[OTTD] Suggestions on rail network

[mjdoom]

Very quick background. I used to play this game when I was younger and very recently the itch came to pull it back out. After trying to get it running in WinXP I ended up stumbling on OTTD and here I am.

When I was younger I used to always make point to point networks which worked ok but were obviously not ideal. When I stumbled on OTTD I came across all the discussions on rail networks and got to reading.

After a few stops and starts my first real attempt at a network is linked here. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions based on what you see. This is a very simple network (right now) with only 3 stations but I think it gives a good idea of my current thought process to see if there are things I am doing well or not so well. I know that it is not ideal since the first time I built the junction there was no way for a train from the SE to get to the lumber mill without looping the whole current network

Also one question. The local authority near my main sawmill station hates me now. Is this solely due to building all that track (and the associated terraforming) or is there something else I am missing? I'm sure the fact that I did it all "instantly" didn't help but I just want to be sure that is what did it and then I can get to building trees!

A few notes: Since I am still learning I turned on the cheats for money and to build while paused but I'm really just looking for comments on the general design and how I have done my signalling.

[Swansea Stu]

It looks pretty good so far. The bends could do with being made longer.

1. Originally the trains slow to 38mph for the bend. I've re-jigged the entry so that the trains now maintain the 80mph top speed and only slow when entering the station. There's a section on the wiki manual about bend lengths and speeds. I haven't altered the exits, you should have a go at that. Just try incorporating a bend length of 2 (or more) and see how it improves speed. Not just here but everywhere possible.

2. Another thing I noticed is that you have 2 way signals in the middle 1 way sections. The middle lanes between your service lanes are a good example.

3. In the 2nd example I've changed the entrance and exit to PBS signals. I'm still getting to grips with them myself so they may not be great but as you can see it can dramatically improve throughput out of the station and simplifies the signalling into the station. With a bit of jigging I'm sure the entry could be made so that several trains could enter at the same time.

I increased the number of trains just to test it, ignore that. Although I did notice you were using unload and take cargo at the sawmill. I would only use this if you had goods wagons. Even then it has drawbacks. If a forest was to spawn within the sawmill station acceptance area then the trains would load at the sawmill, when they get to the forest they wont pickup anything as they are full and the sawmill wont accept them when they return. To simplify things I would just use FULL LOAD at the forest and goto Sawmill.

Also, if I have several identical trains doing the same route it's easier to use shared orders. When in the order menu just hold ctrl and click the train to create shared orders. If you ever change an order in one train it will change it for every train that is shared. And if you want to add a new train to the route click clone in the depot menu and hold ctrl when clicking the train you want to clone. It clones the train and shares the orders.

Just south of this station you have a coupl eof forests, rather than creating a new route to here you can just run a train (or trucks) from these forests and transfer and leave empty from the other station. The wood would then get taken to the sawmill via the trains.

Eventually you may want to send the trains to a sawmill further away as the greater the distance covered the more money you get.

Anyway, that should keep you busy for a while. Have fun.

[mjdoom]

Thanks for the quick reply. A few additional comments and questions.

1. That entry is a lot cleaner and I'm not sure why I didn't think of it. I think I was so concerned with my tight space and the first few attempts I made at entrances were a bit larger than they needed to be so I felt squeezed when there was actually enough space all along!

2. I *think* the only 2-way signals I have are pre-signals designed to handle priorities on my main lines. Is this not a good idea or was it just not clear what they were doing? The point of them was to keep traffic flowing smoothly on what will (eventually) be the busiest lines by giving them priority over some merging lines.

3. I really really like the PBS exit there. The entry is neat but the exit is awesome. This was another case where I compromised on space concerns but your solution is a lot nicer. I'm going to have to experiment with a PBS exit at the sawmill station which can get very messy on exit especially with a badly placed breakdown. I did notice in letting this run that one time a train on the tightest inside turn got reversed and stuck so I might need to jigger around with it a bit to make sure that can't happen. I can only imagine it happened because he ended up waiting too long for that 3-way merge at the end.

I started experimenting with shared orders a bit after I posted this and I will definitely look into using those more. The comment on unloading is also welcome. I was trying to figure out how to incorporate those other two forests and didn't even think of a transfer; I'll have to look into a good way to do that.

When letting this run I saw one additional big concern that I'm not sure if you can help me with. I have attached a screenshot that shows the issue. If the exit way from the forests ends up with a chain of trains and then a chain of trains come from the East forest the train coming from the East will properly yield to a train on the main line initially. The problem is that after the train on the main line clears the side line train enters onto the mainline and as a result the next train coming from the south forests sees the spur off to the side line and takes off heading east instead of waiting for the side line train to clear ahead. In the screenshot Train 9 is heading off to the East where ideally it would have just waited where Train 15 currently sits.

What I think I need is a proper way to relay the blockage information all the way back through the main line to the southern entrance. Would PBS signals be a good idea here? Should I redesign the tracks in some way to make the East path less attractive? There is a signal hiding between the two bridges which I assumed would be showing green in this case and I would figure the south train would head up to it and then stop but I guess it isn't working that way for some reason. Or is the whole solution to this just to put a waypoint between the two bridges so that the train cannot choose the East path if it is green while the main line shows red?

Edit: Added one additional screenshot (it's actually an earlier date because I restarted the save file) with the bridge hidden and showing a slight variation of the problem. In this case one train from the south cleared onto the main line but before it could clear enough for the signal between the bridges to turn green the other waiting train saw the green branch to the East and took it instead of waiting for about 2 seconds to be able to go straight ahead.

Once more main line traffic gets added to this network my hope is that I can arrange it to be "smart" enough to move to the inside track near that merge as necessary and then it will just have to deal with crossing traffic where the entering forest trains have to move over to the inside track to head to the sawmill. In the longterm hopefully there will be another sawmill farther down the line to send these guys to so that they won't have to be crossing so quickly and potentially interrupting main line traffic so much.

[Swansea Stu]

I'm not 100% clear on the problem but as a quick solution how about having less signals in that area. So instead of the train having the choice to go the wrong way it has to wait until the right way and the wrong way are both available. The train should then go the correct way.

Or maybe altering the pathfinder used in the advanced settings/routing might solve it. PBS might solve it I'm not sure. I think there is a way of altering the settings to make the train wait longer (there should be something in the maunal or search the forum). Again I'm only starting to use PBS myself so I cant give you a better answer.

Have a play about and if it doesn't solve it then try re-posting the problem in the OTTD problems subforum, that forum gets a lot more traffic from the game experts.