over lapping station coverage

[Roads]

Try as I will, it looks like at times I cannot prevent station coverage over lapping each other.  I know this causes some difficulty when an industry is connected to two stations.  What sort of problems, if any, can I expect from passengers and/or mail?

[ӔO]

nothing should be affected by overlap, at least, not in standard.

[An_dz]

If there's a building with 2 stations I think that depending where the passenger want to go he will choose the faster route.

[Václav]

And for freight transportation, there may be one station for material support and the second for products distribution. Only one important thing there is, you may wait some time to game's finding that products have to wait at station that is for example in front of factory while station where needed materials come to factory from station that is in the back of factory. But coverage overlap doen't cause anything wrong.

And also I found that coverage overlap doesn't cause anything wrong also in pasengers transportation. But at stations that are close to any attractions or else important buildings (and have overlapped coverage) you may wait that people will use all those stations, not only one.

[Roads]

Thank you all for the replies.  Aeo, from now on I won't worry about it.  An_dz, that's interesting about choosing the faster route.  Maybe I'll see some situation where I can kinda test that out.  I can't think what it would be right now but one really good thing about Simutrans is that it presents situations you don't, or at I don't, anticipate.

Yep Vaclav, I think you are exactly right in what you said about products.  I didn't have it as well defined in my mind but was what I was referring to generally as difficulty.  It is not that the products can't be picked up.   It is just that the distribution to the two stations and the pick up appears to be often the least optimal for timely delivery.

[Combuijs]

As far as I know passengers originating from a tile that is covered by two or more stations are more or less evenly spread over the stations. I don't think faster routes come into play, at least not in Simutrans Standard.

[Ters]

I don't remember ever having a problem with overlapping coverage for passengers and mail. As for factories, having two stations covering one factory has been the solution rather than the problem for me.

[Knightly]

As far as I know passengers originating from a tile that is covered by two or more stations are more or less evenly spread over the stations. I don't think faster routes come into play, at least not in Simutrans Standard.

Before I left the Dev Team, Standard's routing system already considers multiple start halts and will find the best route among the various start halts. Though it seems that the criteria of what is best has not been finalized and incorporated yet -- but Dwachs had already written a patch on this last year. Probably the Dev Team is currently tied up with other issues, and has thus postponed the issue on best route criteria.

[Roads]

@ Ters

I have been thinking about what you said, "station overlap is more a solution for me than a problem" but cannot determine why this is true.  Care to elaborate?

Really I have only two issues that give me some heartburn and demand quite a bit of micro management.  The first is, say you have an industry with five consumers.  Those consumers are various distances away.  Since the factories make goods in equal amounts (or I assume they do). for each of the consumers, the only solution I've found is to allow the stations to become crowded.  I can then adjust my shipments however I want since it looks like the industry tries to keep the quantity in the station the same for all consumers.  This is not without problems however.  Unlike the huge quantity of raw materials that can be stored in the factory, the storage of finished products are somewhat limited.  It does appear that when the quantity of finished products is almost at its max that the industry stops producing finished products and simply stores the material as raw materials.  Can you confirm or deny this?

The second problem is this:  If you have a big drop off area such as a dock with various raw materials, it seems the engine tends to "favor" some goods over others - for example, cotton and wool.  Last time I looked I had 900 wool at the dock, 70 cotton, the factory had 300 cotton and no wool.

Sorry, this is not exactly relevant to the thread but thought you might address it anyway.

[Combuijs]

If a factory has 5 consumers then the production algorithm is easy I think:

for each consumer for that factory
   if the consumer is not full with the product then
      look for a route that connects factory with consumer
      if found then
          if there is room at the starting station then
              put a certain amount (usually 10?) units of product in the station with destination that consumer

So, no consumer is preferred, if the factory station has ample space. If transport capacity to a certain consumer is more than its consuming capacity, the storage limit at the consumer will be reached and the factory will stop producing for that consumer.

If the factory station is full then production continues until its factory storage limit is reached. While you are nearer to that storage limit production slows down, and stops completely if you are on that storage limit. From then on no production takes place, e.g. its raw materials (if any) will heap up until their storage limit is reached. Then no production for our factory will take place.

I don't know how favoring of goods works, but if transport capacity of wool and cotton is enough, in the end the factory will get full of cotton and wool is automatically transported then. So the cotton before wool situation is never stable and will result in wool being transported in the end.

As you seem to be playing pak128, note that the storage limit of factories in that pak is usually very high, thereby allowing for instable situations for a longer time. If I am correct this was done with a purpose in mind, but I don't know what that is. But in the end everything will be alright. It's one of the reasons I never play pak128 anymore.

[Ters]

@ Ters

I have been thinking about what you said, "station overlap is more a solution for me than a problem" but cannot determine why this is true.  Care to elaborate?

There are two cases where having more than one station covering a factory has been the solution.

The first scenario involves a very interconnected freight network and a factory whos input and output goods can be carried by the same type of vehicles. I set up two lines servicing the factory's station, one to deliver goods to the factory, and one to pick up the produced goods. Both lines wait for a full load at one end. However, lines in Simutrans work both ways, and these two lines in reverse, possibly along with some other line(s), formed another unintentional connection between another set of factories. But the unintentional connection produced goods at a higher rate, so goods start accumulating at the unloading end of my two lines while the convoys are waiting for a full load at the other. I could of course adapt my network by adding line(s) in the other direction, possibly taking a much more direct route, but for whatever reason, I don't want to. The solution is to break the reverse connection by splitting the station at the factory in two independent stations (in practice by building another one). The supplying line still delivers goods to the station via one station, and the other line picks up the produced goods from the other, but the unintended reverse connection is broken because goods can't flow between the two stations as no line is connecting them.

The other scenario involves two or more lines picking up goods from one factory, where on at least one line, goods takes a long time to reach its destination (slow convoys or long distances). This means that the producing factory keeps flooding the station even when enough goods to satisfy the demand is en route to the destination, so that there eventually is no room left at the station for goods for the other lines. By giving the troublesome lines their own stations, they get their own storage space that can overflow without interfering with the other lines. (As far as I can tell, goods in a factory's internal output storage are not yet assigned to a destination.)

[Roads]

@Combuijs
@Ters

First, thank you both very much for the detailed info!  So much of what you said I had no clue.

Combuijs, you are right I am playing pak128.  For me, I can play the game and enjoy it with the storage limits at the factories, with less I doubt I could.  This is because in the '30's, '40's time frame, it easily takes more than a month for a truck to make a round trip from the factory to the consumer.  I take it from what you said pak64 is much less...all I can say is you have my respect.

Ters, I don't think I fully grasp all that you said but will continue reading and re-reading until I do.  I do absolutely understand what an unintentional connection is.  This has happened to me more than once and reminds me of things that happened when I did application work years ago - I would be scratching my head and saying, "how did this happen."

At any rate it is one of the fun things about the game and makes it so much more interesting than the vast majority of simplistic stuff you always see in the way of games.

I agree I can't tell that goods in the internal output storage are assigned until they are deposited in a station.  That is such a great idea about assigning troublesome lines to one of the stations.  This will no doubt be of tremendous help.

Again, thank you both so much!