Preventing wares to be transported

[lilleskut]

As my transport network has grown more complex I ran into the following problem.

I set  up a number of routes and unintentionally this created also a route between other factories/producers which I did not want to connect. Generally this could be fine, but there are often the following problems:

1.  the unintentional route takes big detours
2. the unintentional route takes away capacities from other routes
3. I often get accumulation of wares as the different legs of the unintentional route are not balanced (e.g. a small capacity long distance leg and a large capacity short distance leg)

How to deal with this? Can I somehow prevent the operation of the unintentional route?

[Combuijs]

There is no way to tell goods (or mail or passengers) to take another route or to forbid routes etc.

So you have to keep in mind that Simutrans takes the "shortest" route for transporting goods. In calculating what is "shortest" it gives a penalty for transferring goods on a station, so the actual distance in routes is in general less important than the number of times a transfer is necessary.

So to sort out your problems, you can best provide routes as direct as possible for your goods. What I usually do is giving Simutrans "no choice", e.g. collect goods in a few transfer stations and provide connections between these transfer stations. There are then hardly any alternatives to consider... Your new problem will then be to give these connections enough capacity...

[Ters]

I'm a bit unsure what is meant by transfer stations, but I don't think that's the only solution, or even the best. For the most part, transfer stations have been the cause of such problems for me, since they cross connect various lines.

The most obvious solution in my mind is to just create an intentional route that is shorter. Another, more cheatish, option is to switch to public player and break the contract between supplier and consumer.

[Combuijs]

I'm a bit unsure what is meant by transfer stations

Also known as central warehousing. For each "region" (defined by yourself) have one central freight station that collects and distributes all goods in that region. There is never a direct connection between two factories. It is certainly not the only solution, far from it, but it usually works quite good if:

1) There is only one line from factory to regional warehouse
2) There is only one line from regional warehouse to factory
3) There is only one central warehouse on the map
4) There is only one line from central warehouse to regional warehouse
5) There is only one line from regional warehouse to central warehouse

As factories are locally connected most of the time, the central warehouse usually does not get too overcrowded. But it should have ample capacity!