The obvious comparison here is LTN (aka https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LogisticTrainNetwork). I like LTN, but I feel like it does too much of the work. That leads to it both feeling less flexible than I would like, and a bit cheaty. I would be interested in a compare and contrast with LTN.

That is exactly why I decided to make this mod, I feel that LTN goes to far too, it really does feel cheaty.

Basically, the Dispatcher allows you to manipulate train schedules, which is not possible with vanilla Factorio. But it is up to you to implement the actual dispatching logic, with signals and logical components. To build a network with stations requesting trains to a Dispatcher when a resource goes above/below a certain level really is not easily done, but I take it as a challenge, rather than having a mod (LTN) doing all the logic.

I am not sure, but I believe most of the functionalities of LTN can by reproduced with the Dispatcher. The main difference is that LTN comes with the logic, while the Dispatcher only augment vanilla Factorio to allows for train schedule manipulation, but leaves all the logic to the player.

It's also technically illegal to make a YT video featuring the mod LTN, or to patch bugs and submit the patches, or to share the mod (LTN) with others due to the custom license Optera chose to use. With this being MIT-licensed, users can feature this in modpacks or youtube videos without risk of lawsuits.

Yeah... I took a risk and submitted a patch awhile ago. He didn't take it, but it did give him an idea for an example build showing people who want to use barrels how to do it effectively with his mod without having to have multi-hop trips.

I need to make a version of Wireless Signals one of these days that constructs a transmitter/re-transmitter/receiver graph whenever an entity is placed.