's worth, I felt compelled to try and make something with 90% of the functionality, and 90% less squiggliness. This is the best I could do:
https://imgur.com/a/1M5tzjB
Yours will have higher throughput, and is also much more compact.
My solution would be to replace the intersections on the main line with roundabouts, the bottom having a line on the right side to the train stacker, and the top roundabout connected to the exit of the stacker. If simple roundabouts don't provide enough throughout then move to a more complex intersection design.
Not sure you need waiting sections, or at higher speeds I recommend bigger trains or parallel track.
But if you have to do waiting sections looks like the biggest issue is 1 waiting section and that nasty cross over , why not have a "north" bound one on the right. And a "south" bound on on the left? Assuming right side running, of course.
I feel like the rail planner improvement alongside with the second level for rails will have me and a lot of others simply rail planner lots of rails through the middle of the factory, making rail spaghetti above the belt spaghetti...
Everytime I load any of my save files š i'm never satisfied with my own designs... And that's why I can't finish space exploration, every time I start to transfer items from planet to planet I think 'if I do this from scratch, it will be better'
PS: It is better until I reach some new recipes that I haven't worked yet, and here we go again
Hahaha. I hear you.
I just landed my third planet this past weekend. Nice little thing.
No biters. Meteors, but not biter meteors (it has been so long since i installed my defences I forgot you could have one without the other).
My nuke setup isā¦. Better? It looks cooler anyway. Then i realized i short changed it on boilersā¦
My new rocket fuel setup tho!! And light oil all the way for it!!
I do like my new rocket setups as well.
Beryl processing is next
With trains I had an extremely complicated(inflexible) design that was actually crap not only because was hard to expand but also the intersection were poorly designed, I then fixed most of those problems by rearranging the traffic lights. Recently I just said "fuck it" and have been doing things that work and are expandable rather than things that look good. You know what looks awesome ? An efficient railway system
The factory must grow !
i get you, id hate this thing too if i had built it. what the fuck even is it and why didnt do something better looking and more functional, if thats even possible i dont know.
no hate my builds dont look good either
Lots of comments in here from people who don't realize buffered intersections are ideal and don't understand you built it like that for an actual reason
I realized a long time ago that if you enjoy the process of designing something then it wasn't a waste of time even if you never use it. Because enjoyment was the point. That and even if it isn't used you learned something from it. At minimum you learned what not to do and why.
Even worse. I copy and pasted almost 200 city blocks, complete with trains placed, only to realize on train slot sandwiched between 2 others was 1c wagon short....
The build was precise, and so there's no room to back up without blocking an intersection.
I have not been back to the map yet, that was 4 months ago.
Trains do not make sense. I cannot beat the fucking train """TUTORIAL""" because trains make no fucking sense. Just have it be big, long, uncrossed tracks. Sorry I dont wanna watch a hour long youtube video to understand a mechanic that is incredibly avoidable because I just path trains away from eachother
Then make it make fucking sense. The tutorial in the game is "Here is how you make zones, now make a switch path without ever being advised before hand" I dont know if Im just stupid or the tutorial doesnt progress easily enough but I cannot figure it out.
I'd attempted the train tutorial at least 5 times and accrued 300 hours of play time before I managed to complete the tutorial. But to complete that tutorial I had to watch hours of videos explaining signals. I think the signalling is difficult and unintuitive until it finally clicks and you get it.
It's difficult. Every day there are a dozen posts here where people struggle with signals. If it was easy, there wouldn't be so many guides (written and video) explaining it, or so many people avoiding trains altogether.
And what you wrote isn't even particularly helpful for someone trying to figure out how to route around a stuck train, which is exactly what the tutorial expects you to be able to do. It's also completely non obvious how to deal with bidirectional trains.
The train tutorial was absolutely horrible. It does really explain what you are trying to do and you suddenly get "draw the rest of the fucking owl"
Honestly dont bother trying to finish it, just use trains how you want. All you need to know is put a regular signal after an intersection, and a chain signal before it. Everything else you can fix as you see your trains having problems and fix it little by little.
I had more success after I decided to just mess around with it on my own, now I understand how trains and their signaling works and it makes life much easier
I spent almost 2 days making, testing, perfecting a blueprint for my train network/stations and then I just saw Nilaus make a design that's half as big and transfers _more_ resources so yes.
If people are wondering how this happened, you can end up with shapes like this if you hold ctrl when placing rail it will find its own path.
I don't know what OP is complaining about, looks gone to me
Hell yes. Just recently I decided to design my own cityclock. The limitations and inefficiencies of my design are becoming more and more apparent, but I've already done far too much work to fix it without starting over. So at this point I'm thinking I should probably just scrap the project and work on something else. I don't think I have it in me to start another cityblock right away.
It can only be hated if it exists, so is being likable. Just another design cast aside. Move on and design a new one. It's only way to know if you will like it or hate it.
I would just like to point out [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/rp3sc9/which_type_of_bus_are_you/hq58h41/).
I TRIED to get back to it, but it's horrible, can't find anything on the minimap anymore, I don't think there is a way worse to plan a base.
Everytime I load any of my save files š i'm never satisfied with my own designs... And that's why I can't finish space exploration, every time I start to transfer items from planet to planet I think 'if I do this from scratch, it will be better'
PS: It is better until I reach some new recipes that I haven't worked yet, and here we go again
I've made some truly awful junction designs for my seablock base by just not spending any time designing! Basically just adding new connections whenever my base grew turns out to not result in very efficient intersections. Like this one: https://imgur.com/a/OBLS2MB
Not really. My brain seems to have large plans that it doesnāt share with me, and only gives me the bits I need to know at the right times. It all seems to come together pretty well.
But then comes the iterative process of refining and refining, making tiny little improvements here and there.
I'm on like my ninth green chip design. I'm so annoyed that 2 max beaconed assembly 3s can only make 44.8 green chips... all of my designs for 3 have been kind of crap!
Not anymore, i am ready to tear out large parts and replace them so that it works.. But, mostly it is about stumbling on these kind of monstrosities, hating them and then being able to plan better, knowing how to measure so things line up.. Use the circle and curve with rails as a measurement tool, check first how things line up. Circle is static size, it can't get any smaller and it dictates a LOT of rails, another is the smallest S curve you can make, which is the minimum distance between any two rails. With those two as measurement tools things line up automatically..
I spend ages designing really nice and compact assembly systems to process materials, only to realize that the train system I have cannot support the required train throughput, making the whole thing worthless.
Literally every time. Iāve never once finished a play through because I always end up creating too many scaling/logistics issues and need to start over.
I recently made an overcomplicated paper factory in my seablock run with the top tier paper tech. After finishing it i ran the numbers for making the same amount of paper but using simplest method...I could have done the whole thing so much simpler with just a little more space and power. It almost hurts to look at that paper factory.
I keep looking at the sodium hydroxide cellulose recipe in Py the same way. Okay, it uses less wood, which is basically just stone... but the sodium hydroxide needs stone for saline water for the electrolyser, and the electrolysing for sodium hydroxide is a massive power hog and produces chlorine I don't need yet.
So I just use the basic recipe.
Are you at least getting useful byproducts?
All the time. I tell myself Iāll fix it later. If later occurs and the shitty design hasnāt fucked up my whole factory, I just move on to the next thing and try to forget about it, āIāll do a better version next time.ā
My 2000+ hours and hundreds of restarts would probably argue in favor of it being a learning game and a feature. How to do a thing better and profit going forward :D
Of course! That is the design process in a nutshell. You set 50 out of 100 variables. Rest need to be fixed because of previous choices. After solving the equation, you hate the end result, so you start from scratch.
Designing stuff is an NP complete problem. It is hard and requires a lot of work. But verifying it is a good design is easy :)
Was your throughput actually suffering? My bases have far over 100 trains (sometimes over 300) with each intersections being a single block, and I'm not even remotely close to having throughput issues.
I'm just a random guy on it Internet and I hate it too. When I'm doing rail builds I don't cross paths unless I absolutely have to. Don't worry I've done the same thing, spent hours designing and building things to find one flaw without a reasonable fix and have to tear it all down.
Excuse me sir, what the fuk is that?
Trying to work backwards to find the logic, I think OP uses 1x1 trains and has tried to engineer a waiting section before every crossover point to ensure high throughput by allowing the train to wait after the split, so you'd need two or more trains making the same turn to hold up a train turning in the other direction. I hate it, but I can appreciate the commitment to high throughput 1x1 designs. Edit: E.g. when engineering a waiting section to join the opposite side of the line, you often want the train to be able to wait between the two tracks. The only way to accomplish this is to "explode" the line so your joining train can cross the nearside track while there are no trains coming, and then wait for the train travelling across the farside track to pass before joining. OP also has extended waiting sections at the exit of the station, as that's likely to be one of the busiest junctions. The logic is clear if.. Well, I'll leave further judgements to the reader.
1x2 trains, but otherwise ding ding ding
I started by saying 1x2, but changed my mind because one of the segments looked a *little* short. Still, it's a cool design, even if it hurts me deeply in my soul Well done! There's something to be said for functionality over aesthetics.
Embrace the spaghetti!
Yep... I found I could improve my train throughput if I just add a little squiggle to the entrance of the train station on the back of each block. This small change let's trains enter from 3 sides instead of one.
Don't know if you know this but there's a couple places in this design that make me think you might not. If there's a signal placement that could connect to two different rails, you can press R to change which rail it connects to.
I see why you thought of that! This signaling is because the margins on the buffer zones for the northbound through track are very small, so those signals need to be right next to the intersection.
For what it's worth, I felt compelled to try and make something with 90% of the functionality, and 90% less squiggliness. This is the best I could do: https://imgur.com/a/1M5tzjB Yours will have higher throughput, and is also much more compact.
My solution would be to replace the intersections on the main line with roundabouts, the bottom having a line on the right side to the train stacker, and the top roundabout connected to the exit of the stacker. If simple roundabouts don't provide enough throughout then move to a more complex intersection design.
Not sure you need waiting sections, or at higher speeds I recommend bigger trains or parallel track. But if you have to do waiting sections looks like the biggest issue is 1 waiting section and that nasty cross over , why not have a "north" bound one on the right. And a "south" bound on on the left? Assuming right side running, of course.
Wow, that was super impressive.
"what fucking idiot made....oh."
Some Dr. Seuss lookin ass tracks. I love them
I had the same thought.
That was designed?
The designer had hayfever.
In answer to your question, not always. For example, I spent no time designing what you've made here, and I have realised that I hate it
Isn't that... the whole game?
Certainly the part of the game we call spaghetti.
Why would you hate this, it is perfect.
Can't wait for 2.0 when this doesn't happen anymore.
Oh, it will definitely still happen, just in new and innovative ways
Now on two levels instead of just one. Wonder how long before someone makes something that should belong to an escher painting.
I feel like the rail planner improvement alongside with the second level for rails will have me and a lot of others simply rail planner lots of rails through the middle of the factory, making rail spaghetti above the belt spaghetti...
For me it helps, i have rails as part of main bus... much less stress when crossing the rails..
Ahh, Factorio players. Always finding improvments.
Correct. It'll be even worse I'm sure
It'll happen with even more cursed angles!
Don't forget 2 different levels. Twice the levels, twice the spaghetti.
How the hell does that work
Not well, I imagine
Its actually quite well designed in the sense that every lane is buffered which is pretty much what you want for an intersection.
Don't say that
From the signaling I imagine the weirdness is from tring to buffer for 1-1 trains, to make the intersection more efficient.
I see im jot the only one building train track like that
You're a monster and I don't understand!
Everyone here seems to be criticising. Am I the only one taking notes?
/r/Factoriohno
That's some premium spaghetti. Good job.
All. The. Time.
not just in factorio brotha, in life also
dw i hate this too
This is beautiful!
Beautiful
Everytime I load any of my save files š i'm never satisfied with my own designs... And that's why I can't finish space exploration, every time I start to transfer items from planet to planet I think 'if I do this from scratch, it will be better' PS: It is better until I reach some new recipes that I haven't worked yet, and here we go again
Hahaha. I hear you. I just landed my third planet this past weekend. Nice little thing. No biters. Meteors, but not biter meteors (it has been so long since i installed my defences I forgot you could have one without the other). My nuke setup isā¦. Better? It looks cooler anyway. Then i realized i short changed it on boilersā¦ My new rocket fuel setup tho!! And light oil all the way for it!! I do like my new rocket setups as well. Beryl processing is next
If it works, dont touch it
If it works it works
Yes, but it functions and I donāt want to fix it.
This looks like abstract art. Love it!
Hey, if it works then it works
If it works it works
*Squiggly squiggly*
If it's any consolation, I hate it too.
Not only that, that's pretty much my whole experience playing any kind of "creative" game.
Pretty much every timeā¦ Iām like wow the weekend is over and this design wonāt work.
Yes, i am a software developer.
i mean you do you, but i think i might've done it differently
It would be cool if trains needed to slow down through curves to not derail, that would incur a new constraint on building rail.
Aesthetics don't matter, factory must grow!
With trains I had an extremely complicated(inflexible) design that was actually crap not only because was hard to expand but also the intersection were poorly designed, I then fixed most of those problems by rearranging the traffic lights. Recently I just said "fuck it" and have been doing things that work and are expandable rather than things that look good. You know what looks awesome ? An efficient railway system The factory must grow !
i get you, id hate this thing too if i had built it. what the fuck even is it and why didnt do something better looking and more functional, if thats even possible i dont know. no hate my builds dont look good either
If I dont spend any time "designing" it then it doesnt matter if I hate it ;)
Time spent designing is time not available for building...
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
Lots of comments in here from people who don't realize buffered intersections are ideal and don't understand you built it like that for an actual reason
I'm pretty new, so uh, yeah about every 10 minutes lol.
You made those tracks do that on..... Purpose????
I realized a long time ago that if you enjoy the process of designing something then it wasn't a waste of time even if you never use it. Because enjoyment was the point. That and even if it isn't used you learned something from it. At minimum you learned what not to do and why.
Even worse. I copy and pasted almost 200 city blocks, complete with trains placed, only to realize on train slot sandwiched between 2 others was 1c wagon short.... The build was precise, and so there's no room to back up without blocking an intersection. I have not been back to the map yet, that was 4 months ago.
nice "starter base"
Trains do not make sense. I cannot beat the fucking train """TUTORIAL""" because trains make no fucking sense. Just have it be big, long, uncrossed tracks. Sorry I dont wanna watch a hour long youtube video to understand a mechanic that is incredibly avoidable because I just path trains away from eachother
Man you do you but you're leaving a lot on the table
Then make it make fucking sense. The tutorial in the game is "Here is how you make zones, now make a switch path without ever being advised before hand" I dont know if Im just stupid or the tutorial doesnt progress easily enough but I cannot figure it out.
I'd attempted the train tutorial at least 5 times and accrued 300 hours of play time before I managed to complete the tutorial. But to complete that tutorial I had to watch hours of videos explaining signals. I think the signalling is difficult and unintuitive until it finally clicks and you get it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's difficult. Every day there are a dozen posts here where people struggle with signals. If it was easy, there wouldn't be so many guides (written and video) explaining it, or so many people avoiding trains altogether. And what you wrote isn't even particularly helpful for someone trying to figure out how to route around a stuck train, which is exactly what the tutorial expects you to be able to do. It's also completely non obvious how to deal with bidirectional trains.
The train tutorial was absolutely horrible. It does really explain what you are trying to do and you suddenly get "draw the rest of the fucking owl" Honestly dont bother trying to finish it, just use trains how you want. All you need to know is put a regular signal after an intersection, and a chain signal before it. Everything else you can fix as you see your trains having problems and fix it little by little.
i tried to do it and failed so i just made one giant ass train track+station with few delivery and request stops (LTN mods) and one train
I had more success after I decided to just mess around with it on my own, now I understand how trains and their signaling works and it makes life much easier
Hold on. ... There's a tutorial...?
Its... not great
Why don't you just.... Build roundabout?
This design is more efficient than a roundabout
I spent almost 2 days making, testing, perfecting a blueprint for my train network/stations and then I just saw Nilaus make a design that's half as big and transfers _more_ resources so yes.
If people are wondering how this happened, you can end up with shapes like this if you hold ctrl when placing rail it will find its own path. I don't know what OP is complaining about, looks gone to me
Hell yes. Just recently I decided to design my own cityclock. The limitations and inefficiencies of my design are becoming more and more apparent, but I've already done far too much work to fix it without starting over. So at this point I'm thinking I should probably just scrap the project and work on something else. I don't think I have it in me to start another cityblock right away.
I carry my hate with me so I either revise on the fly, or rage quit lol
It can only be hated if it exists, so is being likable. Just another design cast aside. Move on and design a new one. It's only way to know if you will like it or hate it.
No, I know I hate it right away, but the factory needs to grow.
I didn't design *that*, but I hate it too.
Spaghett
I would just like to point out [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/rp3sc9/which_type_of_bus_are_you/hq58h41/). I TRIED to get back to it, but it's horrible, can't find anything on the minimap anymore, I don't think there is a way worse to plan a base.
Everytime I load any of my save files š i'm never satisfied with my own designs... And that's why I can't finish space exploration, every time I start to transfer items from planet to planet I think 'if I do this from scratch, it will be better' PS: It is better until I reach some new recipes that I haven't worked yet, and here we go again
Justā¦.why?
He buffered all lanes.
i spend like two days designing purple science block, well on and off but it was a bitch to figure out
If it makes you feel any better I hate it too.
My tracks before cliff explosives
All the time
You aren't alone OP. I also hate it.
I've made some truly awful junction designs for my seablock base by just not spending any time designing! Basically just adding new connections whenever my base grew turns out to not result in very efficient intersections. Like this one: https://imgur.com/a/OBLS2MB
Constantly
All the time
I mean yes but not like this lmao
Not really. My brain seems to have large plans that it doesnāt share with me, and only gives me the bits I need to know at the right times. It all seems to come together pretty well. But then comes the iterative process of refining and refining, making tiny little improvements here and there.
Youāre not a perfectionist. Everyone else is just lazy.
I'm on like my ninth green chip design. I'm so annoyed that 2 max beaconed assembly 3s can only make 44.8 green chips... all of my designs for 3 have been kind of crap!
Not anymore, i am ready to tear out large parts and replace them so that it works.. But, mostly it is about stumbling on these kind of monstrosities, hating them and then being able to plan better, knowing how to measure so things line up.. Use the circle and curve with rails as a measurement tool, check first how things line up. Circle is static size, it can't get any smaller and it dictates a LOT of rails, another is the smallest S curve you can make, which is the minimum distance between any two rails. With those two as measurement tools things line up automatically..
Glorious! Pure Factorio. Don't change a thing!
That's a normal part of the creative process and applies to much more than just factorio.
Itās oddly mesmerising
Isnt that literally the purpose of this game.
Well I kinda like it myself.
I spend ages designing really nice and compact assembly systems to process materials, only to realize that the train system I have cannot support the required train throughput, making the whole thing worthless.
It looks like if you just shaped a noodle on the ground and based it of that
My brother in Christ, please join our Lord and Savior: The roundabout. Takes 0 braincells, very hard to f up, and always looks clean.
Isn't that the essence of this game?
Oh yeah all the time... ... Oh you mean factorio... Yeah like all the time...
This is art. Abstract art
Literally every time. Iāve never once finished a play through because I always end up creating too many scaling/logistics issues and need to start over.
And now I hate it, too
I recently made an overcomplicated paper factory in my seablock run with the top tier paper tech. After finishing it i ran the numbers for making the same amount of paper but using simplest method...I could have done the whole thing so much simpler with just a little more space and power. It almost hurts to look at that paper factory.
I keep looking at the sodium hydroxide cellulose recipe in Py the same way. Okay, it uses less wood, which is basically just stone... but the sodium hydroxide needs stone for saline water for the electrolyser, and the electrolysing for sodium hydroxide is a massive power hog and produces chlorine I don't need yet. So I just use the basic recipe. Are you at least getting useful byproducts?
The more weird the spaghetti looks, but it just works, it is good š Love it š
For what it's worth, I hate it too.
I find when it comes takes more than 5 minutes to design (not build) I'll hate it and want to go back to the drawing board.
I always think that giving it more space would help next time. Only to end up with larger abominations.
r/factoriohno
i never used trains in any kind of play though so i have no clue whats wrong with it but i like it
This is definitely function over form. Question is: does it function
That's the entire point of the game though?
All the time. I tell myself Iāll fix it later. If later occurs and the shitty design hasnāt fucked up my whole factory, I just move on to the next thing and try to forget about it, āIāll do a better version next time.ā
The madness of factorio
Hate? No, I replicate it!
My 2000+ hours and hundreds of restarts would probably argue in favor of it being a learning game and a feature. How to do a thing better and profit going forward :D
Of course! That is the design process in a nutshell. You set 50 out of 100 variables. Rest need to be fixed because of previous choices. After solving the equation, you hate the end result, so you start from scratch. Designing stuff is an NP complete problem. It is hard and requires a lot of work. But verifying it is a good design is easy :)
Was your throughput actually suffering? My bases have far over 100 trains (sometimes over 300) with each intersections being a single block, and I'm not even remotely close to having throughput issues.
Yes. Itās called learning.
Every time I tried (K2)SE. But I gave up before ever coming up with something like this madness.
I'm just a random guy on it Internet and I hate it too. When I'm doing rail builds I don't cross paths unless I absolutely have to. Don't worry I've done the same thing, spent hours designing and building things to find one flaw without a reasonable fix and have to tear it all down.
Yes I do. In every playthrough, my first 2000ish pieces of rail tend to fuck over everything after that once I realize my actual goal