Goods Not Being Picked Up

[LapJax]

I have a wheat farm 72/72 wheat. A line that runs from the farm to Albany who produces beer. Beer is currently unable to produce because I cannot get a train to take the wheat to Albany. Other trains will deliver wheat to every other damn city but trains remain empty going to and from Albany. I have deleted the line and made new ones without any change. I have tried about a dozen other changes and it still won't pick up wheat. I tried adding to the warehouse but no change. The trains are still empty, beer is still not produced. I have zero clue what else I can try.

[jmuria]

Maybe there is wheat in transit, stuck in a wharehouse in a city connected to Albany, check that. I think devs must correct this because its counterintuitive, uneficcient and unrealistic

[Rolf]

Hi @LapJax :)
Thank you for reporting.

The warehouse allows goods to be transfered, so the Grain delivered to the warehouse is not necessarily meant for beer production. You can check the Tips&Tricks warehouse section for this.

Have you checked the Stock and Demand of the City feature for Albany? Maybe there is incoming delivery for this city from elsewhere that is stuck on it's way?

[mart95777]

Hi Rolf,
AI can also contribute to the problem, when their delivery is stuck somewhere. A town has apparently one demand for all players human and/or AI, and they can go into troubles, having trains/deliveries delayed.

So when a player has an issue with delays it may be often solved with some actions, sending new train, making more tracks for faster delivery, etc.
When an AI does that - this is pretty much beyond player control, little can be done, if at all.

More and more players will get these kind of issues, especially when playing higher difficulty games with like 3 AI players. Such games would be strict, where growing a town quickly is sometimes the only solution, e.g. custom game task is early 3-5 years from game start and a town needs to be from size 20 to 70 k.

Not an easy thing to fix, as it is in the core of new supply-demand design. I think this is what best is to think of a working solution as early as you can. Maybe check source code for logic, one can imagine scenarios from that.
Some solution might be, that if delivery is delayed, town accepts another cargo - this will give an effect of unblocking demand, and delayed cargo would have a penalty of lowering the payment, but can you track additionally a time for each cargo car? Engine might have worse performance. This is actually not good idea.

Another solution is to have no strict limit for demand. Let towns to accept even several hundred percent more of cargo, or have no limit, but such overstock would place such requests at decreasing priority going to zero. Towns would still use all of it, they would just not request such cargo urgently. We would never have then a situation, that a town for example has no grain, cause some limited amount is somewhere stuck in travel.
The check, if shipping of cargo is possible should be rather based on actual stock in a town, not a sum of stock+"in shippment" amount. Such sum would only decrease priority.
If you think about it, stuck cargo can be for years, e.g. AI just having no minimal hauling capability.

[kzickas]

It certainly sounds like it's something that should be looked into in some detail, but my impression is that even just making trains slightly prioritise goods that are travelling a shorter distance might reduce the problem significantly in practice.

[Rolf]

Thanks for your participation and your feedback @mart95777 @kzickas :)
We're looking into this delivery-situation closely.

[kzickas]

I've done a bit more reading after making my comment, and i think it might be better if warehouses allowed goods to be stockpile rather than transferred. This would mean that goods only started to count as "in transit" once they leave the warehouse for the city

[mart95777]

Hi @kzickas,
After playing more now, I think, that warehouses being only for transfer is less of a problem. It is actually hard limit of both values of "in stock" + "in transit" number/amount. This is cause you may have "in transit" having all allowed number/amount, and town has a shortage then - zero "in stock". Allowing warehouses to get shipment from farm/factory would only solve problem partially, cause you would not be able to haul such cargo to mentioned town.
But if allow for no limit, you might end up in increasing stuck "in transit" cargo. This would not be good for game engine. Warehouses might be blocked with stuck cargo, and trains with such cargo would maybe overcrowd map, lines would get blocked, etc.

[kzickas]

I don't think you really understand the problem. The problem is that a town will starve to death while empty trains are going to and from a nearby farm because grain in some warehouse on the far side of the map is considered "in transit" to that city. If goods only counted as in transit to a city once they're actually on a train going to that city then the city would simply be effortlessly supplied by the nearby farm, where trains are already going but just going empty.

[mart95777]

yes, but not counting warehouse cargo is solution for a case, where there is problem before warehouse, "bottleneck" is with trains from farm to warehouse. and if such cargo does not count towards demand, then yes, it is a solution.

Consider a case where there is a problem after warehouse. Cargo is then marked as "in transit" when going to town in this new system. Train/trains maybe is/are stopped by heavy traffic, a sabotage of important rail line track for 3 weeks (they happen on expert level more often), and this after-warehouse cargo also blocks demand. And what is worse, AI can participate in that also, maybe all "in transit" cargo be stuck in AI company. You often cannot do a thing to solve such problem. This would be regardless of warehouses.
Actually stopped trains from farms directly to town is such case where warehouses play no role