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What difference does ‘group’ make and when should you use it? I tried using it to link a truck route and a rail route so that the goods would move from lorry in the hills to rail for the main haul. Then, I could not add vehicles to the road part of the route.
A couple of things I discovered. You need to rename both the freight stop itself and the name on the ‘flag’. Getting ine early with a bus station near the railway station reduces congestion later on, but you have to do this beforet new buildings close to the railway station crowd out the space.
I’ve been wondering that very thing myself Martin.
I group tram stations/stops that are right next to train stations…thus making the large tram station parked at the train station’s entrance the same stop. Not sure what the advantage is of doing that, if the two are un-grouped they work the same. Only reason I keep doing it is because I saw someone in a German video doing it. LoL So I would love to know the scoop on the grouping as well.
The only advantage I noticed is that it unclutters the map. That’s it. Passengers don’t move faster inside grouped stations or stuff like that.
Two problems I have found when dealing with grouped stations:
- Sometimes if you group stations of different means of transportation (bus and train, for instance), the lines going thru them are not recognized of the proper type: a bus line is seen as a train line or the like.
- If you “ungroup” a previously grouped station (bus+train), a line can become useless: for instance, a train trying to go to the former bus station part of the grouped station.
The game also seems to automatically group bus stations you place on the two sides of the same street. That is sometimes inconvenient if you want the line to pass in a certain direction and it does in the opposite. The solution is easy: ungroup them.
Yep, the only use of grouped stations is convenience for the user.
I usually group stations – a passenger train station has a bus/tram station attached, and goods stations where lorries arrive and trains leave (or vice versa) I group, as well. But that’s more OCD than gameplay.
On one hand, they’re still separate stations: If you don’t click on the icon but on the actual station graphics, you can see that the merged station still retains its original name, internally.
You can use that to guide the lines somewhat: If you create a bus line through one of those stations where stops on either side of the road are grouped automatically, you can click the bus stop graphic (that little hut) instead of the icon, and the line uses specifically that stop (and not the one on the opposite side). Problem is that this often gets jumbled when the line is changed and redrawn later on – the game redraws the line using the combined station.
On the other hand, they’re combined for the purpose of line assignment: The line uses the grouped name for the whole stations. That’s why, if you separate them, some lines don’t work any more – they’re trying to use the station name that now belongs to the wrong type.
#1 in isidoro’s post can happen, but is immediately corrected when you assign vehicles to that line: If you create a line between two grouped stations (rail+road), the game guesses whether it should draw the line graphic on the road or the rail connection; if you assign a vehicle to that line, it switches to the correct mode of transportation. I think (though I’m not sure) that you should be able to avoid this by choosing the correct station part when creating the line, instead of using the icon (or the other half).
But in the end, it’s basically cosmetics.
Varana is correct. Everything i had to say on this topic was covered in Varana’s post.
Spot on observation.Hi,
Also, see this post. Doesn’t say much but is related
http://www.train-fever.com/forums/topic/stations-have-2-names/
So this is what i use the group ability. For example, at a steel mill, you need both coal and iron, and the products need to go to town. Lets say i’m in 1850’s, and there are a lot of horse carriages that revolve in this cycle. I use 3 stations: 1 station for coal, 1 for iron and 1 for product. I set up the lines between the coal mine the iron mine and the steel mill like normal, but then i group the coal station and iron station and i put 1 line for each. It is the same as making different lines with different stations, but the thing is that this feature is used when you have more lines with a big number of trucks/carriages and you dont want your system to fall apart. this is my opinion.
I don’t see any other advantages of grouping stations then uncluttering the screen. I used to group stations often, but now I don’t anymore. Leaving stations ungrouped has to me two minor advantages:
- less (minor) glitches during modification works of lines (mentioned above)
- a more clear report about waiting passengers or cargo: per line a status, in stead of one global status.
The fact that two opposite stops are grouped by default, is a gain (again in the screen clutter department).
I’ve recently started ungrouping all stops – the main reason being I can see more clearly where people are waiting for transport and I can then use that to determine what sort of bus/tram/train etc to put on each line. It’s particularly useful to ungroup when you have buses/trams going in both directions as it helps work out where people are trying to get to.
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