Questions about valuables!

[puffingbilly]

puffingbilly here again - - trying to figure things out!

So, I've got an airport that is within range of the city bank, and there's valuables to be shipped.
I refitted a plane and shipped them to another city. The airport is out of range of the bank, so I make the plane unload. There's also a truck depot next to the airport. No problem, run an armoured truck to the truck depot that I placed opposite the bank in town, set it up to deliver the valuables there.

So, my little truck loads up and drives there (the depot says it accepts valuables) and unloads. However, I only earn a few hundred dollars the first time, and after this it earns me nothing.

Now both airports are laden with valuables, the truck depot opposite the bank has several hundred loads of valuables waiting, I'm shifting them all over and not making a penny!

What am I doing wrong?

Also, are you supposed to transport valuables back and forth? So, should my armoured truck be dropping valuables off at the depot opposite the bank and then be refilling with other (?) valuables that are there and shipping them back to where the original valuables come from? If so, how do you know which valuables are which?

And one more thing, why does my valuables plane fly in a zigzag style on one leg of the flight? Is it something to do with having a valuable cargo that makes the pilot get a bit frenzied?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

puffingbilly

[Prof. Frink]

Try extending the airport (Build a truck stop, then a bus stop towards the bank, remove the truck stop and rebuild the other side of the bus stop, repeat) so you can make the delivery in one go.

Have you set the truck to 'unload' at the bank? this would mean it would leave its cargo en-route.

Yes you should transport valuables both ways.

Try moving one airport one square sideways.

[John]

the problem exists because of the second airport. u have to either build two bus stops and two airports (one for delivary of valubles - the other for taking them away) or build an airport within range of the bank or walk it closer like Prof. Frink said

[puffingbilly]

It's still not working!

I can't "walk" bus/truck depots to make the airport accept valuables - it's too far from the bank, too many buildings in the way.

So, I built a new truck depot within range of the bank, and now both depots accept valuables. However, the armoured trucks simply unload the valuables at the new depot and there's still no money to be made!

I'm still moving valuables around and making no money at all!

Any ideas? Anyone!

[_RaK_]

Hmm, do you build only one? If does, we got it, you have to build other city near banks, so it will make the money.

If your city is too big, better use "Pause" so you can build during pause, so city can't build during pause.

If won't work. Could someone figure it out?

[puffingbilly]

Do I only have one what?

There are 4 big cities with valuables in this scenario. With 2 of the cities they are covered by the airport, the other by a train station, and the last is the one I have problems with - where the airport is on the other side of the city to the bank.

It is just this one city that's killing me. It has an airport, a bank, and as described before it has 2 truck depots very close to the bank.

I fly in valuables from another airport, truck it to the depots (I've tried both) near the bank, and the best I've got is a few hunded dollars, and then it falls to zero. (the plane flying the valuables in to the city runs at a loss!)

Literally hundreds of bags of valuables being moved for no profit!

The city that has a bank covered by a train station is fine; I load a train with armoured cars and deliver it to a station next to an airport (and bank!) in another city and make a tidy profit!

Obviously it's best to situate an airport in a way so it covers the city bank, BUT if that doesn't work - what do you do?

Thanks again - billypuffer

[Patchman]

It might help if you post your savegame, then people can look at it and really see what you're talking about. Just attach the savegame to your post.

[puffingbilly]

Wow - post my save game and reveal my creation to the public?

Yes, you are right, I shall do that!

However, not entirely sure how to do it. I downloaded a few scenarios and couldn't find the file in which to put them in order to load them as a saved game. And I'm guessing that this is the same file that I'll find my saved game of this scenario. (do they have the same names in a folder somewhere - if so, I can't find them!)

Tell me how to do it and I'll attach the scenario with some details of the problem area!

Thanks for your interest and offer of help.

billy puffing

[Prof. Frink]

Try using TTSGM to find your savegame.

It'll be one of the .sv1 files in your TTD directory.

[krtaylor]

I know exactly what your problem is, it's happened to me before.

Let's say that the city where the airport is close to the bank is City A, and the other city where you have to use a truck to deliver them is City B.

Think about it. The plane carries way more valuables than can fit into one truck. So, when the truck gets to the City B airport to pick up valuables that the plane delivered, there will still be plenty left. The airport status window will read, "100 bags of Valuables (en-route from City A)." The truck has City A valuables inside it. It delivers them to the City B bank, and receives payment. The payment will be low because there really aren't very many in the truck. The truck picks up valuables from the bank to take back to the airport. So far so good.

Now the truck arrives back at the airport. There are still "100 bags of Valuables (en-route from City A)" at the airport. The truck has 20 bags of valuables from City B on board. It goes to drop them off at the airport, and to pick up a new load. Logically, then, there would be waiting at the airport, 20 bags of valuables (en-route from from City B), and 100 bags of Valuables (en-route from City A).

Wrong. TTD can't store multiple cargoes of the same thing with different original sources, in one station. It has only one "pile" of each cargo, and one parameter describing where it came from; this parameter always describes the source of the most recent load delivered.

So, what will actually happen when the truck arrives at the airport, is as follows:

It unloads its 20 bags from City B. Now the airport has 120 bags of valuables, and they will be labeled as en-route from City B.. So when the truck goes to fill up and return to the bank, from the game's point of view it is just taking the valuables back where they came from, hence no payment.

The same thing will happen next time the plane arrives. It will unload, switching the station's cargo register to reading "en-route from City A;" then it will re-load and take the valuables back to City A, where they came from. Again no payment.

Transfer service works only when the flow of goods is one-way. It does not work if the flow of goods is bidirectional. This is very awkward and we've asked about fixing it before, but it's impossible because not only would the station registers have to be completely rewritten, but also there would have to be some sort of logic so the vehicles could figure out which of the various destinations, they were supposed to load.

That's also why you can't have an outlying airport, with passengers delivered to it by bus.

[puffingbilly]

Fantastic reply krtaylor.

I now fully understand what's going on. I guess I'll simply have to make do with making my millions shifting everything else except valaubles between those two locations.

Really appreciate the time taken by you guys to explain the problem.

Thanks again

puffed bill

[BobXP]

What you could try is this:

Code: Select all

+----+ +-----+             +-------------+
|Bank| |Truck| ........... |   Airport   |
|    | |stop |      .      |      1      |
+----+ +-----+      .      +-------------+
                    .
                    .      +-------------+
                    ...... |   Airport   |
                           |      2      |
                           +-------------+

Now, tell one plane to load at City A's airport and unload at Airport 1.
Tell another plane to load at Airport 2 and unload at City A's airport.
Tell one truck to load at Airport 1 and unload at the truck stop.
Tell another truck to load at the truck stop and unload at Airport 2.

It takes a lot of space, but you can have the airports as far away as you like, and actually WORKS!

[krtaylor]

Yes, that certainly does work. It's so awfully inefficient though that I never do it that way, I use station-walking or don't do it at all.

[John]

in reply to bobxp

.... build two bus stops and two airports (one for delivary of valubles - the other for taking them away)...

basically what i said earlier on - though i guess i should have been clearer

u dont need two trucks, u can do it with one - i had to use this system before (once with valubles and once with passengers).

using 1 truck.
load up at bank -> airport taking goods away (force unload) -> airport bringing goods in (full load) and thats it.

[MervinH]

If your going to walk stations through a city don't go through buildings, take them along the road(destroy the road first, of course) You don't have to bribe th LA as much that way.

And another thing, if you follow a road around a corner you can place the stations diagonally together. That way you can save time.