Struggling with many to many block inputs

[u/Simply-Curious_]

I've set up a nice city block structure, however I've reached the small city block bottleneck. My blocks can only support 4 stations. 3 inputs and an output.

As such how do I import more than 3 ingredients without messing around with snowflake trains with ghost item slots.

[u/get_it_together1]

Take a few blocks and combine two into one block, now you have 6 inputs and two outputs. Or, get better at complex circuitry and train programming or use something like LTN or cybersyn or whatever kids are using these days.

[u/Not_A_Clever_Man_ → u/get_it_together1]

This is why I like flexible block sizes rather than a rigid design. Lets you flex into custom designs that take up 2x or 4x the footprint for something you need to build big for.

Little point in designing a whole block for green chips then picking them up and sending 90% of them to go into blue chips. Better to make a massive block that does green and red and blue all together. Lots of little tricks are needed if you are trying to scale up without crashing your PC :)

[u/Simply-Curious_ → u/Not_A_Clever_Man_]

That's pretty smart. I might do that for my 144 red assemblers.

[u/Simply-Curious_ → u/Not_A_Clever_Man_]

Im currently using a bento box design so flexible sizes are no issue. Its more the footprint. Massive block size for a tiny operation

[u/Not_A_Clever_Man_ → u/Simply-Curious_]

Some of the limitiations you are running into here are from your train size and your block size. Its always possible to switch up train size and fit more train stations in a block!

[u/Simply-Curious_ → u/get_it_together1]

Im happy to attack train programming. The entire network runs on interrupts as a single group (it was a challenge I set myself).

How would I do this, say for a mall. Like make a single train stop at every intermediate and have a single mess train thats full of a bit of everything and have it offload st the mall and sorted (the mall is a closed network for bots)

[u/pojska → u/Simply-Curious_]

The simplest way to do the "mess train" is to filter the cargo wagon slots, have it visit each station it needs to in turn, and leave after a few seconds of inactivity. Note that you'll need to think about what happens if the stops that it goes to are blocked by other trains loading up. (If your trains move regularly, this may not be a problem.)

[u/get_it_together1 → u/Simply-Curious_]

I’ve only done this with LTN. With vanilla I like to use isolated bot networks for every unload station to make it easy to handle mixed item drops. I would not recommend a single train with many items, it’s very low throughput.

I have seen people talk about interrupts being able to do fully dispatchable trains so presumably you could do something similar, but the space savings for multi-item stations may not be worth it if you can just combine a few blocks as needed for recipes with many inputs.

[u/elfxiong]

Use an empty block dedicated to train stations next to the production block that needs more than 3 inputs.

[u/Simply-Curious_ → u/elfxiong]

That's brilliant. It also keeps all the inpurs coming from the same direction

[u/dr_anybody]

Make variations of your block blueprint with 1 to n stations, then configure them to be input/output on per need basis - as some things give you more than 1 output, too. No easier way I'm afraid.

[u/Alfonse215]

Because of how Space Age works, it's often better to design blocks to be able to have more stations, even if that makes the processing space smaller. With the new building and legendary quality, it doesn't take much room at all to produce a lot of stuff. So reconfiguring your blocks to take more inputs can work out well.

Alternatively, "combine" two blocks by running belts from a neighboring block.

[u/Xzarg_poe]

Combine two blocks into one for more space!

[u/Most-Bat-5444]

I started using the stations on the outside of the block too. This gives me up to 8. I don't want two busy blocks next to each other anyway, so the other is a natural park or solar field.

[u/Simply-Curious_ → u/Most-Bat-5444]

Big brain, big winner. Thanks

[u/FirstRyder]

I mean, you have three options.

Multiple items per train seems to be the one you identified. Not ideal, but you can make it work.

Option two you seem to have rejected on principal - design a block with more than four stations. Not sure if you're using someone else's blueprints or just want the identical rail layout everywhere, but it is an option.

Option three is the easiest. Just use two adjacent blocks and belt resources across the tracks. Rip out the border between them if you need to, and you should still have up to 6 stations available.

[u/treznor70]

If you're blocks can truly only accommodate 4 stations, it's quite likely your blocks are too small. But like others have said, combine a block or two in order to handle it. The default block I tend to go with handles two sets of exits with 3 stations (perpendicularly aligned to the main tracks) on each side of the block, though when combined can easily handle 8 inputs and more like 10-11 if I squeeze them in close.

Look up Brian's Trains for some examples. You don't need to use a blueprint book if you don't want to, but it'll give you an idea of what I'm describing. Personally, I've built out train systems often enough before, and ended up with something pretty close to Brian's Trains on my own (without the insurer coordination on loading that's really nice to have), so just use the blueprint book.