Cargo Distribution

[c933103]

Question: How do you overload a travel link to red like shown in the attached screenshot? I can only make it up to green...

[Alberth]

Create more cargo or accept more passengers to transport.
Alternatively, reduce the transport capacity

[c933103]

I just read another forum post which said I have to turn cargodist on to make them display in yellow/red, and seems like it's off here..

[Alberth]

That could help

Open the settings menu (from in-game if you want to change an existing game), use "advanced settings", and type "cargo dist" as search text.
Alternatively, open "Environment -> Cargo Distribution".
There are all the cargo dist settings. Change distribution modes of the cargo-types that you want handled by cargo-dist to something else than "manual".

[Wahazar]

There is an exploit: is it easily possible to cheat by pumping station ratings with single vehicle waiting for full load, with single order as such.

Is it possible to fix this feature?

[supermop]

There is an exploit: is it easily possible to cheat by pumping station ratings with single vehicle waiting for full load, with single order as such.

Is it possible to fix this feature?

This exists without Cdist as well, and has since the original game I believe...

[andythenorth]

Don't kill the piglet

[Wahazar]

This exists without Cdist as well, and has since the original game I believe...

No, vehicle would load everything which have no explicit destination. It is not possible to make single order and force vehicle to stuck on station in case of manual cargodist or if station is fresh (with red marked cargo "to anywhere").
But once link is established, vehicle would sit and not load cargo with fixed destination.

It totally kills cargodist idea, were you get higher station ratings traded for local freight. With this exploit you can get high station ratings plus all traffic at long distance.

Possible fix is to generate randomly small amounts of "cargo to anywhere".
Such fix would be also useful to establish new links, currently it is sometimes hard to attach new destination into existing network.

[Eddi]

It is not possible to make single order and force vehicle to stuck on station

uhm, make a load order with ridiculously long timetable waiting time?

[andythenorth]

Piglet variant B: drop off cargo at a nearby dump station and return to pickup.

Trying to prevent exploits is usually hard.

[Wahazar]

Piglet variant B: drop off cargo at a nearby dump station and return to pickup.

It is not working well currently, because bad rating of target station affect source rating.

[andythenorth]

It is not working well currently, because bad rating of target station affect source rating.

Do I misunderstand, or is there some patch I don't know about? How does rating of destination affect rating of source?

[HapticTactic]

It is not possible to make single order and force vehicle to stuck on station

uhm, make a load order with ridiculously long timetable waiting time?

Sorry to revive the old topic but this exploit bothers me too.

Yes, in general, the vehicle waiting time in stations is what causes this exploit and I don't believe it is caused by Cargo Distribution itself.

I can think of at least two possible underlying causes for this exploit:

1) "Days since last cargo pickup" exploit: A fully loaded vehicle being "loaded" at the station for months counting as a vehicle actually loading units of cargo despite being already full. Would this be a bug or a limitation of the game engine?

2) A vehicle being loaded at the station being considered by the game as an vehicle arriving at the station with each game time update. I heard/read somewhere that frequency of arrival of vehicles to the station influences rating too but I cannot find any evidence for this on the OTTD wiki. Would this be a bug or a limitation of the game engine?

Is there a general fix or at least another forum thread where this issue is being discussed? I believe this is a pretty major exploit that needs to be fixed. Are the devs aware of this? Or is there a patch I am not aware of?

Thank you.

[jfs]

You should post bug reports (including exploits ) on the issue tracker: https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issues

But no, there is no code that tracks frequency of visits to a station, only a single number (for every cargo) for when a vehicle last loaded at it.

[HapticTactic]

You should post bug reports (including exploits ) on the issue tracker: https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issues

But no, there is no code that tracks frequency of visits to a station, only a single number (for every cargo) for when a vehicle last loaded at it.

Thank you for the clarification about the frequency of visits!

To be absolutely precise, by "for every cargo" you mean "for each single unit of the given cargo" therefore 100 passengers would be counted as 100 individual loadings of the cargo?

[planetmaker]

You should post bug reports (including exploits ) on the issue tracker: https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issues

But no, there is no code that tracks frequency of visits to a station, only a single number (for every cargo) for when a vehicle last loaded at it.

Thank you for the clarification about the frequency of visits!

To be absolutely precise, by "for every cargo" you mean "for each single unit of the given cargo" therefore 100 passengers would be counted as 100 individual loadings of the cargo?

No, for each cargo type, that is passengers, mail, coal,...

[Wahazar]

Because this thread was resurrected, let me go into Indiana Jones mode and comment some ancient scrolls:

It is not working well currently, because bad rating of target station affect source rating.

Do I misunderstand, or is there some patch I don't know about? How does rating of destination affect rating of source?

Not sure when such feature was implemented, but I checked current 1.8.0 version and it works as well:

transferrating.png (71.61 KiB) Viewed 7016 times

Station rating gradually drops, if cargo transferred from this station is sitting on the station with bad rating. No matter is cargodist is on or off.
Very good patch indeed, two issues are solved:
* no production boost cheating by local transfers;
* self-regulation of overloaded cargodist network (not super efficient, but it is smth.)

[Eddi]

IIRC there was a feature in cargodist that checks how much cargo is piled up on intermediate stations. i forgot the details, though.

[romazoon]

If i remember correctly, in the begginings of Cargodist there was a setting players could modify to reduce the effect on source station from cargo waiting in another station, it then disapeared from the setting menu.

I often wondered why, because i noticed the effect was still there.



And i could add to what mczapkie said about the "exploit", you don t even need the piglet truck to actually pick up something, only trying to pick up is enough to raise the ratings.

I often use it, and simply use a single order for that : go to station (unload and load if possible). That way, cargo eventually loaded get unloaded at the source station and eventually taken by another vehicle waiting. But with cargodist on, and once all cargo are routed, that piglet is actually not even loading something as it has no destination, and just by trying to load, it does its job of raising the rating.

I m also against removal of that behavior btw, That truck looses money (it s running cost), so it may be an exploit but it s not a free exploit.

[HapticTactic]

You should post bug reports (including exploits ) on the issue tracker: https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issues

But no, there is no code that tracks frequency of visits to a station, only a single number (for every cargo) for when a vehicle last loaded at it.

Thank you for the clarification about the frequency of visits!

To be absolutely precise, by "for every cargo" you mean "for each single unit of the given cargo" therefore 100 passengers would be counted as 100 individual loadings of the cargo?

No, for each cargo type, that is passengers, mail, coal,...

1) So one uninterrupted full loading of passengers to a train would count as one event of loading of passengers and be considered as the most recent time the passengers cargo type was loaded at a given station? Correct?

2) What happens when there is not enough passengers and the train is loaded to certain percentage and more percentage is loaded gradually in many days, for example?