cargo – Train Fever

Production rate of scale up/down is ludicrous

aubergine18 — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 00:29:08 +0000

The rate at which production scales down is several orders of magnitude faster than the rate at which it scales up. I’d like to reverse the numbers, so scale up is fast and scale down is slow – otherwise there’s just no point risking using trains for cargo delivery.

Earlier today I made a mistake – I’d paused the game to do some track editing shortly after loading the previous day’s save game. I placed some tracks without cantenary which broke the route of some electric locomotives I was using to deliver goods.

After un-pausing the game, my industry chain completely collapsed to 0 production within a matter of minutes. It’s taken a few hours so far just to get it back to 50% of what it was. This imbalance is just ludicrous. It makes me not want to refine my rail network, which makes me not want to use trains for cargo. And using trains for cargo is the primary reason I bought the game.

This is further compounded by the “death spiral”. I had lots of freight carriages per train on that route, and they were set to “Full load (any)”. So as soon as the production rate starts to drop, the trains start taking longer to fill and thus there are bigger gaps in delivery. This leads to two side effects:

The factory will often realise it can walk its output down a road faster than the now delayed trains = trains fill even slower. Recursive death spiral. (This doesn’t always happen, but when it does it’s very painful to recover from as it also exacerbates the second side-effect…)
If train deliveries are too infrequent, the city will assume it’s not being served by the production chain and remove it’s pull request, so production drops even further. Recursive death spiral.

Editing and refining rail networks should be fun, the current mechanics have turned it in to a very tedious and painful experience. There are numerous other issues I could mention, such as blocker issues if you use multiple supply and delivery lines within the same chain (the AI basically breaks and the chain collapses rapidly), but suffice to say a simple “fix” would be to transpose the rates at which production scales up and scales down.

Cargo Train Route Problem

recnilcram — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 21:43:40 +0000

So I’ve been scouring the internet for a while on this issue. I currently have circular freight routes in my towns that stop at each industry and in the end return to a large cargo bus station. These work well and are profitable. I tried expanding my industry by adding cargo train routes with cargo train stops near the cargo bus hub in my towns. However, the train isn’t being used. Each Cargo Bus cycle is less than three minutes and the current rotation time for the cargo train is 16 minutes. I’ve also noticed that the cargo bus stations are nearly empty if not entirely so (probably due to my circular pattern). Should I increase the train frequency to see if they’ll use it, or is it possible that my circular bus route is negating any need for the train?

I read recently that it is suggested to put the cargo stops near the industries themselves. I’d do that if my current system is inherently flawed, but I want to see if that is the case first. Thanks in advance.

Main Cargo Hub??

mchammerstein — Sat, 30 May 2015 09:53:10 +0000

Hey guys. Can anyone tell me if i can set up a main cargo hub? E.g. A five lined cargo station that receives and distributes any and all cargo to different cities across the map. I have tried in … Continue reading →

Who use trains for cargo?

douglas — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 20:52:06 +0000

The cargo chain is so simple that trains are entirely unnecessary. I can feed all my cities with short truck routes. There is not a single time that trains are necessary. There are 3 types of industry and way too … Continue reading →

Station capacity

pollux_ar — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 13:09:58 +0000

A little suggestion, I’d like each station (specially cargo) will show the max. capacity when selected, so I know when limit is reached and should add another. It also should display as a tooltip when you select from the build … Continue reading →

Ideas on Train Fever

NJ87Army — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 14:29:56 +0000

I hear those say ” what about helicopters or planes.” well that be just mad , What about ships some said . ok i can see something here in the 1800s there was canals with barges pulled by horses and mules to deliver goods wont be to hard for the developers in the 1900s they could have small trawlers ( tugboats) pulling barges full of goods or resources and in the modern eras a bigger cargo vessels. for transportation you can simply do a ferry service but anything longer distance would be more fesiable with a train PLEASE DEVS dont ruin the game with AIR instead invest in our future hours of enjoyment with historical accurate boats ships trains and carriages… bad enough you make us wait so long to even play

Off the Map (?)

thetzar — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 17:38:59 +0000

While I’m happy to hear that the map size is going to be large, it will never be large enough for some people. Myself, I love the deal of building something realistic-ish, and 16km on a side is barely one good-sized metro area in real life.

But! That doesn’t mean that 256sq km is a bad map size! In fact, it could be great! Here’s an idea: cargo/passenger loads coming in from, or demanded by, the edge of the map.

It could work in such a way that tracks could be drawn off the edge of the map, and that ‘endpoint’ added to the train’s orders. This would allow us to simulate long-distance travel in and out of the area we’re playing. It’d be great for giving us the feeling as playing as a part of a larger world!

Just something to think about.