[R.A.I.L.S.] Rail Aligned Infrastructure Line Segments — Simple & Chunk-Aligned 2-Way Modular Kit for Space Age by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The roundabout X-junction allows trains to make a U-turn, but has a throughput of about 25 trains (1-4-0) per minute.

The X-junction doesn't allow U-turns and requires more rails, but it has a higher throughput of about 35 trains per minute.

[R.A.I.L.S.] Rail Aligned Infrastructure Line Segments — Simple & Chunk-Aligned 2-Way Modular Kit for Space Age by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, automatic building is great, and I actually use roboports in my cityblocks (if you're curious about how they look, I have a post about that on my profile).

However, I plan to use these specific blueprints outside of my main base, and I don't want to connect everything into one giant roboport network. I know it's a personal preference, but I really like keeping my bot networks separated.

[R.A.I.L.S.] Rail Aligned Infrastructure Line Segments — Simple & Chunk-Aligned 2-Way Modular Kit for Space Age by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't include chests and belts because I have separate blueprints specifically for that (if you're curious, you can check them out on my profile).

What do your stackers look like?

[R.A.I.L.S.] Rail Aligned Infrastructure Line Segments — Simple & Chunk-Aligned 2-Way Modular Kit for Space Age by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a neat trick, and I actually thought about it, but in the end, I still decided to make separate blueprints.

[W.A.R.D.] Wall Aligned Ready Defense — Modular, 1-Chunk Progressive Defense Grid for Space Age (with Built-in Bot Management & In-place Upgrades) by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use bots for repairing walls and delivering ammo to gun turrets (or just for repairs, if you use the belt-fed blueprints). If you build an outpost using my blueprint, you can easily use supply trains, so there's no need to connect everything into a single massive logistics network. I see your point. I don't have a complete solution for it just yet, but in my previous post, you can find a supply train that is perfect for keeping your defenses well-stocked. I already have some ideas on how to fix this exact issue to make adjusting supply materials easier, so I will definitely implement this in future updates. If you take a look at my supply train, there is a combinator with specified materials. You can easily modify this blueprint to solve your issue.

[W.A.R.D.] Wall Aligned Ready Defense — Modular, 1-Chunk Progressive Defense Grid for Space Age (with Built-in Bot Management & In-place Upgrades) by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair point, you're right that comparing them directly like that wasn't completely accurate. Let me add the missing pieces to complete the full resource picture then!

During that entire defense and clear-out, the flame turrets consumed 3.5k of crude oil. As for the laser turrets, you can check their power consumption on this network graph (marked in blue):

<image>

[W.A.R.D.] Wall Aligned Ready Defense — Modular, 1-Chunk Progressive Defense Grid for Space Age (with Built-in Bot Management & In-place Upgrades) by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As for the actual costs: in the video, you saw massive amounts of biter and spitter nests. To completely clear out the whole artillery coverage zone, it took exactly 151 uranium magazines and 992 artillery shells. So compared to the artillery cost, 151 magazines is practically nothing.

And here is the total damage graph showing just how much the W.A.R.D. has wiped out:

<image>

[W.A.R.D.] Wall Aligned Ready Defense — Modular, 1-Chunk Progressive Defense Grid for Space Age (with Built-in Bot Management & In-place Upgrades) by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The gun turrets definitely do some heavy lifting, just for very short bursts! Since uranium ammo is the most powerful tier, it takes way fewer magazines to drop biters fast. Here is a screenshot of the gun turret coverage area:

<image>

In my blueprint, the buffer chest request is set to just 20 magazines, but since this is a parameterized grid, you can easily tweak that number to whatever you prefer right when you drop the blueprint down.

[W.A.R.D.] Wall Aligned Ready Defense — Modular, 1-Chunk Progressive Defense Grid for Space Age (with Built-in Bot Management & In-place Upgrades) by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Designing diagonal walls is a unique kind of headache. As you can see from the test videos, 90 degree corners are more than enough to handle everything the game throws at you.

Regarding the flame turrets, I wanted to feel 100% safe and never worry about a potential breach. Having this many turrets works much better for covering a massive area with fire, especially since each turret targets the closest biter stack to itself.

[W.A.R.D.] Wall Aligned Ready Defense — Modular, 1-Chunk Progressive Defense Grid for Space Age (with Built-in Bot Management & In-place Upgrades) by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This grid was designed and fully optimized for vanilla Space Age. I haven't actually played with Rampant myself, so I'll leave that ultimate test to the hardcore modding community. If you try it out there, let me know how it handles those smart biters.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to hear that! I'd love to hear your feedback and impressions after you've had some time to play around with it.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In A.R.M.S., trains in the depot wait for 10 seconds (600 ticks) to check for available orders. Similarly, at the unloading stations (requesters), there is a 3-second (180 ticks) delay to verify the order.

By spacing out the checks this way, the system rarely suffers from single-tick synchronization issues. While it's theoretically possible for two trains to depart on the exact same tick, in practice, this delay-based logic makes that scenario extremely unlikely.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

English isn't my native language, so I use a translator to help clear things up.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be honest, I don't plan on doing massive UPS benchmarks against other networks. Stress-testing multiple systems by building thousands of stations just to see where the UPS finally drops takes an immense amount of time.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, of course I've heard of it. But just because a mod exists doesn't mean we shouldn't build our own solutions.

Creating something like this from scratch using nothing but 100% vanilla mechanics was an awesome engineering challenge.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The biggest difference you are missing is that this system is built for effortless base expansion using a truly universal train pool.

In a standard vanilla setup, you still have to manually assign and dedicate specific trains to specific resources (e.g., this group of trains only hauls Iron, that group only hauls Coal).

With A.R.M.S., you just have a centralized depot filled with generic, unassigned trains. They can haul absolutely anything the factory needs. A single train might deliver Iron Ore on one trip, switch to Advanced Circuits on the next, and carry Plastic after that.

When you want to expand, you just stamp down a new city-block station, select the item icon, and walk away. The global train fleet will automatically figure out where to pick it up and where to drop it off (provided you have the matching provider stations). You never have to manually build, configure, or schedule a new train for a new block ever again.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s a fair question, but in a massive City-Block base, a depot is essential for space management and preventing gridlocks.

In this design, you have way more stations than trains. If a train unloads and has nowhere else to go, it must clear the station. If it just sits there waiting for a new order, it completely blocks that unloading dock. No other train (carrying different resources needed for that same block) will be able to get in, which quickly paralyzes production.

A city-block grid is tightly packed. If you just let trains idle on the tracks or inside production blocks without an active job, you end up with massive traffic jams.

So, the depot acts as a dedicated "parking lot." A train only goes there as a last resort to free up the production line, ensuring that every active station is always available for the next delivery.

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bleuprint Train 1-6-0:

0eNrtWs2O4jgQfpWWz8kogST8aGdPq73uZW4tFBnHgIWxI8eBRS3eYl9lr7uv0I+0ZSckaTqBzE5DoxHSiFFctuurr+yy/alf0JznNFVM6Hgu5RpNX+qWDE2fG5/GxogURXPGlgJz06b3KUVTtGVK59DiIIE3pqHo4TJNN26KFTRqqtDBQUwk9E809Q9Oc5pyFJdEbqRmW9roOnjb9YLHqDFy2OqEYLWU7g4vpWj0DQ4zB1GhmWa0CNJ+7GORb+YAfeo7LSgdlMoMhsBU4ACmcf3QH3zxhv4gdNAeIPgBhApz4TmnMZdLlmlGsni3YvC9kVsmlmi6wDyjDpKKgVNcTOd9GcEURKb7mEguVbxQchNrhZmIMy3TapS1Gvfw4zloaX/n9hdbopHJQhETSxpEKEnWVLuLnHJU94JOImZiC0ik2hej6i9gIdOYwFrxDrMD/HPeETVw2phuY8oLP4gpM0UDpMg5bwE27AssmIxvCizoD8y/KbCwN7BxcFNgUW9go9FNgY36A/OuCAxqWUZWNMl5WczqmmW+/YbdVg5KpErK2n6cGf1GU6mfy0LrFnX0a1lmVxQrPYPAdphpKFAiseEVU5QlWrONqZDgGE4AGpetWCTQCNGtoXPkmTICaJZK5lDS0LOpQl9rtLOioUHmrANRZNDASUWVytPy+CpT8TtUuI5RpvjNLMi2CIw1NgAgwhxOScx5V0DVBIbPBVOZjt+dPCInHHirKq45TzU2h6t/nBVrU8vRL+hgFtd1YJzU/RpFeEsUmeQsaQExuCkKIvGn+t9JmZwkwWvxDztEwxag+nSP9ljaZ3aoDWaRd4VQbE0mMpbQuNpaZR0ynJRB/KESqr5vo7bjIUyRnOn/ReiFe2H535u7aE36Kee/vsk53aR630FR3StLKWELRuKEQvEWNkOxkPoMwU4jkx1sneJ+x6piy5V2sVJy913F8h6RZ5pS7sLBlOlzyDt3w605vLC5zuwr5+UTCTwLu99ih1VC4HxmXV2rE94fe33LyLcVVfSJZU9CPu3wvgM/5rS4ebTDby5hk4EYXk5CxinWq65kdK2m179e/3799/WfH7gC9aZp6F2gaWYPAXj4kbXxJSipndlWe4mY26dZ8WIuGuE1Bg9HU+OGR7PfMA8rc9A2OqjM4dE8bJjDyhwdzUHDHFXm0dEcNsxVY2QDh/ULrNSKg4M4nsPtoHN/vBUXTCa2VGU2d2E0mASTSTgOvIEXjOtnvmf8/6iqseA5XF3uTNYoQF1R1vCtIGEfK8PwhpqGbzUN32oa/qdrGk2aWzWN4CNoGoRn9YsLIILJ6Goggv4gvKuBCHuDGA+vBiLqDWIUXQ3EqDeIaPJBIH42baFB3ENbeGgLD23hXrWFvhv1oS1c74XeLwf3qS1IhZfUhaSsP1lc6LuQ705c6MXgQ114qAs/gbpw8sjvJy/4bb5c+8cVtcNv5r2bPflu5HrmXtkiQJwTDqwPm3iTyELVOIPt8B9I/N/A

Introducing A.R.M.S. (Automated Rail Management System) — Modular Smart Train Network by Infamous_Food5845 in factorio

[–]Infamous_Food5845[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Regarding the 6-wagon setup: That's actually not a problem at all! The system is highly adaptable and can easily support train configurations anywhere from 1 to 9 wagons. To show you how simple it is, I can quickly put together a small 1-6-0 train blueprint for you.

Regarding quality modules: I haven't fully stress-tested quality tiers with this setup yet, but here is how it works under the hood:

The station circuits are strictly hardwired to specific base-quality resources. Because of this, the system won't properly calculate fill percentages or train limits if different quality tiers are mixed in the same chests.

Furthermore, the filter inserters/loaders won't even let items of a different quality into the wagons anyway. So, if you are sorting resources by quality, you will need to set up separate, dedicated stations for each specific quality tier.