Topic: what do warehouses do?

[A.Badger]

I've been doing a few tests in a test game and been unable to figure out what warehouses do.  In particular, what their capacity does.

* It looks like the amount of goods produced is related to how long it takes for the goods to get to the consumer.  I can get goods waiting in a source station to exceed the station's rated capacity without the use of warehouses by making a transport vehicle wait at the consuming end instead of the producing end.
* The same goes for junction stations.  goods waiting there can easily exceed the rated capacity.
* Does it do something at a destination station?  My test case was too primitive to make it clear whether there was a difference here or not.

Thanks for any clarification

[Matthew]

Obviously you know that warehouses expand capacity.

My (very limited, based on Ex 11.35) understanding is that lack of capacity causes overcrowding, which increases transfer (but not loading???) times. I don't thinks goods customers are ever given refunds, so that's not an issue as it could be with passengers.

[jamespetts]

Warehouses do not affect destination stations: only origin stations. Warehouses and other goods extensions increase the goods capacity of a station so that more goods can wait at a station. If an origin station is full, goods will not transfer from a nearby industry to that station until there is capacity again.

[A.Badger]

Interesting.  Is it a bug then, if more goods can transfer from an industry to an origin station than the origin station lists?  Here's an example game: https://toshio.fedorapeople.org/simutrans/excess-station-storage.sve  (Test area is in the upper right hand corner.  Origin station in this case is the dock for the cattle farm)  I can file a real bug report if that shouldn't be happening.

note: Even though more goods can go to the station there does seem to be an upper limit so it's not game breaking.  Will throw off balancing a bit, though, as it lessens the need for warehouses and increases the ready supply of goods to transport for no cost.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for that. From my investigations so far, what seems to be happening here is that the status of the stop is updated only periodically, and it is the status that determines whether it is overcrowded. It is intended that it be allowed to exceed its stated capacity by 32 units of goods, but I can see excess here by several hundred. The reason for this, I think, is that the large number of farms nearby all discharge their wares into the stop before it registers as being overcrowded.

That was formerly compounded by goods in transit not counting towards overcrowding, but I have now fixed that latter issue. What you will notice is that, once it becomes overcrowded and registers as such (red status bar), no more goods can be added until it drops below the level of being overcrowded again.

[A.Badger]

Excellent.  Compiled from the latest sources and the amount of overstock is more logical now, as you've described.
* The farms only push more goods to the station when the stored amount has fallen below the station's capacity.
* The farms' output is now choked off sooner, so that it goes over by approximately as many goods as the farms initially have stored instead of pushing out hundreds of goods after the station should have registered that it was filled up.

Much more predictable now :-)  Thanks!

[jamespetts]

Excellent - glad that things have improved.

[AP]

Given that only origin and destination stations are mentioned above, possibly it's worth clarifying whether the capacity issue affects intermediate interchange stations also. I.e. if storage is full at an interchange, will freight route via the interchange? Will it be loaded onto a train at the origin station if the interchange is full?

[jamespetts]

The fullness of a station does not affect routing (and this is deliberate: there is a feature in Standard where this does affect routing, and it causes behaviour that is indecipherable to players and very odd deadlocks that are hard to find and fix). However, an overcrowded station does greatly increase the transshipment time of goods using that station, which will, in turn, increase the overall journey time of all goods using that station.