Replacing things on mass

[***** Poker]

It is about time I wrote something about this game. I think it is fantastic, I bought it when it first came out and have been using it for about the last month pretty well everyday for about 8 to 10 hours per day so now I feel I can make some constructive hopefully useful criticisms.

It is very difficult to globally change a vehicle, a set of carriages or cargo. If you have 100 vehicles and you want to change some of those vehicles from one type to another this can entail an awful lot of clicking which to be honest is a pain when I say that I mean literally pain in the wrist. What would be easier is to be able to say I want to change all this particular type of locomotive or vehicle to this particular type.

If I want to do a global update like signals? To change the signals I've got to click on every individual signal delete it, then put a new one in this although not changing the operation in the game is a pain.

Another problem is to do with lines and editing lines if you've got a nice system already operational and your cities expanding you therefore have to add your bus routes or more bus stops. RE-editing a line is quite difficult and usually the best way to do it is to delete the whole thing and then start that city lines again, sometimes you screw up shall we say and then it becomes a pain because you've deleted the station you shouldn't have done. Then have to work out what you've deleted and after reinsert it again. So that needs looking at how you would do it I don't know. The problem comes when you have got to a point where you can have several hundred vehicles it gets tricky.

Regards Stephen.
P.S. I do not expect anything to happen, as devs are always too interested in putting new gimmicks in <SMIRK>

[lemming3k]

Yep, signal and stations updates would be nice. I know it's only cosmetic, but a simple 'replace all' option somewhere would help make each era feel a bit more authentic.

If it helps with replacing trains, I name my lines using the good or wagon type first so all the constructs are grouped together. It's still a few clicks to select each group and replace, but it's the quickest way I've found to replace a fleet. Then you just have to line balance a little bit with the wagons to match the rate. If they fixed the colour assignment it would be even quicker.

[Nolivfr]

Why would you change type of cargo? Just buy/duplicate the train and sell the unused one

And I do like Lemming above, I know what type of cargo they carry so it's easy to replace the trains.
Don't get me started with the colors problem, I even started a topic about it

Originally posted by gabbs:

Another problem is to do with lines and editing lines if you've got a nice system already operational and your cities expanding you therefore have to add your bus routes or more bus stops. RE-editing a line is quite difficult and usually the best way to do it is to delete the whole thing and then start that city lines again, sometimes you screw up shall we say and then it becomes a pain because you've deleted the station you shouldn't have done. Then have to work out what you've deleted and after reinsert it again. So that needs looking at how you would do it I don't know. The problem comes when you have got to a point where you can have several hundred vehicles it gets tricky.

I don't find editing routes to be difficult. If you want to add a station, just click on the station just before in the list and add you new station (luckily they are numbered...)
Same with deleted station, you have a timer to reinsert it without causing any changes (even after the timer, sometimes the route is restored)

[***** Poker]

Thanks for the replies people.
Yes agree about the lines name lines per cargo type i do that as well. I.e Grain 1, grain 2. and also I tend to have same type of trains running all the time.

What Really gets my Goat is BUSES. I set a route up. Ten years down the road have to go and redo it to optimise it. But when you have cargo delevery and bus lines in a city/town you have to go through the list checking the bus routes to change them. all that scrolling and clicking gives my wrist a real problem. That is why I kicked off and global replacement.

In my current game I have 6 bus routes 4 Cargo routes. Best way to name them is by city name.
Like :-
Rugby Bus 1
Rugby Bus 2

Rugby Food Drop 1
Rugby Tools drop 1

Rugby Bus Airlink 1
Rugby Bus Airlink 2

I think you get the idea.

[Rooboy]

Originally posted by gabbs:

Thanks for the replies people.
Yes agree about the lines name lines per cargo type i do that as well. I.e Grain 1, grain 2. and also I tend to have same type of trains running all the time.

What Really gets my Goat is BUSES. I set a route up. Ten years down the road have to go and redo it to optimise it. But when you have cargo delevery and bus lines in a city/town you have to go through the list checking the bus routes to change them. all that scrolling and clicking gives my wrist a real problem. That is why I kicked off and global replacement.

In my current game I have 6 bus routes 4 Cargo routes. Best way to name them is by city name.
Like :-
Rugby Bus 1
Rugby Bus 2

Rugby Food Drop 1
Rugby Tools drop 1

Rugby Bus Airlink 1
Rugby Bus Airlink 2

I think you get the idea.

I do similar but think a better way to name is "Bus Rugby 1", "Truck food Rugby" etc. That way you can easily upgrade all buses etc when a new model comes out. Just go to manage vehicles and all the bus lines are grouped together. So if I have 10 bus lines and 100 buses it's 10 or so easy clicks to upgrade (but agree with OP that it should be much easier.).

For trucks it's it's similar (all fuel trucks listed together etc) but think very important to list all goods if carrying more than one. For example it could be "Truck steel machines Rugby". Then when i go to upgrade I know what type of vehicle I am limited to.

[genemead]

Buses are much easier to replace than just the engines. All my bus lines are named "Bus -whatever". I just select all the "Bus" lines and replace/upgrade all of them at once with one click. Same with Truck lines.

The OP wants the same thing for engines, but it's complicated because of all the different types and number of wagons. Then there's the trains with double (or even triple) engines. Like I said... it's complicated.

[larry_roberts]

I believe (it's a long time since I played it) you could do a global replacement of locomotives in 'Transport Giant' (still available on steam), so it should be possible for the dev's to do something similar in Transport Fever 2!.

[***** Poker]

blimey a host of useful replies and indeed good ideas.

The putting of Bus or truck at start with the load id. Is a very nice tip. Why did i not think of it.
As to the replace option the programming would be reliant on the way the database is setup and the way it is stored. It should be possible to write and LUA script to do it?

Thanks again for the help.

[Nolivfr]

I use the following naming: TransportType-CargoType-From>To
Everything is nicely ordered then and I can find any route easily

• CT for cargo trains
  
• PT for pax trains
  
• CTr for cargo trams
  
• PTr for pax trams
  
• Tru for trucks
  
• B for buses
  
• CP for cargo planes
  
• PP for pax planes
  
• CB for cargo boats
  
• PB for pax boats
  
  Which give for example (for Pax trains, I list all stops once) :
  
  
• CT-Steel-Stonehouse>Bedworth
  
• B-Bedworth-CW (or CCW)
  
• PP-Bedworth-Stonehouse (I don't use '>' here because it's a roundtrip and they come back with people)
  
  If I want multiple goods, I just add it as good/good (But I try to avoid multiple goods per transport):
  
  
• CT-Steel/Plank-Stonehouse>Axbridge/Bedworth

[Vimpster]

I use to use naming conventions back when I played TpF, but towards the end and since the release of TpF2 I have given up on naming conventions and just leave things as line 1, line 2, ect. True enough it can make mass replacement more problematic. But to be honest I don't find myself bothering with mass replacements too often. For the most part I upgrade vehicles only when I see a problem with a line and a newer vehicle happens to be available that would be useful. In some rare cases I have still had horse carts operating on a cargo line because they were adequately getting the job done even beyond the year 2000.

[lemming3k]

Originally posted by gabbs:

Thanks for the replies people.
Yes agree about the lines name lines per cargo type i do that as well. I.e Grain 1, grain 2. and also I tend to have same type of trains running all the time.

What Really gets my Goat is BUSES. I set a route up. Ten years down the road have to go and redo it to optimise it. But when you have cargo delevery and bus lines in a city/town you have to go through the list checking the bus routes to change them. all that scrolling and clicking gives my wrist a real problem. That is why I kicked off and global replacement.

In my current game I have 6 bus routes 4 Cargo routes. Best way to name them is by city name.
Like :-
Rugby Bus 1
Rugby Bus 2

Rugby Food Drop 1
Rugby Tools drop 1

Rugby Bus Airlink 1
Rugby Bus Airlink 2

I think you get the idea.

I used this convention at first, but found replacing several hundred trains extremely difficult. I now name mine with the item or wagon first, then town, then additional locale if required - so it would give;
Food-Rugby
Food-Rugby-North
Grain-Rugby
Etc

This forces lines to be listed together with others using the same wagons making mass replacements easier. You can set abbreviations for wagon types at the front which will further group them in the list making it even easier. It also gives the relevant location info. I don't tend to worry about including vehicle type as there are already filters for most of them, but if you find it useful try the list from Nolivfr.

I do colour code all lines by good type as well so Iron Ore = Red etc. I find this makes everything visually very clear, but also keeps the text orderly, informative, and practical.

The only difference is passenger lines so I name those P for a regular line or PH/PX for high speed/express, then try not to overlap colours too much with the industrial lines.

It might not suit you, but for me as long as the key info is there the order didn't matter; except for replacements.