Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

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Cool Loser
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Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by Cool Loser »

Hey.

I guess this is a common question and has been answered many times, but I can't find the answer.

So I have a train that I want to load iron and unload steel at station A, and unload iron and load steel at station B. What would be the orders I need to give to it? I've tried different combinations and the only thing I get is the train unloading and then loading the same resource at each station, effectively not hauling anything.

Thanks!
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by piratescooby »

viewtopic.php?p=1047749 , included in JGRRP ...viewtopic.php?f=33&t=73469#p1154208 may be what you are after .
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planetmaker
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by planetmaker »

Simplest orders imaginable:

Goto A
Goto B

no fancy orders needed.
You need to make sure that
A provides iron and does NOT ACCEPT iron
A accepts steel and does NOT PROVIDE steel
B accepts iron and does NOT PROVIDE iron
B provides steel and does NOT ACCEPT steel.

that is in the station catchment of A must not be any industry accepting iron nor any producing steel
in the catchment area of B must not be any industry providing iron nor accepting steel.

If these two conditions on the stations cargo acceptance and supply is not true, there is little you can do.

If you have wagons which allow refit in stations, you might even include refit-in-station orders to change wagon cargo from iron to steel or vice versa (only few sets, if any at all, would provide such wagon, though). You can do all this in plain unmodified OpenTTD.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by Cool Loser »

Thanks for your answers. TBH, it's kinda disappointing that this ultra-basic behaviour is not included in the base game. Loading and unloading in the same stop, and trying to place your stations so they accept and provide as many different resources as posible, and not just the other way around, seems to me the most efficient and logical way of hauling resources and establishing chains of supply, so I'm not sure what reason might prevent a game about transport networks from implementing it, but I guess there must be one.

I didn't want to install mods (least of all gameplay mods) until I learn how to play, but I'll have to take a look at those two (I hope they're updated).

Cheers.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by kamnet »

Cool Loser wrote: 11 Sep 2019 10:48 Thanks for your answers. TBH, it's kinda disappointing that this ultra-basic behaviour is not included in the base game.
OpenTTD is a faithful emulation of the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and as such has to support the original behavior of the game.
I didn't want to install mods (least of all gameplay mods) until I learn how to play, but I'll have to take a look at those two (I hope they're updated).
I would suggest installing OpenGFX+ Trains. They are a modification of the original game vehicles that add some new features, such as being able to refit wagons at station as Albert mentioned. The wagons that carry iron will also carry steel and can automatically refit without having to go to a depot or to add extra wagons, and you'll achieve what you're looking for.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by Cool Loser »

kamnet wrote: 11 Sep 2019 11:02OpenTTD is a faithful emulation of the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and as such has to support the original behavior of the game.
But it adds some new features, right? Like I said, I'm fairly new to the game and I didn't play the original back in the day, so I'm not sure.

Of course, I don't mean this as a criticism at all. The work of this community, from what I've seen, is just unbelievable. I love the game, I love the huge mod support and I love its open source philoshophy.
kamnet wrote: 11 Sep 2019 11:02I would suggest installing OpenGFX+ Trains. They are a modification of the original game vehicles that add some new features, such as being able to refit wagons at station as Albert mentioned. The wagons that carry iron will also carry steel and can automatically refit without having to go to a depot or to add extra wagons, and you'll achieve what you're looking for.
Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Refitting seems to me the best option given the circumstances.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by kamnet »

Cool Loser wrote: 11 Sep 2019 11:18
kamnet wrote: 11 Sep 2019 11:02OpenTTD is a faithful emulation of the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and as such has to support the original behavior of the game.
But it adds some new features, right? Like I said, I'm fairly new to the game and I didn't play the original back in the day, so I'm not sure.
Yes, it adds new features, many of which can only be used if you're using NewGRFs. This model was created so that original game saves will still work as expected, but allow new features to expand the game. So where the old OpenGFX+ trains won't do certain things, the NewGRF trains will.

Another example is with the CargoDist system introduced a few years ago. If you create a new game in OpenTTD, CargoDist is automatically enabled. But if you're playing a save from an older version of OpenTTD or TTD, it will not be automatically started.

Yet another example that you will see in the future stable release is the introduction of multiple types of roads and tram lines and special vehicles that will both use multiple types and restrict what types of vehicles can use them. Unless you are using NewGRFs which take advantage of this feature, it will not be enabled automatically. But within a few years it is going to become the standard by which most people will play.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by planetmaker »

Cool Loser wrote: 11 Sep 2019 10:48 Thanks for your answers. TBH, it's kinda disappointing that this ultra-basic behaviour is not included in the base game. (...)
err... did you read my reply? The base game supports that - if the stations don't accept and provide both cargoes... alternatively enable cargodist.
kamnet wrote: 11 Sep 2019 11:27 Another example is with the CargoDist system introduced a few years ago. If you create a new game in OpenTTD, CargoDist is automatically enabled. But if you're playing a save from an older version of OpenTTD or TTD, it will not be automatically started.
It is not enabled by default. You probably changed your openttd.cfg so that it is enabled for *your own new games* by default.
https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/blob ... s.ini#L669
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by kamnet »

planetmaker wrote: 11 Sep 2019 12:54
kamnet wrote: 11 Sep 2019 11:27 Another example is with the CargoDist system introduced a few years ago. If you create a new game in OpenTTD, CargoDist is automatically enabled. But if you're playing a save from an older version of OpenTTD or TTD, it will not be automatically started.
It is not enabled by default. You probably changed your openttd.cfg so that it is enabled for *your own new games* by default.
https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/blob ... s.ini#L669
I thought I read that got flipped in 1.9 so that it was now the default? My apologies!
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by odisseus »

Cool Loser wrote: 11 Sep 2019 10:48 the most efficient and logical way of hauling resources
... is rarely seen in the game. OpenTTD rewards transporting cargo for longer distances, whereas in real life you would want the transport distance to be as short as possible. In fact, if there are both an iron mine and a steel mill near station A, IRL it makes sense to supply the mill with the ore from the nearby mine, rather than transporting it from far away.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by srschacher »

odisseus wrote: 11 Sep 2019 22:02
Cool Loser wrote: 11 Sep 2019 10:48 the most efficient and logical way of hauling resources
... is rarely seen in the game. OpenTTD rewards transporting cargo for longer distances, whereas in real life you would want the transport distance to be as short as possible. In fact, if there are both an iron mine and a steel mill near station A, IRL it makes sense to supply the mill with the ore from the nearby mine, rather than transporting it from far away.
I'm glad you said this, because I've been looking for a place to ask a question and this seems to be a great place to do it.

First, to your comment, I'm not sure I agree. OpenTTD supports trucking and trains. I'd think that short-haul deliveries would be best served by road vehicles instead of trains. The investment in the infrastructure required for trains seems to suggest that rail service is best for long-transport, coupled with local trucking to make the last-stop deliveries.

That said, to my question.

I don't know if I'm playing this wrong, but it seems that the costs of running trains are prohibitive unless one builds a circuit where the train is constantly loading and unloading materials. Running ore from a mine to a mill and then running empty on the return will eat up a lot of running costs that can't be made up. The train won't be profitable unless it's either a necessary component of a larger profitable supply chain, or it hauls the ore a very long distance, or it has additional cars for other products that it can pick up/drop off along the way.

Am I playing this right, or are there other settings or newgrfs I should look at? I'm playing FIRS with the Extreme economy. I'm already using the Altered Costs newgrf to flatline some of the non-deteriorating resources, I've turned off inflation, and I've halved some of the costs via parameters in the road and train sets.

Still, I don't want to "game" the game, as I believe what I stated above, that trains aren't really meant for town-to-town transport, but region to region transport or highly valuable/fast decay products like food.

Am I right or wrong here?

Thanks,
Steve
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by planetmaker »

If you are playing with FIRS you are playing also with alternative train and vehicle NewGRFs. They usually have their own idea of how prices and running costs should work. So change their parameters (if possible) to not have prohibitive running costs, use a basemod NewGRF to lower them or use other vehicle NewGRFs.

Every vehicle NewGRF author has his or her own idea of what a default game looks like, what the default difficulty wrt costs should be... so that's why every NewGRF introduces its own weired set of cost progression and "balancing". And sometimes that also changes between versions of the same NewGRFs.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by srschacher »

Thanks.

Can you give me a baseline on what an average train's running cost should be? For instance, a moderate diesel engine with boxcars, say, length 4?

I noticed in my games that average running costs for an engine is between $75K - $125K, with purchase price in the mid $20s. However, with the Squid water craft newgrf, the cost for a basic fishing trawler is $250K, which seems so out of whack with a train. I can't see spending $250K to bring ashore fish that won't recover its cost.

I'd just like to better understand what the base expectation is, to better understand usage.

It feels like this game's appeal is to create train networks, but it also feels like road networks make more sense for local hauling -- unless I have my base costs messed up from mixing newgrfs and train sets.

Steve
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by kamnet »

You're never going to get a "true" base cost if you're using NewGRFs. NewGRFs exist for a variety of reasons. A lot of them are created because people want to duplicate "real world" settings, not only in the types of vehicles, but costs as well. You'll often notice that default OpenTTD vehicles are much more inexpensive than vehicles in "real world" sets. Some sets have unrealistically low costs in order to make it closer to original OpenTTD, and some are set on real costs which make them appear to be unrealistically high (in the real world, a whole train will run millions of dollars, not $20k). Many sets are not designed for competitive game play, since their developers don't particularly care if your game is or isn't profitable, they're developing mostly for carefree or sandbox gameplay. Most NewGRF sets are also not balanced against each other, either. There are no enforced rules on what NewGRFs should and should not do, how much things cost, etc. It's intentionally mean to be as open or restrictive as the NewGRF developer wishes.

There are a few sets which are designed to work with each other explicitly, which balance costs with all their sets, or which are meant to be used competitively.
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by srschacher »

Thanks, again.

My concern is mostly that the running costs are commensurate with the transport costs for the products more so than that the sets balance each other. It seems to me that at some point, the company HAS to be profitable or the game will shut it down.

To be profitable, the profits have to pay for the running costs. It seems that this favors long-haul trains, which I don't mind if that's the "normal" use for such things (rather than just playing model trains in a sandbox).

I'm using the NARS with FIRS, but I added some extra vehicle sets that looked interesting. I'll experiment with different mixes when I start a new game.

Steve
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Re: Loading and unloading two resources in the same train

Post by odisseus »

The basic set of costs and payments was designed for much smaller maps (256x256 was probably the typical size back in the day, and 1024x1024 was the largest size possible). In addition, the costs must be low enough so that an inexperienced player doesn't go bankrupt too fast.

The combination of these two factors makes long-haul trains extremely profitable, as can be seen every day on the popular public servers. A cargo train that travels across 1000-2000 tiles can cash out for several times its own worth in a single trip.

That said, I have the impression that the original designers did not aim for balance or realism at all, but rather for an easy start and a preference for trains.
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