Loading goods from boat to train

[TonVerkaik]

Dear all,

I have an oil rig from which I want to load oil onto a ship and load it onto my oil train to reach it's destination. The ship doesn't load oil, presumably because it's schedule does not lead directly to the factory with which the rig has a contract. At least, I presume that. So my question is: can transport between a producer and a consumer actually go with different modes of transport? Or do I need to make a canal to the destination of the oil in order to let it be delivered there? The train and ship both have their correct schedules...

Thanks!
Ton

[Václav]

I am worried about that it is not possible - due to:
1. factories don't produce if good should be transported to place that is out of business
2. vehicles will not load those goods which should be transported anywhere else than true target factory is

... so, if target refinery is at least partly accessible by building of canal, build it.

[Combuijs]

Hi Ton, welcome to the forum!

Yes, it is definitely possible to use different modes of transport to get the goods from factory to producer. And the way you describe your connection (oilrig - port - factory) it should work. There might be a lot of reasons why it is not working:

1) Is there a contract between oilrig and factory? (Is the oilrig a producer for the factory)
2) Can the ship transport oil?
3) Can the train transport oil?
4) Is the port one station? (is there only one station name at the port)
5) Is the port enabled for goods (Is there a small goods symbol in the station info window)
6) Is the station near the factory enabled for goods?
7) Is the station near the factory near enough to the factory? (You can see that in the factory info window).

You see, a lot can be wrong (there might still be other reasons...), but it is definitely possible to connect oilrig and factory with ships and trains.

Good luck!

[TonVerkaik]

Thanks for your replies. It was the train that was the problem because it only had box cars, I could have seen that! I added tanker cars and now my train makes a nice three-way connection bringing oil form the ship to a chemical plant, which produces the ink my train transports to the printing works yard. It seems that this could be done quite a bit more efficient because there is a lot more oil brought to my dock than the (not so short) train can transport, but that's the nice thing of the game of course! And it brings in a lot of money anyway like this.

By the way, is there a limit as to what a dock can store? It says that the storage capacity is 320 (without stating what units), but it already has 42612 cubic metres of oil waiting at this time. And if there is a limit, is there a way to let the ship automatically stop and wait if it can't unload it's oil when a dock is full?

[Combuijs]

There is no limit to what a dock can store.

With some non-default settings you can prevent routing of goods (and passengers and mail) through a full station. That means that in your case the oilrig does not produce oil anymore until the dock (and every other transfer station) has room again. There is no way to stop ships at the dock and wait until there is room.

If your industry chain does not extend after the printing works (so no bookshop etc), then you will notice that in time the printing works will overflow with ink. If that happens the chemical plant stops producing ink, and will overflow with oil. If that happens the oilrig will stop producing oil.

This also happens if you increase the capacity of the train to the chemical plant sufficiently. You will notice that the chemical plant will get full of oil, the oilrig stops producing oil and your dock will gradually run out of oil.

[TonVerkaik]

Thanks again for your answer, I indeed observed the phenomena you described, Combuijs. I guess I'm getting a bit off-topic here, but I have another question about the saved games: are they saved in some specific file? I find the save- and load-game interface a bit tricky. When one saves the current game and click the wrong saved game name, no "are you sure?" questions are asked and your entire game is lost (if I understood that right). That's why I'd like to make some backup copy of my game...

When it makes any difference: I have a Mac and I'm familiar with the command line and hidden files. I could however not find a .sve-file in my entire simutrans directory and its subdirectories except for two scenario's that belong to pak64 and pak128 respectively.

[Combuijs]

You will find saved games in a user directory. As I never worked on a Mac, I can't tell you where that is, but on Windows you will find them in:

MyDocuments\Simutrans\save

I guess there must be a Mac equivalent to that (~users\Ton or something?).

[TonVerkaik]

Yes, found it, thanks again. For any interested Mac-users: it's in: ~/Library/Simutrans/save/ (so go to your home directory, open the the Library folder, then the Simutrans folder, and there you find the save folder). I see settings and screenshots are also saved there, amongst others.