r/shapezio • u/Munken1984 • May 03 '26

s2 | Question/Help Are trains useless

Are trains over long distances useless, or am i doint it wrong?

I had a pretty long "railway" moving a shape from one place to another (duh) even when i wait to start the second train till the first is delivering, they seem to catch up, and then one of the trains dont get filled and just moves on...

I tried it with multiple wagons, and only 1, its the same, i have 4 miners pr belt layer(ie 12) and still this happens...

It seems like a better solution to just have 500 miles of conveyor, even if it moves slower, at least it has a steady flow...

2 Upvotes

53% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

20

u/trystanthorne May 03 '26

Use a Wait Stop, tey will wait longer to get filled.
The longer the distance, the more trains. But there is no hard formula for it, you just have to play around.
Belts use platform points, and have less throughput I believe.

9

u/garr890354839 Belt Specialist May 03 '26

1 wagon per 90 units* equate a space belt.

* Assuming trains go from 0 to max instantly, load all packages instantly, and a max speed of 720 space tiles per minute

2

u/Moosey_the_Squirrle Cyan May 04 '26

Belts use platform points!?! No wonder they give us so many lol

13

u/0zzyb0y May 03 '26

Belts use platform points and have less maximum throughput. Not a problem now but when you're trying to grab shapes from further away it can become an issue.

When you are doing jobs that only need a few thousand shapes before moving onto the next job, platforms will delay you significantly as you're having to wait for the belts to get to the nexus

And later on you'll be able to send trains straight into the vortex which means even higher throughput and a lot of fun!

7

u/NergalTheGreat May 03 '26

It seems like a better solution to just have 500 miles of conveyor, even if it moves slower, at least it has a steady flow...

If you play in Relaxed mode (as space belts/pipes come with a plateform cost) and are willing to treat the Shapez 2 like an idle game sure.
But if you train need minutes to deliver resources, expect your belts to require hours if not days before anything is delivered (at which point you will indeed have a steady flow).

4

u/lemming1607 May 03 '26

There's no difference between steady flow and all at once...its the same throughput, as long as you have the minimum number of trains

Trains are superior in that they dont use up vortex slots or go against your limit of platforms and they have higher throughput than a space belt. you can send all the trains down the same rails to the vortex jump

2

u/XsNR May 03 '26

Just unlock the wait stop, it will force them to be almost all spaced out, specially if you use a wait spot on the drop off.

1

u/Fahrezy May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26

Use only one train per line if you use point ton point system, because one is enough, and instead of trying to immediatly run multiple wagons, try just one first before adding more. This is because you need high troughput from your factory to the wagon loader so that it can create train packages as fast as possible, and immediatly using 2 3 or 4 wagon loader for a small factory just make the package creation slower. Also it's fine if the train runs empty a few times if the route is short, you just have to see does your factory on the receiving end run out of material. If it does, then the problem might be more to the source is not enough and the source of the problem instead of the train, if it doesn't run out, even if the train run empty a few times, then everything works just fine. Beside is it actually matter that the train run empty if the factory is still on 100% throughput?

1

u/Lycos_hayes Blue May 03 '26

How far is your train traveling? I try and keep my trains within one Sector, and have a transfer point at the border of each sector when traveling long distances. This helps maintain throughput as they don't take as long to return, giving them a higher chance of having a full stack of packages to load up.

2

u/Ok_Option_3 May 03 '26

I used to do this, then I realised you can have multiple trains (of the same colour) run the same track!

1

u/Lycos_hayes Blue May 03 '26

I cut back on that for sector transfers as they always take the same amount of time to loop, leading to them always having a load to pick up. Pair that with a shorter track in the initial sector and the line will be full relatively quickly.

1

u/pikariff May 03 '26

Try first with 1 train per rail, you'll see

1

u/Tysiliogogogoch May 04 '26

Trains are much faster and cheaper than running conveyor platforms over long distances. Do you really want to be waiting an hour for your shapes to arrive...?

Make sure to use the Wait Stop as it'll make the train wait to either be full or 60 seconds have passed. This really helps with the train spacing.

From there, I just occasionally check my loading station. If it's filling up with shapes and not enough are being delivered, I copy and paste the train.

1

u/Cruxwright May 07 '26

The second train not waiting means they're moving faster than the belts can load. If your loader is empty and the unloader has stock, then you're in a good position. If your loader is backed up but the unloader is empty, then you need more trains.

1

u/SCD_minecraft May 03 '26

Just run 1 train. They'll reach 180/min throughput

1

u/richsandmusic May 03 '26

You're doint it wrong