Partial loading, min / max waiting times

[aahz77]

One of my co-workers told me about some very nifty order enhancing features in OTTD (namely the "MiniIN"). Among others:

- Partial loading
- Exact loading
- Min / Max / Exact waiting time

The first one would be especially useful for Passenger / Mail trains (so that they don't queue up after each other), and with the third one exact timetables could be possible.

After having done a search I saw that this suggestion hasn't yet been made for TTDP. For reference, there is a topic in the OTTD section about the new features.

[DaleStan]

After having done a search I saw that this suggestion hasn't yet been made for TTDP.

I'm quite certain I've seen this before, but I too, cannot find it by searching.

The only undefined value in the order structure is when the Full-load and Unload bits are both set. Patchman has designs on using this setting to disable feederservice, but this hasn't happened yet. Even if it never does, this only gives us one more option that is mutually exclusive to all three of the current order types (normal, full-load, and unload. I'm ignoring the non-stop modifier since it works independently.)

[AndersI]

If the non-stop modifier is independent, couldn't it be used in conjunction with the other bits? UNLOAD + NON-STOP or FULL LOAD + NON-STOP seems to me to be combinations that are meaningless for the moment, and thus could be loaded with some meaning. It would probably make a coding nightmars, though...

[Bilbo]

If the non-stop modifier is independent, couldn't it be used in conjunction with the other bits? UNLOAD + NON-STOP or FULL LOAD + NON-STOP seems to me to be combinations that are meaningless for the moment, and thus could be loaded with some meaning. It would probably make a coding nightmars, though...

They are not meanigless. UNLOAD + NON-STOP mean go to target station without any stops and unload there. This is behaviour when ttdpatch compatible handling is off. It does not make sense only when it is on, but most servers have it off anyway. Same for FULL LOAD + NON-STOP

[Dave]

It does not make sense only when it is on, but most servers have it off anyway.

Are you getting confused here?

This is TTD Patch. "most servers" indicates you're talking about OpenTTD. If you have it switched off anyway, you don't need to worry about it. I assume AndersI is suggesting a change in the switch's code to make it so when nonstop handling is on.

It wouldn't make a difference to OTTD anyway.

[DaleStan]

Bilbo, please. If you're going to post in both the Patch and Open forums, pay attention to which forum you're gracing with your posts.

It says which at the top and bottom of every page, and even if it didn't, you can usually tell just by who is (or isn't) posting.

[Bilbo]

Bilbo, please. If you're going to post in both the Patch and Open forums, pay attention to which forum you're gracing with your posts.

It says which at the top and bottom of every page, and even if it didn't, you can usually tell just by who is (or isn't) posting.

I am sorry, I failed to notice this subsection is about TTDPatch. I wonder, is there any way how to remove certain forum sections from "View posts since last visit"? If I managed to remove TTDPatch (and Locomotion and Offtopic) topics from that, I think I will no longer mispost ....

[steelixb]

Personally I think being able to adjust waiting times to an exact number (of days?) could be very useful in attempting to keep a network smooth. In reality I'd say theres very few times a train will stop at red unless at a station, of course due to timetables. Having some kind of feature present like this could help keep trains from stopping for too short a time at stations, resulting in large queues of trains, after which have all passed there is a gap in the time taken for another train to arrive.

The major problem with this is that I'd imagine it would be difficult to literally timetable trains in TTD if times were all based on how long a train waits at a station.

I've played around with the timetable patch for OTTD, and managed to make a simple line where all trains seemed to travel between each station smoothly, without stopping at signals. Without waiting times, chances are trains would be queuing up to enter stations, which I would say is kind of inefficient, considering the station last visited may have more passengers arriving after the train left, if you get what I mean.

Honestly, I think some kind of waiting time system should be looked into.

[aahz77]

Without waiting times, chances are trains would be queuing up to enter stations, which I would say is kind of inefficient, considering the station last visited may have more passengers arriving after the train left, if you get what I mean.

Queueing trains at a train station's entrance is not that big a problem when you're using PBS (except for one-platform-per-destination through stations, of course). The inspiration for my suggestion was that I often see trains in my game following each other at a very short distance. The first train arrives at a given station, picks up as much of the available passengers and mail bags as it can carry, the next train follows up, and so on. But mostly there are not enough passengers left for one or more of the followers. Because of this, the followers have shorter loading times, letting them catch up to the train before them even more. If a waiting time of any kind (time-based or percentage-loading based) could be introduced somehow, this problem would be solved.

Note that this problem arises only with passenger/mail trains as freight trains are nearly always set to full-load.

[Oracle]

The US Set has "instant" loading and unloading of passengers and mail (i.e. one unit of time for each) to try to reduce this problem, although it doesn't work perfectly.
I do think an "exact" loading time would be a good idea - it would be mutually exclusive of both full load and unload so could possibly use the situation DaleStan described: you could set an amount of time (probably in ttdpatch.cfg) that you'd like your trains to wait there, whether full up immediately or not. I doubt you could allow different settings for each train but I think it might still be useful without that.

[Stevie D]

I see that Patchman already has something along these lines in his "to-do" list:

Minimum load; never leave a station if less than X percent full. Perhaps only if not forced unload.

What I would like to see, as well as a "partial load" feature (interface: a slider?) would be "not load/unload" option.

eg, When setting vehicle orders, hold down Ctrl when clicking "Full load" would change it to "Not unload", and Ctrl+click "Unload" would change it to "Not load".

These would work exactly as the name suggests. A vehicle set to "not unload" at a station would pick up any cargo/passengers waiting, if it has space, but will not set down any. A vehicle set to "not load" will deposit its cargo but will not pick up any more (and so would be like the unpatched Unload command).

The uses for these would be, for example:
- You want a bus/small local train to call at the main station in a town, but you don't want it to pick up all the passengers and maybe have your express long-distance train leave empty a moment later. So your bus/local train just drops off passengers but doesn't pick up any more there.
- You are taking iron ore to a steel mill, and a new iron ore mine opens within your steel mill station's catchment area. You can't use Unload to deposit the cargo because then it won't be sold, but if you just enter the station in the orders with no flag, it will pick up iron from that mine at the same time, which would be no good.
- You want to run a feeder bus service around a city, picking up at several points and then dropping all passengers off at the railway station/airport. Rather than have separate bus routes to each stop, this could allow one bus to serve multiple stops, but without all the passengers from the first stop getting off at the second and never making it to the main station.

[Stevie D]

OK, I've thought some more about this, and thought about another feature of this that could be useful.

As well as setting not-load, not-unload, and minimum-load, you could also set maximum-unload.

If you had a train calling at three stations, you could set it at the middle station to, eg, "maximum unload 50%". This means that (no more than) 50% of passengers/mail would get off at that station, with the other half remaining on the train to go on to the next station. (Passengers unloading would pay you and disappear as though there was no 'unload' flag set, not wait at the station for another train).

This would make it worthwhile and realistic building long routes with multiple stops, as you could have some passengers staying on the train at each stop and travelling the whole length of the route - much more realistic and profitable than have everyone jumping off the train at the first small town leaving the train nearly empty for the rest of the run.

(I said "no more than" because I'm also thinking of the suggestion I made a couple of minutes ago about maximum passenger acceptance of towns, so it may be that if you'd set your train of 300 people to "50% unload" but the town would only accept 100 passengers, that would take priority and only 100 would unload. I think that these two features combined would make transporting passengers far more interesting and challenging than it currently is. I hope other people do too!)