Catchment/Coverage, Station-Joining, and Resource Production

[KtX2SkD]

Hello. First-timer to these forums, the game, and probably the genre. I seem to have managed creating, managing, and expanding profitable businesses while identifying and closing bad ones over my first three days, but I'm trying to get into optimization and under-the-hood stuff, hence me asking about what'll seem like super-basics.

P.S.:
- Already from searching & reading I have some guesses on how things work, but they're just guesses, so please bear with me if I seem self-answering.
- Also I don't fully understand the installments/life cycle of this series. I'm playing this thing on Steam so hopefully I'm asking in right place.

Q#1, Resource Generation (Passengers):

For the most part they seem to only come from towns & the like. At first I used to build bus stations at town edges to shorten inter-town roads, but now I'm noticing this "Coverage" button for a town showing red squares on its buildings, and if none are included in "coverage area highlight" when placing a bus station then the "Supplies" field won't state "Passengers" ("Accepts" field having a similar but more strict/unknown requirement).

Now I'm wondering if by any chance the coverage of more red squares could lead to better performance, like more passengers ready for pickup per month. Is this what it's about?

Q#2, Resource Generation (Non-Passengers):

Taking coal for an example, just like passengers you can't just build in some random 10x10 piece of grass in the middle of nowhere and expect to get money or work in.

However, non-town facilities don't seem to have any "Coverage", so, what? Just one truck station that's anywhere where the "Supplies" or "Accepts" values are shown is good enough? So long as there aren't traffic jams that is?

What about mail? It's in towns, but it uses trucks. Does it want more red square coverage just like passengers? Or just one point anywhere just like coal?

Q#3, Station Joining & Effects:

Okay, so hold CTRL while placing and the game will treat multiple bus stations as one. What for though?

So far I'm guessing that rather than each red square contributing to its own station's passenger balance, the joined stations will all have one shared balance, so instead of me having to split my buses across the 10 bus stations in some town called Lunar Paris according to god knows what variable passenger amount each has, I can just issue a command to any station, and the buses will just hit the closest station, because all said 10 stations have a unified balance and for all the game mechanics care it's just one big fat station, massively reducing headache and micromanagement. Is this what it's about?

Tricky question: Based on the earlier assumption that mail works like coal, and a town Mega Banana was entirely within coverage areas, but, two-thirds of it was covered by bus stations while the final third was covered by a truck station... if the stations are joined, is passenger production then maximized? If the stations were NOT joined, then am I right to assume passenger production is at two-thirds of the maximum due to said coverage?

Finally, say some town Black Egg is so big that it needs like 20 bus stations to fully cover, but there's no way to join them all under one joint-station, then, what about having two joint-stations? Would the town's production be split accordingly, so, no matter if 20 unjoined stations, 2 joint-stations, or 1 joint-station is in place, total passenger production is the same since it's the same amount of red squares covered, so it's just a question of ease of accessing passengers & unifying passenger balances?

For the purposes of town identity (so far I only understand subsidies to care about such thing), would the 2 joint-station design noted above allow for the game to recognize both joint-stations to service the same town, and hence both would be benefiting from the same subsidies?

INSERT HORIZONTAL LINE HERE

Aaaaah finally done. Sorry if there's any unnecessary parts, and forward thanks for your time & patience.

- KitCat.

[Chrill]

Q#1, Resource Generation (Passengers):

For the most part they seem to only come from towns & the like. At first I used to build bus stations at town edges to shorten inter-town roads, but now I'm noticing this "Coverage" button for a town showing red squares on its buildings, and if none are included in "coverage area highlight" when placing a bus station then the "Supplies" field won't state "Passengers" ("Accepts" field having a similar but more strict/unknown requirement).

Now I'm wondering if by any chance the coverage of more red squares could lead to better performance, like more passengers ready for pickup per month. Is this what it's about?

Every building generates passengers, smaller cottages may generate 1/8 of a passenger etc. and you need to reach 1/1 to make Passengers accepted. The more houses, the bigger population, the more passengers will spawn. Build a massive central station in a dense downtown, and you will struggle immensely to ship them all off even with very long trains. So yes, more houses within the catchment area = more to transport = more profit

Q#2, Resource Generation (Non-Passengers):

Taking coal for an example, just like passengers you can't just build in some random 10x10 piece of grass in the middle of nowhere and expect to get money or work in.

However, non-town facilities don't seem to have any "Coverage", so, what? Just one truck station that's anywhere where the "Supplies" or "Accepts" values are shown is good enough? So long as there aren't traffic jams that is?

What about mail? It's in towns, but it uses trucks. Does it want more red square coverage just like passengers? Or just one point anywhere just like coal?

Coal is accepted at full rate as soon as the industry is within the catchment area. Placement does not matter. However, a single station will only pick up something like 78% of the output. To pick upp 100% of an industry, you need two separate stations within the area.

Q#3, Station Joining & Effects:

Okay, so hold CTRL while placing and the game will treat multiple bus stations as one. What for though?

Throughput. Having multiple stops as one station will allow you to handle more buses simultaneously, plus also expanding the catchment area since every stop will have its own catchment area.

I have to go to work now, but hopefully someone else will continue reading your post. Welcome!

[KtX2SkD]

Many thanks for the reply Chrill, & hope work is good

Need to clarify though:

Coal is accepted at full rate as soon as the industry is within the catchment area. Placement does not matter. However, a single station will only pick up something like 78% of the output. To pick upp 100% of an industry, you need two separate stations within the area.

Two *stations*, as in two separate stations, not two truck stations that are joined into one joint-station?

In any case, are you referring to what they're discussing here? Although they seem to be talking about a lot more factors, and no mention of amount of stations, unless... what you're going for is skipping the entire concept of "be 100% perfect in one station" as it's kinda unfeasible, and instead tricking the facility by utilizing two imperfect stations that'll be taking everything possible?

For passengers, there doesn't seem to be any similar statistic, so would that mean it doesn't need two stations? Hence leaving resources challenged by "rating" & station count while passengers are challenged by "coverage"?

Then, mail, it seems affected by rating, so it should be treated just like coal? Actually is there any resource in game that's treated like passengers anyways?

Forward thanks.

[jfs]

Every building generates passengers, smaller cottages may generate 1/8 of a passenger etc. and you need to reach 1/1 to make Passengers accepted. The more houses, the bigger population, the more passengers will spawn. Build a massive central station in a dense downtown, and you will struggle immensely to ship them all off even with very long trains. So yes, more houses within the catchment area = more to transport = more profit

This isn't quite accurate.
A town building's Accepts and Produces are entirely separate.

Town buildings all have two hidden statistics: Their population, and their mail generation. The population of a building contributes to the listed population count of a town, in the town's statistics, and determines how many passengers that building can generate. The total number of passengers generated by a building varies randomly, but a bigger house can generate more passengers. Some town buildings, in particular fountains, statues and parks, have zero population.
The mail generation statistic for a town building works exactly the same as the population statistic, except it doesn't show up in the town's data directly. In general, big commercial buildings generate more mail than residential buildings.


The Accepts is separate, it determines if that building can contribute to deliveries on a nearby station being accepted and paid for.
If you haven't yet, try out the Land Area Information tool, the Question Mark button on the very right of the main toolbar. It lets you inspect tiles on the landscape and see more details about them, in particular also their Cargo accepted list.

openttd_2023-04-19_19-34-35.png (52.81 KiB) Viewed 450 times

In this picture you can see a town building that accepts 6/8 Passengers, 2/8 Mail, and 3/8 Goods. Those numbers are fractions, so read them as six-eights passengers, two-eights mail and three-eights goods; the Accepts are always given in parts of eight.

You may already have discovered it too, but if you enable the Coverage area highlight while building a station part, you can see which tiles on the landscape that station part will cover. The station can accept cargo from tiles within the coverage area, and deliver cargo to tiles within the coverage area.

openttd_2023-04-19_19-38-31.png (67.61 KiB) Viewed 450 times

For a station to accept a cargo type, all the tiles together in the coverage area must sum up to at least 8/8 accepts rating for that cargo type. Going above 8/8 doesn't give any bonuses, but it can mean that more buildings would need to be torn down before the station loses acceptance of the cargo.

Joining multiple station parts, either by just building them adjacent to each other, or by holding Ctrl to distant-join, will create a larger, combined coverage area, but that's all it does. Keep in mind that you can't transport cargo from one station to the same station, the destination needs to be a different station.


Industries can be slightly different. Covering even one tile of an industry with a station gives the full supply potential of the industry, but some industries might not accept all cargo on every tile. For example, the temperate climate sawmill only accepts Wood on the large shed tiles, not on the log pile tiles or logs-and-shed tiles.
Sometimes you can manipulate this to your advantage, if you for some reason wanted to build a station that can pick up goods from a sawmill, but not be able to deliver wood to it.


In conclusion, if you want the maximum cargo to pick up from stations, you need to cover as much of a town as possible. Covering more of the town also gives a better opportunity for additional cargo types to be accepted, in particular delivering Goods to a town can improve its growth speed, making the town produce more passengers for you to transport.