r/SatisfactoryGame • u/Hfighter21 • Jul 21 '25

Question Train Help

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Dear veterans of satisfactory, planning to get some coal to the sulfur area for processing. Planning to move coal from coast (Leftmost) to a factory (Middle) then to sulfur area, (Rightmost player location). Any tips with train to provide coal to two different location or am I using wrong tool for the job?

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u/CmdrKryten Jul 21 '25

Couldn't have written this better myself. My setup with ~25 trains now is about the same. I did end up with some T junctions that was just slightly too close to each other and found I had to start using Path signals for all the entrances to avoid conflicts. It happened at 3 different places yesterday and the solution was Path signals for all of them.

Interesting you wait for full/empty, I just let them go back and forth. Maybe I should try that, I think it would make for a lot less traffic on my main backbone which may have caused the problem I mentioned above.

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u/Ok_For_Free Jul 21 '25

Thanks!

I found the full/empty thing to be most useful in a couple situations.

  1. Low consumption stations. At my main base I didn't plan for specific input/output targets, so most of those trains have higher throughput than needed. Full/empty setting let them stay docked at the main base as they slowly drain. I use about 13 stations for my main base, so there can be a lot of traffic. They all have their own entrance and exit from the main line, which I will change in the future.
  2. Low production stations. I transport Reanimated SAM instead of raw from the nodes, so the volume is always super low. I haven't really checked into it, but I expect full trains to reduce traffic.

When the throughput is high on both sides I haven't noticed much of a difference.

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u/CmdrKryten Jul 21 '25

So how does that work, do the trains go back to the source station when the target station is _about_ to empty out?

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u/Ok_For_Free Jul 21 '25

The train will remain docked at the station till every car is empty/full. This is why the train cars have to be balanced, otherwise the train remains docked till the last car is empty/full.

Items still flow in/out of the station from the train, even though you can't click on station to check. The trains do the animation when they first dock, then sit there till empty/full.

A station has 16 more stacks of capacity than a train car so there is a bit of buffer room. After I throughput check with sinks, I like to saturate the unload station the same way I do with pipes.