bridgewater-brunel.me.uk - Simutrans-Experimental - Pak128.Britain-Ex 0.9.0

[asaphxiix]

server seems to be restarting. I don't think a reversion is expected, I had just quit and rejoined, then desynched.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - as ever, the logs tell me nothing of why it restarted.

Was anyone doing anything in particular when it happened...?

[ӔO]

another good alternative, actually, probably the best choice for upgrading, would be LNWR cauliflower (33t) with LNWR 8 wheel on improved wrought iron track.

Decently fast, tons of power, light weight, better price/performance compared to Midland 1833

[jamespetts]

Probably, your best bet is midland 1377 (40t) and midland 1833 (44t!) with LNWR 8 wheel coaches for pax. For mail, maybe run a single 1377 with  midland 6 wheel mail carriages.

Out of interest, why the bold and exclamation point?

[asaphxiix]

Hmm - as ever, the logs tell me nothing of why it restarted.

Was anyone doing anything in particular when it happened...?

I had just saved and rejoined, that immediately desynced, and the server restarted.

[jamespetts]

Hmm. Odd.

[asaphxiix]

I was removing the canals in reddingchester, I removed from neighbouring towns and I when I got to the intersection of 1896,1454 (skipping the area between it and the public dock there, which has crashed the server before when I tried to remove it), I was using singular removals with the water removal tool (double click) to be extra careful, this is where the server restarted again just now (14:25).

Also, after restart, I must reopen my client to stay connected. Otherwise it's instant desync, with no additional server restart.

[asaphxiix]

james, do you think there's some tools we can use that do not require a lot programming knowledge to debug some things for you? I would much like to help this way, and will pull a great effort if needed.

[ӔO]

Out of interest, why the bold and exclamation point?

to note that tracks must be upgraded to something that allows heavier trains.

There is a choice of WSSR light 75km/h (62t), IWI 130km/h (43t), WSSR 145km/h (69t), WSSR heavy 145km/h (98t)
choice between WSSR light, or WSSR, which has nearly twice the maintenance of the light version.

IMO, probably best balance between speed bonus and maintenance, if the 90km/h or faster trains can be run on IWI.

[jamespetts]

Asaph,

thank you for the offer of help. Short of the sort of things that require some knowledge of programming to assist with, the most helpful possible thing that anyone can do to assist with tracking down bugs is to test and document precisely how they can be reproduced. It is almost impossible to find the cause of a bug that cannot be reproduced, and finding conditions in which it can be reproduced is often the most time consuming part of bug fixing in the case, at least, of certain sorts of bugs. The bug to which you refer seems to relate to the removal of canal tiles - if you could see if you could reproduce that in a single player game, that would be most helpful.

[asaphxiix]

OK James! What I was thinking was, if I could reproduce the bug myself and send you the output of whatever debugger you are using (if you are using one).

[chicken]

If Lindley gets liquidated what happens to the stations we share?

[jamespetts]

Ahh, I use MSVC++ (Express, 2012) as a debugger; what I need to be able to do is reproduce the issue myself and inspect the code and the values of all the variables at the point when the crash was triggered (for example, noting that a particular pointer has a NULL value, and therefore knowing to check for this before calling a method from that pointer, etc.); so the best thing really is steps to let me know how to reproduce it. Thank you for the suggestion, though!

Chicken - if you share Lindley owned stations, they will be demolished if/when Lindley is liquidated. You will need to rebuild stations to continue to serve those places.

[asaphxiix]

If Lindley gets liquidated what happens to the stations we share?

apart from the stations, the tracks may also be removed, in such a case your trains will get 'no route'. If the tracks stay, your trains will simply continue going there, possibly also wait at the former station. If one of your trains is waiting in the station when the station is gone, the train will get stuck there and you'll need to release it (I've seen this happen with coaches before).

However, it doesn't seem like Lindley's going bankrupt soon.

[asaphxiix]

Ahh, I use MSVC++ (Express, 2012) as a debugger; what I need to be able to do is reproduce the issue myself and inspect the code and the values of all the variables at the point when the crash was triggered (for example, noting that a particular pointer has a NULL value, and therefore knowing to check for this before calling a method from that pointer, etc.); so the best thing really is steps to let me know how to reproduce it. Thank you for the suggestion, though!

Chicken - if you share Lindley owned stations, they will be demolished if/when Lindley is liquidated. You will need to rebuild stations to continue to serve those places.

very well - i'll do my best to narrow it down and record. I think, from previous testing, that this is one of those issues that only happen on the multiplayer server, possibly even only in linux.

[chicken]

If anything, placing tracks slowly and methodically seems to make them spaghetti even more when I re-log in. I've redone the same section of track 3 times now.

[jamespetts]

Placing the tracks slowly will involve more separate instructions; as AEO has said, the incorrect patterning seems to occur when one instruction is sent before a previous instruction has executed, so that would explain the difficulties.

Out of interest, what are your computer specifications?

[chicken]

Core i5-2500k 8GB RAM

ping is averaging 92ms with near-zero packet loss.

[jamespetts]

Hmm. The CPU is more significant than the ping in this context, but that ought to do the task. It's odd that you are having these troubles more than others.

[chicken]

Upgrading rails is hell with this problem. I come back and find the tracks I rebuilt are all messed up.

I think I might be desyncing when a train reaches a point on the track where my client believes is one way and the server sees another completely messed up way.

Any logs I can turn on to show what's going on?

[jamespetts]

Hmm - there wouldn't be any easy way of logging this. I should add that I have run a test, and cannot reproduce the problem. Do you always hold down CTRL when dragging a diagonal double track?

[chicken]

Not always, but often I do, yes. I haven't noticed a difference yet in the outcome w/regard to the weird behavior.

[jamespetts]

Hmm. I have to say, this is very odd. I'm sorry that you're having trouble. Could you perhaps post a video of you trying to draw the tracks so that I can see this issue in action? It's rather hard to track down without knowing exactly what happens or being able to reproduce it.

[ӔO]

Lindley Lines is in the red, with a seriously outdated set of equipment and lines, much of it going back thirty or fifty years.  With not too much chance to play lately, the sheer scope of trying to upgrade it all to the modern situation, and reorient to be "at right angles to" the competition, is a pretty stiff task.

Recommendations for course of action?  I would almost like to start over now that we are in the electric age.

As a challenge, I tried recovering your company into black and it was possible.

Key points
- Upgrade/downgrade all of your tracks to 130km/h, 43t, Improved wrought iron
- Make sure to use a proper return trip for rail lines, instead of reverse route.
- Make sure those rail lines are using the proper platform on each way of the journey. There were at least a pair of lines that were not using the proper platform and were looping back
- Make sure to uncheck "reverse route" for all trains
- "Bushing Duckingham Express" and "Clacingborne/Lowwater Local" is unneeded.
- The infrastructure that "Clacingborne Elevated" uses is quite expensive for the amount of usage it gets and could be revised
- Upgrade all stations with less than 5 tiles to have 5 tile length.
- Due to your track layout, station spacing and station length, you really do not need any locomotive that runs faster than 100km/h, which means you should stick to LNWR Cauliflower
- Slowly replace trains with LNWR Cauliflower with GNR Clerestory carriages. For every three old trains you retire, you can replace with two new ones
- Low usage/short trains should use Midland 1377 with 4 to 5 GNR clerestory carriages
- Start with the most expensive to run. Jenny Lind should be left to last.
- Pax should get 4 or more carriages, while only 2 to 3 mail carriages are needed per consist. 9 pieces results in 5 tile length, while 10 pieces results in 6 tile length.
- There is no need to use TPO or dining car, except on "Rox Colingham"
- For "Yerlden Finsland Limited", use 6 tile length 4x LNWR Cauliflower with GNR carriages and 1x LNWR Cauliflower with LBSCR Bogie carriages. LBSCR train is high capacity pax, which is needed to ease congestion

- Trams lines should be temporarily abandoned in favour of bus lines. The loop line configuration, coupled with low numbers on the line result in severely poor capacity. Adding signals (spacing=2) to improve capacity would bankrupt your company and leaving them running will result in massive refunds.

- Some bus lines do not have enough capacity and need more frequent service.

If you only fix the trains, and don't fix the trams, you can expect to be in healthy black at around 8 to 12 months. If you switch trams to buses, I would expect it to be less than 8 months.

[asaphxiix]

I'm surprised you dismiss the trams - i have been running them seemingly well - I would think they can run good capacity and pretty fast too, especially the large ones (80 pax)? Even for longer lines. Sometimes the last stop before the train station can be a little crowded, but they seem to make good use of themselves all and all, 75-90% full being the norm. Also, no pax congestions or annoying bus jams. Profit is alright as well, for local transportation anyway.

[jamespetts]

It is very interesting to see in depth game play discussion!

- Make sure to use a proper return trip for rail lines, instead of reverse route.

May I ask - can anyone pin down precisely what the problem is with reverse route settings? If there was a specific reproducible error, I might be able to look into fixing it.

[asaphxiix]

I think it's on this thread james:

http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10638.0

the problem is in fact that the trains pass through the correct lane where they are supposed to stop, and skip the station, only to make a u-turn on the next crossing, pass the station on the opposite lane, then make another u-turn and this time stop at the station.

this will happen when there is a certain amount of trains going on the line - regardless of automatic mirror scheduling or manual scheduling of the mirror. Clearing the 'reverse destinations' buttons on all trains is important, but unless I was missing something back then, won't solve the problem.

there is a solid work around for the problem - building choose signals and crossings on both ends of the through-station, and I improved it further by building an end-of-choose signal on both of the opposite direction entrances (or forward exits) of the stations, to ensure trains will stick to their lane. You can see an example at Brambledale Highminster Station.

[ӔO]

It is very interesting to see in depth game play discussion!

May I ask - can anyone pin down precisely what the problem is with reverse route settings? If there was a specific reproducible error, I might be able to look into fixing it.

Instead of properly using the opposite platform, the trains will try and loop back to use the designated platform.

I'm surprised you dismiss the trams - i have been running them seemingly well - I would think they can run good capacity and pretty fast too, especially the large ones (80 pax)? Even for longer lines. Sometimes the last stop before the train station can be a little crowded, but they seem to make good use of themselves all and all, 75-90% full being the norm. Also, no pax congestions or annoying bus jams. Profit is alright as well, for local transportation anyway.

Trams are not bad if they are configured properly, but they require costly signals to have great volume.
Loop lines that don't have a reverse route will quickly become overloaded, as pax must take the long way around.

Basically, they eat more money in infrastructure than they can produce, so they are a money sink

[asaphxiix]

Trams are not bad if they are configured properly, but they require costly signals to have great volume.
Loop lines that don't have a reverse route will quickly become overloaded, as pax must take the long way around.

Basically, they eat more money in infrastructure than they can produce, so they are a money sink

For bigger towns at least, I must disagree. on Arlsley-Cornchester for a while now, profit is 14000, infrastructure can't be much more than 3000, and construction probably less than 100K,  that's less than a year ROI. signal spacing of 6 is more than enough I find, going every 10 minutes, or even less. Also, I use large bubbles, to cover a greater area, loop around eventually, and have connections where pax can  take shortcuts or go back to the stop the need on the other side of the ring. So it's like having many circular lines in one, and it works quite nicely, despite the detours.

Even Axhall, with 5 convoys makes ~1600 profit over ~800 infrastructure. Perhaps buses can beat that margin, I can't tell, but i find them less efficient in terms of player effort/trouble, as well as in terms of passenger traffic.

edit: I assume that you aeo can indeed make better profit with buses and not be bothered about it, as you are like the undefeated boss of this game. From my humble perspective, trams have made my life very much easier where I was red all over (on the 'waiting' map layer) and having recursive traffic jams, so it was a good investment

[Felix]

Hello all,

as I am already playing for a couple of days, it might make sense, that I also make an appearance here :-) I am the player behind the company New Hope Transports.

Currently, I am planing my future expansions. Regarding this, I have two in game questions. First, is someone still claiming the road from Milkingworth (1849,983) to Durdon (1906,697) or is this just a leftover from a bankrupted company? Second, I am planing to extend my ship lines to Eveford. Would it be fine if I connect with the ACMGo network at that place?

By the way, I am also troubled with a very laggish behavior of the game, but this is very likely caused by my rather weak computer (Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, running Linux). Maybe, I will find some time to help with debugging at a later time.

Best,
Felix

[jamespetts]

Welcome, Felix! Always good to see new players.

As for the Milkingwortk-Durdon road, if you press CTRL+O, you will see that it is unowned, which means that it is free for anyone to use. You are more than free to put carriages or traction engines to work on the road, or even bulldoze it and replace it with a railway if you take care to ensure that the public roads are not cut off.

Your lag probably is caused by your slow computer, although work is planned to improve the performance of Simutrans-Experimental code.

Incidentally, your railway passengers are a lucky bunch: your line is one of the least overcrowded and most comfortable operations on the map! (Although, sadly, it seems, still running at a loss).

[ACM]

Hi there, Felix.

I am the former operator of ACMGo. I had to stop playing after 1827 because I couldn't cope with the latency my computer was getting. Unfortunately, rsdworker, who offered to take over the company, never came back to do anything with it.

At this point I don't think anyone is going to care if you build over the company.

[asaphxiix]

maybe you should try again, ACMgo. The load on the server and clients is much much better these days, no evil's eye.

[Felix]

Thanks for the nice welcome!

It looks like I can proceed with my expansion plans as soon as I find sufficient time and the lag is bearable. By the way, that the railroad operates at a loss is known. I hope this will change as soon as I get around to extend the railroad network and a larger flow of passengers gets generated.

[jamespetts]

I shall look forward to your extension, as, I daresay, will the inhabitants to the towns to the West of your existing network!