Store cargo at industries, not stations

[Mackensen]

I originally suggested this here, and I thought I'd pitch it officially.

A lot of times in games you'll have a really good run going, say several forests to a sawmill. Several full-size good trains run round-the-clock, and life is good. Then the computer dumps a dinky little truck stop next to the sawmill, and all the goods start going there, even though with three trucks he's hard-pressed to haul more than a fraction of the output. Meanwhile, your goods trains are sitting on their thumbs.

Now, this doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint. The sawmill paid the forest for the wood, and us to transport it. The town will pay the sawmill for the goods (and we get a cut again, for hauling it). The sawmill is losing money while those 800 crates of goods sit at the truck stop. Realistically, the sawmill would employ whomever could haul those goods, and wouldn't deliver goods to a company to transport unless the company could haul them. I mean, as I see it, when a train comes to the station to pick up goods, it's picking up the goods from the sawmill, not the station. We run transportation companies, not storage facilities.

So, my proposed solution takes a page from Railroad Tycoon II. Cargoes should be stored at the industry that produced them, and be available for pickup from any station in the catchment area. That way, whichever company can muster the most transport carts off the most goods. They only problem that immediately comes to mind is how to calculate station ratings. Perhaps replace station ratings with industry ratings, and make all associated transport companies responsible for keeping it up?

[Purno]

Very interesting idea.

[Kjata]

Sounds cool.

Maybe it could be expanding into buying exclusive rights or have a contract to a percentage of the cargo, but it's nice as it'd be more realistic as it's annoying when a competitor running an inefficient system comes along and steals your business.

[Korenn]

but what about passengers and mail?

[ChrisCF]

The way I see it, if this were real life, you would have a transport contract for the industry, and your rail sidings would be on their land, not a few hundred yards away. You also have to remember that, if everything was stored at the industry itself, you'd have farms with several thousand near-dead cows waiting for trains which aren't coming.

[Mackensen]

The way I see it, if this were real life, you would have a transport contract for the industry, and your rail sidings would be on their land, not a few hundred yards away. You also have to remember that, if everything was stored at the industry itself, you'd have farms with several thousand near-dead cows waiting for trains which aren't coming.

Only if production is continuous. The industry should only output if there's a connected service and (if that option is activated) a train of the required type has pulled up at the station. Basically, the only thing changing is that cargo would not be stored at one particular station.

[pmjordan]

In theory, the ratings system is designed to take care of this. So really, the solution would be to overhaul that, and possibly introduce a new 'capacity' system that measures how many units of freight of each type are transported from a station in the past quarter, and the total amount of freight is divided according to the capacity. The existing rating system could weight that, i.e. if two stations have the same capacity rating, but the goods get collected quicker from one (i.e. rating is higher), more goods will go to that station.

How does that sound?

~phil

[Alltaken]

i think that ottd uses (within stations) a time based loading system.

if 200 goods gets dumped at a station, it seems that 5 crates gets dropped into each container, then another 5 untill they are all loaded.

i think the same should be done in the other.

if there are 3 trucks at a truck stop, and the loading thing is say 10 each time. and there is a train at a train station, with a loading capacity of 5 per itteration, then the goods get distributed based on "who is currenlty waiting for goods"


pmjordan yeah i think that could work.

make the rating system take these things into consideration.

average time for goods to be picked up and dropped off by the station. (for current cargo type)

average cost/profit of that transport ( companies will factor in the price of course)

how many units (as you said) have been transported.

current quantity of the product at the station.

i.e. if the station has 1600 of somthing already waiting for pickup, the computer will not put more there.

i think the maximum amount of product waiting should be compared to the regularity of pickup, because in some situations 1600 units is nothing LOL.

Alltaken

[pmjordan]

i think that ottd uses (within stations) a time based loading system.
average cost/profit of that transport ( companies will factor in the price of course)

Hang on, you get more money for transporting further, and faster. So the industries would favour the route which takes a long time to transport the goods a short distance? I think not.

I think the 'efficiency' of the station is already rolled into the rating, which depends heavily on how long cargo waits at a station before it is picked up.

Other than that, valid points.

~phil

[Alltaken]

pmjordan

you know as i was posting that i was already thinking exactly like you.

however if you imagine a system where you transport accross the map for a heck load of profit and a cheaper route can be found because it is a closer dropoff point, then you would go to the closer one, right?

i would think that there would need to be two factors involved in the cost calculation for the supplier. one is the cost curve, whos the cheapest transporter. the other would need to be a time factor, and the cost might be divided by the time factor or somthing.

the fastest route would not necisarily be the "best" however the slowest route would almost certainly "NOT be the best"

somthing like logs, it doesn't relaly matter how long they take, but somthing like cattle, or grain it is far mroe important, so the time factors would be very different for thw two situations. (if that makes sence)

this is a big reason why cattle in my country is transported by truck, even when travelling across the country, but logs are transported from truck to train.


Alltaken

[Villem]

I like the idea, but should be a switch like many other changes