Box cars only take plastic?

[Potoroo]

I'm producing things like machines and tools and stuff that need box cars to carry them but every time I put box cars on a train and it leaves the depot it only shows plastics (the pink icon) and won't pick anything up.

[canophone]

There must be another need at the industry that isn't fulfilled, if you have the boxcar lines setup right.

[Autocoach]

Plastic is the default as they have to show something. Maybe your route is not correct

[Potoroo]

The problem is not in the industry chain. I checked that and it's happened more than once. One is a Logs > Planks > Tools (spanner icon) chain, where the box cars will not pick up Tools, and the other is Logs > Planks + Steel > Machine parts (cog icon). Same deal, the box cars will not pick up the Machine parts for the last leg.

My map has one plastics factory and that chain is working fine: Oil > Fuel > Plastics + Steel > Goods (box icon). The Goods are being picked up and delivered.

[Autocoach]

Upload the save to a dropbox if it's vanilla and someone can check . It's not as easy from screenshots to see an error in TpF2 as it was in 1.

[Potoroo]

Originally posted by Autocoach:

Upload the save to a dropbox if it's vanilla and someone can check . It's not as easy from screenshots to see an error in TpF2 as it was in 1.

I got there in the end but this game has serious issues with busy cargo stations. It gets confused easily and the catchments don't always work properly. I had trucks set up to move the products from the station to the catchment area but the game just would not pick it up. In the end I had to build a second cargo station, complete with soaring rail bridge, on the far side of the city before I could get it to work.

[Gregorovitch]

This is a weird UI decision. All it actually means is that the box cars that could theoretically hold so many plastics are currently empty. Why plastics specifically, who knows. But it is very confusing and is a good candidate for early patching IMHO.

[Autocoach]

It has to show something , I think it's the top one in the list . Yeah the devs could change to goods or tools etc I suppose but it is not that important really.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Autocoach:

It has to show something , I think it's the top one in the list . Yeah the devs could change to goods or tools etc I suppose but it is not that important really.

Or they could show nothing at all. If a train of capacity 80 was currently hauling 30 machines it could simply say 30/80 machines. Simple. The addition of an additional "theoretical plastics" count simply confuses the player and provides exactly zero useful additional information as far as II can see.

[Autocoach]

OK to be clear , it comes fresh from the depot saying plastic , as soon as it changes to load something else it stays with that never reverts to plastic unless it carries it .

[Potoroo]

Originally posted by Autocoach:

OK to be clear , it comes fresh from the depot saying plastic , as soon as it changes to load something else it stays with that never reverts to plastic unless it carries it .

Not quite. The Tools train never stopped showing Plastic even after I got the game to start moving Tools. It had a variable "x/50 Plastic y/44 Tools" type display but the Plastics icon never went away even though it never carried any and wasn't going to, being on the far side of the map from the Plastics factory.

[Autocoach]

OK , on a wagon by wagon basis what I have said is true . Apologies for not being specific . The plastic icon is for the rear wagons that have never loaded anything else.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Autocoach:

OK , on a wagon by wagon basis what I have said is true . Apologies for not being specific . The plastic icon is for the rear wagons that have never loaded anything else.

I ask again: why should I care a damn about this information?

[Oddible]

Ignore the symbol on an empty wagon, it is a bad UI choice. It means nothing. Focus on the line and the factories. Make sure you have selected the correct Load / Unload items on the line. Check the Consumers tab in the factory. The majority of these cases are that you haven't got things connected correctly.

[lozacenz]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Autocoach:

It has to show something , I think it's the top one in the list . Yeah the devs could change to goods or tools etc I suppose but it is not that important really.

Or they could show nothing at all. If a train of capacity 80 was currently hauling 30 machines it could simply say 30/80 machines. Simple. The addition of an additional "theoretical plastics" count simply confuses the player and provides exactly zero useful additional information as far as II can see.

Originally posted by Autocoach:

OK to be clear , it comes fresh from the depot saying plastic , as soon as it changes to load something else it stays with that never reverts to plastic unless it carries it .

Ayup, and TpF1 did exactly the same thing. (well, kind of. it only picked primary resources, not manufactured products. then again, every wagon type had at least one primary resource it carried in 1, this is not the case in 2)
Hoppers would always indicate coal until they picked something up.
Boxcars would indicate cattle until they picked something up.
Tankers would indicate... I don't remember, probably oil, actually.
Stake Cars would indicate wood (lumber? whatever the thing that got processed into planks was called)
Trucks and ships did something similar. The first, alphabetically, primary resource they could possibly carry was indicated until they actually picked something up.

There simply wasn't a 'null' icon. And still isn't. So it shows x/y (current/last cargo) for wagons/compartments/vehicles that have had something in them, and 0/y (first thing in the list of Possible cargoes) for wagons/compartments/vehicles that haven't carried anything yet.

Not at all a problem once you're aware of it.

Though, yes, actually Having a null icon would probably be better <_<

As for the OP's problem...
The fact that it indicates plastics on the way out of the depot (and continues to do so until the wagon gets loaded with anything else) and the fact that your non-plastics lines aren't working are entirely unrelated.

The plastics icon is a placeholder. It's a sub-optimal choice, but not important.

The game Does have a major problem with cargo on trains: If there are multiple cargoes waiting to go on the same line, and the Same wagon Type could carry more than one of them, it will pick one (based on some combination of the last time any was picked up, how much is sitting there, etc), until either the train is full Or all cargo of that type is picked up, and only Then will it pick load any of the other type, if there's room on the train.
This is particularly bad when the cargos are coal and iron, or steel and planks, where you need even amounts of both at the same factory for it to produce it's outputs.

Now, there's a fairly simple solution to this for they player: Have your line go from A to B to A to B (instead of just A to B), and on the First A, tell it to only pick up iron (for example) and on the Second A, only pick up coal.

That said, in This case, while you can do that, the Developers should really fix the logic so the train actually picks up something aproximating half and half. Ships (which only have two compartments) already manage it, trains managed it in TpF1 (presumably using similar logic with 1 train wagon = 1 ship compartment), so it's weird that it's not the case that Trains can do this in TpF1 <_<.

If your problem is unrelated even to that... I've got no idea.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by ;3963662449066753787:

Not at all a problem once you're aware of it.

Though, yes, actually Having a null icon would probably be better <_<

As for the OP's problem...

I've played hundreds of hours of Train Fever and TF1 and even now I've finally worked out what these icons mean I still have to take seconds to double take the listing to make sure I understand exactly what they are telling me.

Lord knows what a player new to the series would make of them.

As to the null icon solution, let me ask the same question I did above in a slightly different way:

Can anyone think of single use case where this information (null wagons, wagons filled with "theoretical plastic", w/e) is actually useful?