Very cool rail network. It always fascinates me seeing these massive rail systems people have. :D Yeah, me too, but the really big networks are usually post-victory. I generally lose interest at that point, so I appreciated the mod combination giving me a reason to make something much bigger than n...

Just another idea: if you want to measure power usage you can measure difference between two consecutive measurements of accumulator's charge level: first moment: 56% in accumulators second: 52% in accumulators That'd be a start if there were any way to measure accumulator charge level with combina...

Take a look on the "MORE PICTURES" section. MORE PICTURES doesn't change what you're doing. You have no way of actually measuring power - just detecting when an accumulator is drained, which is a well-known technique. A useful thing, but very different from testing live power usage when y...

I've done some testing. It turns out that trains will persist in pathing through locked train blocks if the open path is longer than the blocked path. http://i.imgur.com/6vsjLYs.jpg In this example, the green, yellow, cyan, and purple trains each found an alternate path, but the white locomotive doe...

Power usage: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=93265#p93265. That doesn't actually detect power usage. That's another accumulator near-empty detector, which is not the same thing. The "drill idle" detector you mention in that thread is completely impractical for detecting ...

There's no way to check power usage right now, though I've read that's coming in 0.13. At most you can check if your accumulators are near depletion using methods we all know well.

For much of the game I was struggling to keep one Blue science pack assembler working continuously. At peak I had 3 running - but only because they had Productivity mods slowing them down to -60%. The thing about Marathon is that Electronics are 10 copper ore (10 ore -> 50 plates -> 10 cable) and 8 ...

I wonder if there's any way to actually detect a biter attack, so as to trigger this? Maybe check to see if the # of repair packs in a chest suddenly goes down as construction bots go to repair damage?

I recently launched a satellite while playing with the Marathon + Resource Spawner Overhaul mods. Took me ~170 hours, apparently. The high copper cost of electronics and distance between ore fields forced me to build a large rail network. No possibility of finishing this using only belts! http://i.i...

Playing with the Marathon and Resource Spawner Overhaul mods changed the game significantly for me. The upside was huge: railroads were a necessity due to the distance to additional ore sources, and progress slowed down enough so I actually spent time in most stages, instead of blowing by them and n...

I'm pretty sure trains insisting on waiting when there's a clear path still happens in 12.4, but I'll retest when I get a chance.

vampiricdust wrote: I was talking about the OP's station branches, not your passing blocks.

Arrgh, of course you're correct. For some reason I skimmed the original question and thought he was talking about sidings, not terminal stations for double-header trains. Of course you need signals in both directions for those.

If I understand what you want to do, you want there to be sort of a global recirculating pool of items on the belts, and when a module produces something, it goes into that pool. While it's not relevant to your specific question - the diffuser at intersections - that thing that occurs to me first is...

The sidings have one way signals entering them. You should make them double signals like the one on the signal track. One-way sidings are the only safe way to set up such a passing block. If both tracks are two-way, a deadlock will happen if four trains, 2 in each direction, enter adjacent passing ...

I've been playing with the Marathon and RSO mods, which has forced me to build a substantial, long distance rail network during regular play, not in the post-victory stage or just for kicks. Because resources were very, very short when I had to build my first long distance rails, I went with two-way...

Yep, the sidings need exit signals. Also, the two-way piece of track is probably best off without signals (they're chain signals now, that might not harm, but it won't help either) I've been experimenting with single-track rails, and I do passing blocks like this all the time. http://i.imgur.com/2o...

I had no idea. Though I'm still easing into the idea of using concrete extensively for anything other than building the rocket bunker. Puffing it up from the default 2x2 to 5x5 makes that go a lot faster. I even went and grabbed the colored items mod for the colored concrete - but I'm short of ideas...

Corners aren't slow anymore. Belts now model the objects they're carrying in a much simpler way, rather than moving items with their own collision rectangles.

That's somewhat similar to the design I had which had problems. Also, I see splitters in there with 1 input and 1 output - what's the intent? Some sort of timing thing?

I know how to do arbitrary 1 to N belt distribution evenly. What's not clear to me is how to evenly consolidate N to 1. The specific application is a common one - moving items from a train unloading station to a central belt. A two-car train has 14 unloading stations. What I'm seeing is that many si...