station capacities

[fonso]

I wrote a patch that introduces configurable station capacities. You can set the amount of cargo or passengers that can be stored on any station tile in the patch settings. If you set it to 0 the behaviour is like before. Otherwise the station will stop accepting cargo that should be stored in the station as soon as it's full. Cargo accepted at the station can still be unloaded there, cargo being transferred can't. Also cargo from industries or nearby houses won't be accepted anymore then. Cargo from industries or houses that can't be delivered to the best rated station because of that is still available for the second rated station. So you can have a highly frequented bus stop in the middle of a town and a much larger railway station a little outside of town and the railway station will actually get more passengers from the houses around it.

There are downsides however:
1, The feature is not grf-controllable (yet). As I get it this would be highly appreciated by the devs.
2, You can use it to cheat a little. Build a very small station somewhere in the desert and a larger station somewhere in town. Then let a vehicle run between the two and set its order to "transfer" for the desert station. Now watch how you get transfer credits even though you don't unload anything and wait until the passengers are annoyed enough to leave even at their origin station. I didn't manage to make a huge profit like that, though. You get the transfer credits only for the first trip. Please try to find other cheats involving that.

[CommanderZ]

The cheat you mentioned is possible to do even without your patch. You can transfer cargo everywhere you want and wou will get the cash according to distance travelled. I don't know exactly how this works, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cas paid on transfer would be the same as if you delivered the cargo to a place where it is really accepted.

[Roujin]

err... no?
Ever watched your balance the moment you "get some transfer money"? You don't really get the money, it is just a virtual amount of money that is added to the train's income, so a train thats only transferring won't have negative income displayed all the time.

You really get the money only if you load the transferred pax/goods on a train again and deliver them somewhere where they are accepted.

[el koeno]

Cool. Next step would be to have special building to increase capacities I guess. Is that what you meant by "grf-controllable?

[CommanderZ]

err... no?
Ever watched your balance the moment you "get some transfer money"? You don't really get the money, it is just a virtual amount of money that is added to the train's income, so a train thats only transferring won't have negative income displayed all the time

Hmmm, thanks for correction

I've watched this with billion on my account

[fonso]

Cool. Next step would be to have special building to increase capacities I guess. Is that what you meant by "grf-controllable?

Yes. I think the devs want it switched off by default and only activated by special grfs. I don't like that idea. I want a global configurability for stations from grfs that don't define that property. Plus the option for grfs to modify it. So I'm digging through the grf docs and pondering how to do it ...

[ostlandr]

Interesting idea. I imagine this would be a nightmare for Pikka and George & Co., who would need to recode PBI and the ECS vectors.

Here's my idea: Stockpiling industries will have both input and output stockpiles. The output stockpile should be fairly small. Once this is full, the industry should shut down (stop producing, not go out of business.) Stations should have a set capacity also, maybe per tile? Maybe X units of each cargo type per station tile. Special station buildings such as warehouses (goods), ice houses (food), cattle pens (livestock), etc. (like in the original Railroad Tycoon) could increase the cargo holding capacity of the station for that particular cargo. Some of the sprites already in Industrial Stations Renewal would work very well.

If an industry is within the radius of a station which is accepting the cargo (that is, a vehicle loading that cargo has stopped there) cargo moves at a set rate automatically from the industry to the station until the station is full.

[fonso]

So here is what I intend to do:

I propose two new grf properties, definable by action 0:
1. A property for feature 08 "global variables", for example number 12, which sets the default cargo capacity per station tile. If no grf setting this property is loaded, the default capacity is unlimited.
2. A property for feature 04 "stations", for example number 1A, which sets the cargo capacity per tile for a specific station ID, overriding the default capacity. If this property is not defined, either the default capacity is used (if defined) or the capacity is unlimited.

Like this I can get rid of the configuration setting, as requested. It should however be trivial to provide a small grf setting the default capacity to whatever you like and thus achieving the same result.

Comments?

[athanasios]

Will there be a percentage indicator for each cargo and/or combined, so we can know how much of the station is utilized? Not in the main view, but in the station window.

[fonso]

Will there be a percentage indicator for each cargo and/or combined, so we can know how much of the station is utilized? Not in the main view, but in the station window.

Perhaps, but not now. I want an acceptable minimal version first.

[fonso]

To make things a little clearer: There are some open questions:
1, How should station capacities be defined with grfs. See above
2. It is not quite obvious to decide how much cargo of a certain kind can be stored when multiple limits are given for different cargoes. Should they add up or should they be considered alternatives.
3, If the latter: is mixing allowed? For example at a station that allows either 20 crates of goods or 20 crates of food would it be allowed to store 10 crates of food and 10 crates of goods?
4, How is the capacity determined if the limits for various cargoes are different and or if the station consists of different tiles with different limits?

I would preferably add up the capacities for different tiles as that makes questions 3 and 4 obsolete. For each tile the exact amount of each cargo is given and by adding those up over the station you get the capacity of that cargo independently of other cargoes allowed at the station. Additionally I would introduce an "any" cargo capacity that could hold the specified number of any cargo. This capacity would be used as soon as the specialized capacities are full. That bit is a little harder to implement but the whole thing shouldn't involve more than two simple arrays (one with capacities and one with actual cargo packets) for each station.

If there is a similarly easy solution for "mixing", I'd like to hear about it.

[fonso]

As the hard limit has received quite some critique I modify my proposal:

The station limit is calculated as proposed above (with open questions still open), but it's not "hard" anymore. Instead, if a station's cargo surpasses its capacity:
1, The station's cargo ratings drop. This should prevent the bus stop with 2000 passengers in the center of a town.
2, Vehicles unload at a slower speed if their cargo isn't consumed at the station. The effect would be like a train unloading at a platform too small for it. Like that transfers can still happen, but you are encouraged to build large enough stations to hold all the goods being transferred. You can't just stockpile thousands of passengers in the middle of nowhere without the process becoming painfully slow.

[ostlandr]

Just for argument's sake, let's start with 10 units of each and every cargo type per tile (no sharing of capacity).

So a small 1 x 4 tile station would hold 40 passengers, 40 sacks of mail, 40 crates of goods, etc. etc.

A 4 x 6 tile station would hold 240 passengers, 240 sacks of mail, etc.

Now, say we have a special station tile called a "waiting room" or some such, which has a capacity of 100 passengers. Add a waiting room to the above 1x4 tile station, and you hold 140 passengers, 40 sacks of mail, etc. A waiting room could also be added to a bus stop.

You could have other specialized tiles such as a post office, oil storage tank, warehouse (goods), grain silo, coaling tower, etc., etc.

With the "distant join stations" patch, you wouldn't necessarily have to bulldoze a tile next to the station to build these- it could go on a conveninet vacant lot.

Agreed that dropping the station rating rather than having the station stop accepting goods would work best.

This idea would probably work best used with a station grf that increased the build cost and "property maintenance" costs for stations. Rather than as now throwing down a 4x6 or 6 x 12 station so you have it later in the game, the player would need to plan their stations to be most efficient, i.e. not adding a second or third platform track until there is enough traffic to warrant it- (exactly the way I like to play.)

Just the other day, I had over 1,000 crates of goods backed up at a 1x4 tile station. Even though it was a "general goods" platform from Industrial Stations Renewal, and showed the piles of crates, I kept thinking of how unrealistic that was for such a tiny station.

With the above scheme in place, that 1x4 station would need to have (roughly) a 3 x 3 tile warehouse attached. Sound reasonable, gang?

- And on a silly note, an open door on the warehouse sprite could show as empty when empty, increasing stacks of goods when filling, and the roof pushed up by stacks of crates when full.

[fonso]

The project is on hold until cargodest is done. I'll need to rewrite it then anyway.