I think this bug has been reported before, perhaps even by me, but perhaps not with optimal clarity. At any rate it is still present. I'll try to describe it as best I can.
Suppose that a line operates convoy spacing at a certain station, with convoys leaving every half an hour. If there is one convoy waiting to leave in four minutes, then a second arriving at this time will wait for thirty-four minutes.
One caveat to this is that reversing time is subtracted from a convoy's departure time. So if a convoy is scheduled to leave at 10:00, but has a reversing time of 1 minute, it will start to reverse at 09:59.
However, the minute between 09:59 and 10:00, the convoy does not count as "in" the station any more. As such, if another convoy arrives during this minute, it will also prepare to leave at 10:00 -- that is, it acts as if there is no other convoy waiting to leave. This bug causes two convoys to leave in the same convoy spacing slot.
Resolving this presumably requires some way for the second convoy, arriving whilst the first convoy is reversing, to recognise that it should wait for the next spacing slot rather than doubling up the current slot.
Thank you for the report. Would you be able to produce a saved game where this can be reproduced? I should be most grateful.
Hello Jamespetts
I find that the helpfiles for the Convoy spaceing and the reversingtime need a better helpfiles.
That´s the player better can be use. :-[
Quote from: jamespetts on August 04, 2013, 08:00:07 PM
Thank you for the report. Would you be able to produce a saved game where this can be reproduced? I should be most grateful.
I'll do my best -- as you can probably tell from the description, this is not a phenomenon which is especially easy to engineer on purpose, but I should be able to find somewhere that it occurs on one of my maps.
Thank you - that is helpful. Greenling: as to the help files - they do need re-doing, but it is a matter of finding the time when there are so many other things to do. However, in the meantime, there is a useful tutorial here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=9241.0).
Ok, here's a savegame where you can observe this happening.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61716/reversing.rar
Upon loading you'll see a Hammersmith & City Line train at Barking with 1 minute left to load. At the same time, another H&C train is approaching the station.
The second train arrives at the platform in Barking just after the first has started reversing. The desired behaviour is that the second convoy wait for the next spacing slot (10 minutes away). In fact, it detects that there is no other H&C convoy in the station, since the first is reversing. But since the first convoy starts reversing before the designated departure time, the second convoy deduces that it must leave immediately -- meaning that two convoys leave in one spacing slot.
Thank you for that - most helpful. Now found and fixed on the 11.x branch.
Excellent - thank you!