Cargo distribution question

[uzurpator]

I've been thinking recently (only mildly painful)

How would you prefer freight transporting to be arranged:

1. Player choses destination and amount of cargo.

2. Player choses destination, amount is limited by recieving industry capabilities.

3. Player is constrained by several industries chosen by cargo supplier. Amount chosen by the player.

4. Player constrained by targets and their acceptance ratios.

For now the design doc says something about contracts, but frankly - they are too complex imvho...

BTW - I vote for no2.

[ChrisCF]

Option 1 - player basically movesany cargo they want to wherever they want. Possibly useful for those wishing to simulate Stalinist collectivism, but otherwise places control of the entire economy into the player's hands. Most definitely out of the question.

Option 2 - this is basically the same, except that perhaps you now have to feed 2 factories instead of 1. Again, too much control in the hands of the player, so not a viable option.

Option 3 - seems sensible. It makes more sense economically to have local industry feed other local industry, and this idea introduces the basic idea that cargo has definite destinations.

Option 4 - rather better. The only control the player has here is that industries they serve don't close. You can't transport more goods than are available, and you can't leave excess at a processing industry - they won't get through it any more quickly. With a little bit of thought, playing a game in this style need not be difficult. Ultimately, people want to go places, and managers want their production lines to keep moving.

The concept of contracts might work along a similar line to subsidies in TT, you move some goods from a specific A to a specific B. You would either have to get a contract before serving some industries (readily available and easily negotiable), or you can obtain a contract for preferential service in addition to normal routes (not as easy to secure - perhaps the industry has to initiate the deal).

Thinking can be a serious health hazard.

[Lilman424]

I vote 4

[uzurpator]

Well.

I think that most definetly industries must not only have limited output, but also limited input - so the size of the factory will show how much input-cargo it can process. This means that it is either no2 or no4 for me.

As for the route choice - this is a battle of two prinicples.

Letting the player to set the routes will add to the gameplay - as players will not be constrained by the "you have to transport here", but it is not realistic - managers decide where cargo must go - not transport companies.

I just got this idea - maybe industries will have preffered reciever and will pay less for transporting the goods to other recievers:

London Coal Mine - 1230 tons of coal monthly

Preferred destinations:

London Power Plant - 100%
Oxford Steel Mill - 90%
Liverpool Steel Mill - 80%
Bristol Power Plant - 70%
40% fare for the rest

This would be a cross between no2 and no4.

[ChrisCF]

Mmm... a little supply-and-demand, and you're done.

Perhaps suppliers will only supply to certain processors, and will favour each equally, but processors have their favourite suppliers, and will pay better for them. Some possible principles:

* The longer the distance, the higher the transport cost, the higher your payments per unit delivered.

* An industry will have its preferred suppliers, for which it will pay more

* A key factor in deciding demand is proximity. A power company would love to build a coal-fired generator right next to a coal mine.

* The further away a supplying industry is, in general, the less favourably they are seen

* The lower the demand for a particular source, the less will be paid for it

* Where demand is too low (e.g. 1000-mile round trips), the goods are not accepted other than in the most desperate times (e.g. major coal shortage)

* A processing industry can only process so much raw material. Any more is stockpiled

* Stockpile capacity depends on how quickly material is processed, and how quickly the resulting products are shipped out (if there are any space-filling products)

Any further ideas?

[Zuu]

Will passangers follow the same rules?

Will passangers travel more far than goods?

Maby passangers shuld pay more if they travel far.

How shuld we limit the player to transport all passengers from one corner of the map to the oposite?

Shuld Passengers pay for the absolete distace between A and B or for the track lenght?

[Arathorn]

Passengers won't exactly follow the same rules. Where passengers go is determined by the passengers themselves, where good go is determined by the industry. A town or city will have passengers that go to various destinations, but I think most industries only have a few customers.
On a related note, I think possible passengers in a city should have a destination, and only show up on the station if they can go to their destination by train bus etc. You could let a marketing company investigate the city to find out where most people want to go befre you decide what line to build. I think that would be quite nice.

On the industries, I vote for 4.

[Oracle]

I'd go for 4 (as most others seem to be too).

I agree with your principles, Chris; they seem pretty balanced and realistic - TT's obvious benefits for transporting stuff all the way across the map are completely absurd in a real-life context.
Of course, power plants should be able to take a lot more raw materials than they use because they have to keep large stockpiles in case the transport fails.
But I don't think anything like TTD's "goods" should abide by the same "The further away a supplying industry is, in general, the less favourably they are seen" rule - assuming all factories or whatever make different goods then people will still want some of everything.

[Hellfire]

I really like this one:

* The further away a supplying industry is, in general, the less favourably they are seen

This would make it very easy to compute a preference value

(I'm thinking ahead towards an implementation here)

[uzurpator]

ChrisCF:

I mostly agree on principles - but disagree on some also.

I think that processors should have their preferred list of suppliers. But (after thinking a bit about it) i think that suppliers should have no preference whatsoever. After all they will sell to anyone willing to pay for it.

As for the proximity - it should be one of the factors, but not the deciding factor. After all USA railroads drag coal from Powder River Basin all over the states.

As for the stockpiling:

Each industry has incoming storage where raw materials are stored and will cease to accept anything when it is full.

Each industry has processing part which changes inputs into outputs

Each industry has outcoming storage where goods are stroed prior distribution. Industry will stop production if output storage is full.

How about that?




BTW - I found great TE screenshot ^^

http://www.railimages.com/gallery/album62/adk?full=1

[Hyronymus]

Industries form a type of the building class and have the capacity to produce any cargo. Industries are composed of three basic elements:
- processing facility: processes input cargo to output cargo and sends output cargo to the output warehouse once a day (game time); industries can change production capacity and production rate by constructing/razing new processing facilities
- input warehouse: stores input cargo (until procession); industries can change input warehouse capacity by constructing/razing additional input warehouses
- output warehouse: stores output cargo; industries can change output warehouse capacity by constructing/razing additional output warehouses
Output cargo is only available at processing industries.

Reading through this topic I spotted a problem if we allow players to determin the load of vehicles or continu with the TTD vehicle loading aproach. An example might help to get the problem clear:

• - Train 1 loads 6 wagons of coal and 3 wagons of iron ore at station A
  - Train 1 is fully loaded and heads towards Station F
  - The steel mill at Station F has a fully loaded coal warehouse, only the iron ore is unloaded from train 1
  - Train 1 returns to station A and cannot load coal as the wagons are still filled. Coal piles up and the station rating drops

The only way to prevent this is by constant checking the input warehouse capacity at the receiving station. That's not player-friendly in my opinion.

[aarona]

Station ratings are affected because there is a pile-up at the station.
If we know we cant accept any more because the destination is full then we wont allow stock to pile up at the station (i.e. we give it to someone else, or production is halted, or funneled elsewhere)

I've devised a rather scratchy formula to calulate how much should be accepted from the industry based on the rates of useage and the amount of storage space at the other end.

Code: Select all

Source:
Rate of production = x tons/week

Target:
Rate of consumption = y tons/week
Total storage = z tons

Station @ Source
a = Distribution co-efficient
a = 1 when one source services one target

Weeks until storage full 
w = (z - y + x) / (a*x)

(note: x > 0, w may be negative if prod does not keep up with consumption)

Approx delivery time = t

.:. Stock levels at station should be

rate of station acquisition = x * (1 - chop(b + t - w, {0,1} ))

b = weeks of "buffer" storage we may want to keep

Hopefully someone can correct me if they spot any glaring errors!

This way it is done automatically and acts as if the source industry has cut down production.

[Hyronymus]

That might solve the problem but isn't that somewhat "surreal".

[aarona]

In real life...
A factory knows how much they are producing, so they order the raw materials from a supplier via a transport company. If they up production then they will order more raw materials...

The transport company is responsible for ensuring the raw materials get there in the correct quantities. If the factory cuts production then the raw material supplier must cut production too or send the remainder elsewhere.

(In general) There are two manufacturing methods.
Warehousing: Where excess materials are kept as backup, and when the company needs more, they order it from the supplier. (Think about having a dam for water)
Just-In-Time: This method has no warehouses and orders the correct amount at all stages of the production cycle. This can be dangerous if there is not a steady supply of materials. (Imagine water supply without a dam)

[Hyronymus]

Let's assume secondary industries determin the amount of resources they need. I agree with you that that is the most realistic thing. Then players need to constantly focus on a vehicle to see if it is capable of delivering the ordered amount. Or am I wrong?

[aarona]

It depends on what we decide for payments...
If its contract based then you will need to make sure all is well with the contract...

The TT solution was to have an alert "Production increased at...", but these were primary industries.

If a secondary wanted to expand then they will have to alert the company, give them a chance to catch up to the new demands or start looking for suppliers/transporters elsewhere.

If we had some type of tender/subsidy system then companies can expand by announcing new tenders, giving the original company the first bid, etc.

For a secondary industry to expand, a lot of infrastructure has to come into place (early warning system), so generally they should have constant demands until major events take place. (i.e. primaries in TT)

Locked until the DD discussion arrives at this issue.