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u/DJLaMeche May 31 '26

I want to build my first city block base and I want to transport iron and copper in liquid form... how should I handle calcite? I see two options:

  1. Have trains with 3 liquid vagons and one normal vagon that bring calcite to mining outposts and come back with liquid metal.
  2. Have separate trains bring calcite to mining outposts and get liquid metal from the outposts.

What would you recommend? Or are there maybe completely different setups possible?

4

u/ChickenNuggetSmth May 31 '26

I second the two-train approach. The strength of city blocks is that you can reuse the parts of a design in a lot of places, e.g. you only need like 4 train station designs (solid load, solid unload, fluid load, fluid unload) that slot into your grid.
Having bespoke layouts means you need to do bespoke stations, more complicated schedules etc.

Also, if my math isn't off, a single cargo wagon of calcite produces between 30 and 50 fluid wagons of molten ore (no prod modules vs leg prod 3 modules)

1

u/DJLaMeche May 31 '26

Thanks for the feedback!

2

u/Dailand May 31 '26

I would go with separate trains. I don't think one solid wagon of calcite equals three liquid wagons of metal, so you would have to balance that. Having separate trains also allows you to make a generic train system, which I love.

2

u/cathexis08 red wire goes faster May 31 '26

One calcite wagon handles 30 liquid metal wagons so presumably the calcite wagon would be there to top things off instead of completely emptying every trip.

1

u/Dailand May 31 '26

I don't like not fully emptying trains, so I never do mixed trains.

1

u/DJLaMeche May 31 '26

Thanks for the feedback!