Once you get stuck in a deficit is the ANY way to recover?.....

[Starbucaneer]

This game is infuriating. My latest attempt has once again become stuck in a resource deficit. I managed to get as far as needing sawmills to produce wood. I built a station with 2 sawmills. However I cannot build any further as ALL my trains have stopped carrying coal. My existing trains for my coal route and my wood route pick up NOTHING. I cannot create any new trains as it states "there are not enough resources" in the train depot screen, i.e. coal is in red. I cannot build anything. Trains do not drop off or pickup passengers. Each train is full of workers just riding the rails for free.... I cannot build more houses or a market. Does this mean I have to restart the game AGAIN?.
I love these types of games BUT this game is very far from fun or enjoyable......

[Edmera]

Im not sure if your game is solvable, in the current version of the game you can create a death spiral but none the less lets give try to get it running again.

Send all trains to the depot except one coal train and any trains that are carrying workers that arent tired. Pause all production buildings except one coal mine (preferable without a distribution center (needs wood for upkeep)) to save upkeep.

To run a coal mine you need two things not tired workers and money for the upkeep of the mine. If needed sell a train to get some of the money back. Send the worker train to the coal mine and if needed change it to unload workers now the mine should be operating again.

Send the coal train to the coal mine and change it wait for full load and let it unload. As advice: Dont let trains run all the time with tiny bit of resources they burn through so many coal. When the coal is flowing again, you can slowly start up your trains and buildings but keep an eye on your money, coal and other resources. Going big fast is asking for trouble in this game.

[TAW | AndySL]

Good advice Edmera

[TheOrigin]

There is also a bug which happended to me. I had about 400 gold income and bought sometthing which had high maintance. So the money would directly go into the negative numbers like -300 or so. When i noticed my mistake i sold said building again but the negative budget wasnt equalized. It kept negative even though the building was sold. Had to start over the game...

[Edmera]

It doenst need to be a bug, what i noticed that the town people for example are perfectly happy without bread. Until you start producting bread then bread becomes part of their happiness factors and if dont produce enough or remove the bakery they wont be perfectly happy anymore because your not supplying them with all their needs. And happiness is a factor of your tax income and if your are unlucky say hello to your death spiral if you dont have the resources to get the people happy and/or more workers in to pay taxes.

At the moment this game can be a bully and when you trip it happily keeps kicking you while you are on the ground. However the dev is looking into making those death spirals less easy to trigger.

[Earth Dragon]

You can rearrange track routes. If you can't build new trains, you need to use existing trains to get the resource you need.

Just create the routes you need them on and switch. Honestly speaking, if you are in a coal deficit and can't start hauling wood, you aren't really that far into a map

[Nuggs]

You definitely will need more than just two saw mills at the start. I usually start with 3 to 4 sawmills connected to a distribution center which is then connected to a station that has at least 4 rails connected to it and i run one train of 4 cars connected to collect the wood and transport it. all at different time intervals so theres always a train dropping off wood.

One thing to check is distance between the sawmills to the warehouse and how much time and distance it takes to get back to the sawmill to start over again. if the line your wood carrying trains are taking a long route youll run into wood deficits.

As far as passengers youll need a passenger train with more than enough space for both new workers and tired ones to board. Each passenger car carries 40 workers and most work places you will transport to will require 40 workers to max efficency. so if i have in your case 2 saw mills ill want a passenger train with 3 to 4 cars attached. Youll typically want passenger trains to be ordered to stop and work facilities either until done or for a specified amount of time.

If youre sunning out of coal its probably because youre either not producing enough coal in which case build more coal mines with storage, or the train(s) transporting the coal are taking to long to get to the ware house.

To me it sounds like most of your deficits are probably due to trains taking to long to get from point A to Point B. Try building rails with shortcuts for certain routes to other rails. Though i cant really say exactly whats causing your deficits since i cant view your game, its a good guess that its just poor timing on your transport trains either due to line congestion, to far of a distance between points of interest or a mix of both. As far as your passengers go just be sure every stop youre either picking up or dropping off people at is set to Swap workers and that they stop at their destinations long enough to load and offload people.

[Starbucaneer]

Hello fellow Transiters....
Ah now there is some very useful info from everyone and thank you ALL for taking the time to reply.
I have been playing again and had a nice set up running and I was so pleased I had to whoop out loud. I finally had coal and timber being supplied. Then a train got stuck causing a bottle neck. I had missed a signal out on one very short piece of track. It had all worked fine until trains hit the intersection at the same time.... . Despite rectifying the signals none of the trains would pick up or put down cargo OR passengers. Stations at the mines and the saw mills have loads of coal and timber just sat in the storage sheds. The Warehouse is empty and now certain trains ran out of fuel because they collect it from there. Nobody will get off the trains!!!!
I always have tons of cash to spend.
I tried running trains with just passenger carriages and trains with just coal or timber wagons. I also tried locking the goods to the relevant category too.
Goods trains without a passenger coach just spammed me with "Train unable to swap workers" warnings.

@Edmera - I will try some of your suggestions Edmera to see if sending all trains to the Depot and then slow deployment will fix issues.

@Pussnuggets - Hmmm yes you may be right regarding distances on previous attempts/maps. The map I was playing today I freshly generated and it has a lot of what I needed closer together but I still had the death spiral after the train snarl up. I had each stop set to drop off and to pick up and until done. That was working fine until the snarl up. I had each stop as close together as was feasible and with as direct a connection as possible.
I have not been able to build more than two saw mills before wood ran out. Often wood is gone before I got to build any at all except of course today at the beginning....

@EarthDragon - I have tried rearranging routes but again that results in all trains just refusing to load or unload anything...... It seems that if the flow gets interrupted the game just flat out refuses to do anything

I am boing to go and try out sending ALL the trains to depot and redeploy them gradually and see if that works <fingers crossed and touch wood it might work

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by Edmera:

However the dev is looking into making those death spirals less easy to trigger.

I hope they don't make it too easy. I enjoy this game because it's difficult.

[Starbucaneer]

Originally posted by Lateralus:

Originally posted by Edmera:

However the dev is looking into making those death spirals less easy to trigger.

I hope they don't make it too easy. I enjoy this game because it's difficult.

Agreed I hate it when games get dumbed down and diluted, I like a challenge BUT I get so far in Sweet Transit (a little further each time) and then it all collapses......so far. That is why I thought I would ask my question here to see if there is something I am missing or doing wrong. Most games have more knowledgeable/experienced players who have wisdom to share when my own attempts fail

[TAW | AndySL]

Originally posted by Lateralus:

Originally posted by Edmera:

However the dev is looking into making those death spirals less easy to trigger.

I hope they don't make it too easy. I enjoy this game because it's difficult.

I agree with you. The learning curve is about right and if they make the UI a bit clearer (they said it’s in progress) then there’s no major negatives for me. Simple in concept but the restrictions such as town coverage make the challenge. It’s a good quality game.

[Starbucaneer]

Hi Fellow Transiters,

I have tried your various suggestions. None of them allowed me to recover from the resource cul-de-sac. However they did allow me to progress a bit further into my latest restart..... until I added some extra rails. The moment I started editing rails and signals ALL trains stopped shipping coal and timber!!!. None of the suggested fixes allowed me to fix this
I had tons of coal just sitting waiting to be moved.... but no timber. I am giving up today I cannot seem to get any further if I edit rails. That seems to be the thing that crashes my economy.

[Edmera]

Ive made so many changes to my rail network and the only time i screwed the network was when i placed a wrong signal. Hard to tell whats going wrong in your game without peeking in your game. Perhaps you can share your save?

[Starbucaneer]

I actually have managed to progress a lot further after I downloaded Wolfs mod. I currently have multiple towns and have just built my first quarry.....
I finally caved and looked in the workshop. I was actually going to make my own mod but found one had already been created and shared.
Absolutely loving this game now I have managed to avoid the death spiral