Place a signal if you need it to stop before it enters a platform. Platforms do not have signals built into them. The problem I see there is that with Factorios lack of path signalling (see OpenTTD), that in several places 2 parallel lines are in a single signal block. Only place a signal after an intersection if it is far enough away so that your longest train doesn't stop in the intersection and block other trains.ĥ. Never put a signal immediately after an intersection. Never put a signal where you don't want a train to stop. Always put a signal before any intersection of other rails or road crossings.Ĥ. Always put a signal where you intend for a train to stop. Always make sure that your block will fit your longest train on that line.ģ. The space between two signals is called a block. If you heard from somebody else that path-based signals use more CPU, ignore it, it's not true, it's never been true.Ģ. You can also make a few signals one way, so that trains wont speed down the wrong side of the network and clog things. If a train gets sstopped at it, it will block other trains from using the crossing. Seriously, just pretend the rest do not exist. An OpenTTD pre-signal (any signal marked with a yellow bar) has no concept of the 'next' signal or where the train is going at all it will be green if any of the explicitly marked exit signals are green (exit signals have a vertical white bar for a plain exit, or a vertical yellow for an exit signal that is also a pre-signal). Thoughts As a general rule of thumb, don’t place a signal immediatly after a junction. These train networks are set up using and abusing behaviours of the signals, where block signals release other trains into the block as soon as a train leaves the block. most important are the block signal (allows only one train to be in. You may have seen the OpenTTDCoop style of hyper-optimised games, where hundreds of trains run in perfect lock-step sync, with very close distances between trains. I agree that path signals are fine as default and new players should probably learn to build good networks with those. There is no need to use anything else until you become a far more advanced player, and even then it's mostly unnecessary. In this paper we develop an AI to control an agent of OpenTTD, a open-source clone.