Transport Tycoon Forums

fonso wrote:

audigex wrote:If you don't mind taking a few moments to explain, I'd be interested to know whether the choice of destination is more (and if so, how much more) intelligent than cargodest was. Is it based on the size of town only, or does it base it at all on the used versus potential capacity of the link?

There are three stages in destination selection:

1. The demand function is calculated based on measured monthly supply at connected stations. Supply is the amount of cargo generated at a station by industries and houses. The calculation is done in a way that

• sets a destination for all supplied cargo
• corresponds to the symmetricity, distance and station size parameters. The station size parameter is really a gradual symmetricity parameter. The lower you set it the less demand is assigned from B to A for a given amount of demand from A to B.

2. The planned flows are calculated based on measured capacities of links between stations and the demands calculated before. The algorithm tries to push flow over the existing links in a way that

• satisfies all demands calculated in step 1
• balances routes. If you have two routes from A to B and the sum of their capacities is smaller than the demand from A to B, both will be equally overloaded. On the other hand, if the capacity is greater than the demand, the shorter one will be preferred. That preference can be customized with the "short path saturation" parameter.

3. The plan is enacted. Every cargo packet arriving or being generated at a station is sent over the link where (plan - sent) for that packet's source station is greatest. After each such sending operation the flow stats are updated and some other link may be the most undersupplied.

The algorithm doesn't know about towns or town sizes. It knows about stations and supply at those stations.

audigex wrote: My own hope would be that the usage is based on the rating of the route, eg if it has a high capacity and high speed, people are more likely to use it - until the route is full, at which point the overcrowding makes people avoid it. The amount could then slowly increase to encourage the player to increase line capacity.

I don't measure speed. But mind that if you increase the speed of a vehicle the capacity of all links it serves increases as it can serve them more often. There is no "until the route is full". The plan is calculated in advance and in a way that doesn't unnecessarily over- or underload any links. Overcrowding happens if the sum of the capacities of all links to a given destination is lower than the demand for that destination. In that event the overcrowding happens roughly equally on all routes leading to that destination.

audigex wrote: Obviously, this is very social rather than technical - so it's a pipe dream I think, but I'd be interested to know if it's based on anything other than the rating of the town and total number of destinations. As much for curiousity as anything else, I prefer cargodest to trunk (haven't played much cargodi yet, I love the ITiM patch too much) and it looks like cargodi is an improvement on that.

Town rating doesn't have anything to do with it and I don't know how it could. The total number of destinations will be factored into the supply. If fewer destinations are connected to a given station you will get less cargo being generated there in the first place. It will be configurable and you will be able to switch it off. Wait for 4. on the roadmap

Kogut wrote:What exactly mean "short path saturation" setting?

keoz wrote: But when a train arrives (say the one who makes the A-B route), it picks up all the present coal, and unloads it all in the station B. Shuldn't it load only the coal for the station B ?

fonso wrote:

keoz wrote: But when a train arrives (say the one who makes the A-B route), it picks up all the present coal, and unloads it all in the station B. Shuldn't it load only the coal for the station B ?

Maybe you're missing the non-stop flag? Otherwise, can we get a savegame? This is about the 121th iteration of this question ... Maybe I'll make that "non-stop by default" setting mandatory and make people specify automatic stopping for each single stop if they want it. Or I'll display a warning dialogue somewhere. This is getting boring.

keoz wrote:That makes me thing to another question.

Finally, that shows that in fact, there is not any practical reason to build a network in order to dispatch productions and cargos to different destinations (except building a nice network). I mean, even playing with cargodist, i can build an "oldstyle" network, without thinking to destinations dispatching, and that will not affect my game.

Is there not any element in your patch that forces or just rewards the effort to build a more balanced network ? For example, reducing payment for cargos that are delivered to a station which doesnt correspond to the intended destination ?

petert wrote:

ostlandr wrote:Playing CargoDist right now- and I like it!

That's great, there was A LOT of effort put into making it.

Also, how long does it usually take other people to download using git?e

tsjook wrote:Keoz, one shouldn't compare the profitability of a certain linked network with cargodist to the profitability without cargodist. It's just a different way to play, a comparison would be pointless.

For me it's nice to be able to build realistic multi-stop (combined) tram, train and bus networks with many stops without all the passengers travelling just one stop. It's just more fun, differences in profitability just don't count.

petert wrote:@fonso, why is this diff completely empty? I'm trying to set up my own cargodist for trunk, but I can't.

ostlandr wrote: Don't know- I snagged the latest binary.
Was tearing my hair out trying to patch before I found out that it doesn't work on my WinVista box.

ostlandr wrote:Only "complaint" so far is LOTS of passengers. I need to go back and read this whole thread and the documentation to see if there is a fix for this. There also seems to be a LOT of mail generated relative to the number of passengers- I find myself having to add dedicated mail trains, tack a couple of mail cars onto my hotshot intermodals, etc.

tsjook wrote:Keoz, one shouldn't compare the profitability of a certain linked network with cargodist to the profitability without cargodist. It's just a different way to play, a comparison would be pointless.

For me it's nice to be able to build realistic multi-stop (combined) tram, train and bus networks with many stops without all the passengers travelling just one stop. It's just more fun, differences in profitability just don't count.

keoz wrote:Particularly, the problem of the incoherence resulting by the fact that actually, we can send a lot of cargos always to the same destination with not any limitation resulting by a realistic industry-demand.

keoz wrote: Particularly, the problem of the incoherence resulting by the fact that actually, we can send a lot of cargos always to the same destination with not any limitation resulting by a realistic industry-demand. I can concentrate all the coal of a map to the same power plant, and always be payed the same. I think that it would be a great improvement to find a way to limiting cargo payment in order to force some dispatching.

keoz wrote:Is there not any element in your patch that forces or just rewards the effort to build a more balanced network ? For example, reducing payment for cargos that are delivered to a station which doesnt correspond to the intended destination ?