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Problem - One source -> Three destinations

Started by Arcanacra, January 13, 2016, 02:31:50 PM

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Arcanacra

Hey there. I have problem with getting delivery from one coal mine to three power plants working.
Technical stuff:
game version 120.1.1 - r7640
used pak - vanilla pak64 - no mods or anything

Problem I have:
I tried either using one station for all 3 lines, and connecting three separate stations for each line and no matter the way, same problem occurs.
So here's the problem:
I make first line, connecting coal mine with power plant 1 - everything works fine, quickly getting profit.
I make second line for power plant 2, everything seems fine so far.
I make third line for power plant 3 and it all goes to hell.
If I use one station, it sometimes fills major chunk of station's available space for one destination, leaving not much free space for the rest destinations. That or, for whatever reason, coal mine refuses to load cargo for destination even when having more than 33% of free space.
If I use three stations, it spontaneously loads cargo to randomly chosen stations, as if they felt like loading it for destination 1 and 2, leaving 3rd one without cargo at all. Trying to combine two stations, one for one line, and second for two lines didn't help either.
Is there a way to divide cargo for each station/destination manually?
I also tried delivering coal to transfer station, then deliver the coal from there to destinations, but it only resulted in overloaded station, in which one destination has more coal than whole station can store.
I tried using trucks or trains, both get the same issue.
All three power plants have contract on that one coal mine, there are no more coal mines those power plants use.
Anybody had same issue and solved it somehow?

Leartin

I think it should go to hell starting with the second line, at least if you wait long enough. Not really hell though, just minor annoyance.

What you see on the map is one distributer and three consumers, so you think each should get every third lump of coal produced. But those consumers are not all the same.

Their consumation rate is different. When you click on a factory, it tells you how much it needs per month. If a company needs more coal, it will order more coal, so more coal gets reserved.
Their stored amount is different. If you delivered more coal to the first power plant than it could consume straight away, it will still have some coal in store. Worst case it gets overloaded and won't accept any coal anymore - even if there were no other power plants, it would not get any more coal. But even if it is not overloaded, other factories will get coal first - they need it more.
Their distance to the distributer is different. The powerplant will tell you how much coal it can hold, how much it has, and how much is on it's way. The amount of coal that is on it's way obviously is dependant on the distance, since on a longer route there can be more on it's way. If there is a lot on the way to a company, it might not get any more while other companies need it more.

Each on its own could probably be understood, but all these together are likely incomprehendable, so the distribution will seem random. At least that's what I think happened, might be something else too.


No, you have no way to choose which powerplant should get more coal. You are a logistics company, you don't even own the coal you are transporting. The powerplants have contracts with the mine, and the mine decides who should get the coal. You are just the errand boy ;)

DrSuperGood

Turn on JIT2 and use 1 station with 3 platforms at the coal mine. After initial storages fill up for the power stations it will be loading all 3 convoys equally with coal at the rate the power stations need. Have each of the 3 lines wait for 100% at the coal mine at their reserved platforms to assure no wasted trips (wasted trips quickly kill all profit in pak64 due to the low profit margin from revenue). If you have problems with convoys blocking each other then you could either make more platforms or separate sidings for them to wait on. Despite having 3 platforms with trains mostly waiting you will make more than enough profit to support everything, that is if you have straight lines and use an efficient convoy combination.

Arcanacra

Thanks for replies! Really appreciated.
Still haven't solved the problem.
The problem is that even when one destination1 gets a lot of coal, and train1 just departs with another cargo load, it unloads new coal for that destination1 again, disregarding those who have less coal or even trains waiting for cargo.
I tried with both 1station-3stops and 1station-1stop, both work the same way, sometimes loading all 3 destinations, sometimes 2 of destinations or 1 of them, sometimes leaving no coal for some of these.

As I mentioned earlier I tried delivering the cargo from coal to transfer station, thinking that it would divide the cargo as intended somehow, but it ended only in overloaded transfer station, train(s) waiting for their cargo, all while one destination get's ~80-90% of the stations all cargo

Of course there's wait for 100% load option, but it only results in train waiting until coal mine feels like loading the cargo for it, and I don't want to wait, because I use all 3 power plants to power other facilities connected via electrical network.
Regardless of situation, I still seem to have a lot of profit both from coal trains and electrical network, even if it doesn't work at it's fullest.

Also what's JIT2?
I'm not really into mods/paks yet. To be honest, I started playing this game since I was kid, and I never understood this game back then (I didn't even know English well, and with version of ST I had there was no Polish language). But I slowly figured out the basics via experimentation. Now I know English well, and with learned basics I quickly got a hang on some quirks - I only had to figure out how delivering people/mail and making cities grow works, and I figured that myself too. But this case with one source and three destinations seems just beyond me. I'm trying every combination I can think of and it still refuses to work as intended.

Leartin

Quote from: Arcanacra on January 15, 2016, 11:42:58 AM
Also what's JIT2?

A setting. JIT is short for just_in_time, and JIT2 is fairly recent.
JIT0 is when you never have to worry about overloading consumers, they will happily accept tons of goods even if they won't be able to use them up till the end of the game. So you never have to balance the amount of goods you want to transport, just transport as much as the distributer offers.
JIT1 changes that and claims that it's silly an overloaded consumer would still order. If your distributer distributes more goods than the consumer can consume, the consumer will overload. When it is overloaded, it will stop ordering alltogether, so while everything still on it's way will be delivered (overloading even more), no new goods will be distributed. At that point in time, your vehicle won't do anything anymore, possibly blocking others and causing a deadlock.
JIT2 kicks out all these incompotent people in acquisation and replaces them with those who can plan ahead, meaning they will order as much as they need, no more. While the amount of goods you can deliver generally stays the same, JIT2 smoothes it out so the deadlock never happens. It's as if you used JIT0, but used the lower value between production and consumtion for the production. (at least in 1:1 connections... it's more complicated than that)

JIT is not a mod and not a pak. It's a basic setting of your simutrans game. It's like turning the day-night-cycle on or off, but with an effect on gameplay. Anyway, since it is a relatively recent development, JIT2 is not entirely bug-free with electricity, so I'd wait for SuperGoods Patch anyway.

Arcanacra

Oh I found this option while tweaking with configuration file, thanks for letting me know about this one. Kinda sad to see it after I got to late point in the game, but at least if I start over I will take a better look at this file each time I make new map.
I'll check if it helps making three lines for three destinations from one source.

Vladki

JIT can be changed during the game. Some paksets can invoke settings by pressing "i".