stations/load bay commands would help

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Samohtd
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stations/load bay commands would help

Post by Samohtd »

Maybe I missed somewhere in options and such where a stations accepted goods can be manually changed, but I think this would be a major help. For instance, instead of having to have trucks pickup coal and drop it at a station by commanding it to full unload, you could have it possible to set goods as accepted goods. Even if they were gathered as transfers only this would cut down on having to clone/copy vehicle commands. This would also give more leeway for trains. Specifically being able to choose what's unloaded at terminals by the terminals themselves would mean linked stops could have a truck stop set with a train station linked to it. Make coal acceptable at the stop itself to build it up at the station and anytime a train with coal cars comes up it could load the coal, but if that train stop didn't have coal as an accepted good it would load the coal to the train, but the train wouldn't try to dump the coal onto the station.

The revers is also true in that a train station could be made to accept coal and then and coal trucks sent to liked stops would pick it up as transfers.

Honestly being able to command what specific items a train/plane picked up or dropped of at terminals would be nice. When a train has multiple cars and you choose to load at a stop it grabs everything it can as far as I can tell.

If this is somewhere else and I missed it I apologize.
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odisseus
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Re: stations/load bay commands would help

Post by odisseus »

That's an interesting idea, but I don't see how it would save clicks on cloning vehicle commands (assuming you know how to use shared orders). If anything, this would make setting up the train orders more complicated, as you would need to click each station on the itinerary and configure its behaviour.
Samohtd
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Re: stations/load bay commands would help

Post by Samohtd »

My current example is a station at a town I had recently.
The town had a train station that did not accept coal. The power plant was too far to link, but was only 3 or 4 spaces too far. Another town on the same track line had a coal mine. So instead of making highways all the way there I added 2 coal hoppers to the train that was already running passengers and mail.

Now if I tell the train to unload it will drop the coal as an exhange. However the train then loads what it can haul which is passengers, mail, and coal. Issue: /the coal never actually gets dropped off. Perpetually moves back and forth./

Options that I can see and know of are 1. Make it drop all cargo and return. Issue :/Will not pick up passengers and mail either/
2. Add another train to that leg of track. Issue:/ have to add tracks, and/or stations, and/or signals. This cost money and time and makes things more complicated./
3. Run a new highway and set trucks to pickup the coal and deliver it to the power plant. Issue: / cost money to make the infrastructure. Same as a second train./

The main issue here is that if the train could drop all and ONLY load passengers/mail the problem would be done. Minimal investments.

Historically the main purpose of a train was to haul lots of different goods quickly. Having to have multiple trains or many trucks kinda defeats the purpose. Might as well just use all trucks and trains then become nothing more that bigger trucks.

If I could make just that station accept coal and it was tallied differently as a transfer it would solve the issue.

Another option would be addon to vehicle commands like "don't load (x good)" or "don't load transfers"

But if you make it to where vehicles don't auto load transfers and you can set a destination as accepting (x good) then you can send say a coal truck ànd tell it to full load, and everything else would just drop off regardless what it is without instruction.

Like I said I may have missed something, but it seams to me that just having the trucks move and the loading places essentially deciding what's loaded or unloaded would be cool.
Eddi
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Re: stations/load bay commands would help

Post by Eddi »

my advice here would be to enable cargo distribution. that will allow the cargo to figure out its path through the stations, without explicit unload/transfer options.
Samohtd
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Re: stations/load bay commands would help

Post by Samohtd »

Eddi wrote: 27 Feb 2022 16:02 my advice here would be to enable cargo distribution. that will allow the cargo to figure out its path through the stations, without explicit unload/transfer options.
That's essentially what I ended up with, but the cargo distribution system always seams to end up effecting so much that it clogs large systems with a large amount of transfers. Stations in the middle of multiple supply lines end up with transfers of things that don't necessarily need to be transfers, and so you end up having to keep track of A LOT more than I feel is really necessary. Especially when if I could just choose a single station and tell it to not load (x:cargo) I could achieve the same thing without affecting the already working system in place.
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