Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
Never connect your internal rail lines to the external rail lines. use a road loop between two stations for freight*, or a multi-track station where one of the platforms is for external trains only (once available) for passengers.
The edge of map stations spawn more trains if they're connected to more stations, with no line restrictions, so it becomes a bit of a disaster if you connect them to your internal tracks (and thus Every station)
*don't connect this road loop to anything else, or you'll have a whole New set of problems, but it will need it's own fire, police, garbage, and death care service buildings.
Second thing:
The default train budget is too high and spawns way more trains than are actually needed as a result. You can generally drop it down to 75% and be fine. Sometimes lower.
Third thing:
The lack of signals in this game causes a problem at junctions. Unrealistic and silly as it looks, you need to build junctions on track that freight trains use as if they were highway interchanges (using one way/single track).
Tracks only passenger trains will use generally don't need this because there are a fixed number of trains as dictated by the lines, but the way freight works means more and more trains will spawn, and if they're not getting to their destination to Despawn again quickly enough they jam up.
The reason for this is that the standard Y junction has trains crossing in front of opposing traffic, which can easily lead a traffic jam to loop back on itself and become unresolveable. Building highway interchange type junctions prevents that from happening, meaning most jams will eventually clear themselves (unless you have other, more major, problems.)
Fourth thing:
Always have a bypass track at stations, so trains that Aren't stopping there don't have to wait for ones that are. How long this needs to be varies, but for path finding, the trains take the fastest route (if there was no other traffic on the line), accounting for acceleration and deceleration for corners and hills. They treat the station as somewhere they would have to go a lot slower (even if not actually stopping, or even slowing down, at it) so there's a fair bit of leeway for the bypass tracks. (though the ideal is that the Through track is straight and the Station tracks are the ones that have to go off to the side, so the through trains loose less/no speed)
Fifth thing:
Make sure that any section of track between two junctions is only Very Slightly longer than a train (or any multiple of the length of a train), otherwise you'll end up with trains stopping on the junction if there's any sort of queue. If you're complying with point three, this is sub optimal, as a few trains which might otherwise have got through down the other line now can't until the queue clears. if you're Not complying with point three it's a disaster prone to triggering the sort of problem point three is refering to, as the train sitting on the junction is blocking traffic in both directions.
Sixth thing:
If at all possible, build your track so that a train entering the station from one end can leave from the other. They will prefer a reasonable track out the far end of the station and back around over reversing back out of the station, and as an added bonus this gets them out of the way of the next train faster. (if they reverse, they also have to go over the switches at the end of the station to change tracks, meaning they don't speed up until they've finished doing that, And they're in the way of the incoming train the whole time. neither of these are true if they can continue going forwards instead. I forget the exact hows and whys, but it is always better to let a train go in one end and out the other if possible)
That will solve the vast majority of problems with train lines. Any further problems are generally more an issue with the roads and zoning etc around the stations, rather than the railways themselves.
Points 2, 4, 5, and 6 also apply to monorails.
Third thing, signals for trains is possible with TMPE... no unrealistic junctions needed. Basic signals are possible with the route tool in vanilla.
Some of the maps had bugs like that. They were fixed in a patch. Then rebroken in another patch, then fixed again, etc. wouldn't surprise me if something got missed.
And that's assuming you used a vanilla/DLC map. (in which case I recommend reporting the bug on the paradox forums, where the devs will actually read it)
If you're using a workshop map (assuming the creator is still active) I recommend informing the creator in the mod's comments section.
Both of these require mods.
My solutions/recommendations do not.
Preventing the spawning of empty trains won't solve the problem of 'connecting all your internal stations to all the external stations spawns way too many trains' unless it also does something else anyway. What you describe it as doing is Exactly what Lowering your Train Budget does. Unless it is also doing something else, the external stations will still spawn a new train for every non-map-edge station they are connected to, and the Internal stations will spawn a new train for every Map Edge station they're connected to. Because that's where the goods are coming from and going to, and how map-edge stations work.
They don't spawn empty to start with. They spawn with what is needed at the destination. often, this isn't very much per trip.
Preventing this will actually just cripple your commercial/industry that now isn't getting it's goods delivered (though, again, just lowering your train budget is already reducing how frequently new trains spawn (can't remember if that's directly or by lowering the cap on how many can exist at once though)).
Again, maybe that mod does solve the problem, but if so, it doesn't do it the way you've described there.
As for TMPE:
TMPE is often sited as a solution to things that are better solved by Actually Learning the Game. There are a Very small number of things it does that are actually helpful and that the game really should do and doesn't. There are a very large number of things it does that make the game harder on you computer or, in practice, only mask problems rather than solving them. Solutions involving it are also often More Complicated than solutions which do not involve it (not for all things, but many), and easier to screw up in ways that break things (mismanaging lane assignments results in all sorts of path-finding stupidity, for example, which could have been avoided just by using the right sort of roads (and thus lane numbers) or placing on/off ramps correctly in the first place.).
As a result I never recommend it as a solution to anything other than "I want my city to Look more like it works like a real city for long enough to take nice screenshots or videos of it".
It should be noted that earlier versions of traffic manager were very good to have at the time, but most of the actual problems they corrected, which made it such a highly recomendable mod at the time, have since been fixed in the base game (and the last version I looked at did a whole lot of other stuff on top of that).
On signals:
You can add 'stop' signs to the track in vanilla (unless they changed something very recently). These work exactly like they do on the road, which is not at all like a proper railway signal. There are situations where they help. Those situations are generally not when there are massive log jams.
They have none of the functions proper signals have which would prevent the need for the flyovers. The issue is trains moving when (and stopping where) they shouldn't. The vanilla stop signs do not fix that, they only dictate Which train does it, when more than one is queued up waiting to do so. Which means the train in question is Still blocking traffic heading in the Other Direction, which is what the highway interchange model prevents.
That is, Train A is waiting on the Left line, Train B is waiting on the Right line, and train C, ahead of them after the junction, moves a half train length forward.
Proper signals wouldn't let train A or B move until there was actually room for it.
Default game behaviour has them moving regardless, blocking not only the other train, but also any train attempting to pass through the junction in the opposite direction down the opposing line.
The vanilla stop sign does not prevent this, instead it only lets you dictate if it is train A or train B that moves, and then still stops on the junction, blocking the opposing line.
So, in summary:
Every one of my points is true in vanilla.
Traffic Manager is not a solution to someone not yet understanding the game, it generally prevents that understanding while also making things more complicated for the player and harder on the machine. Most problems it is proposed as a solution to can be solved just as well with vanilla if you understand how it works.*
None of which matters anyway because the actual problem was apparently a bugged map.
* Exception: Vanilla busses and bus lanes are handled Awfully. the former can't keep up with demand without causing traffic jams themselves if there's enough demand to justify their existence, and in my experience (the last time I even bothered with them, which was some time ago, this may have been fixed since) the path-finding for cars just flat out ignores the latter pretty much entirely unless you're using Traffic Manager (or similar) to force them to do otherwise.
Of course, the 'vanilla' (quote marks because you actually need the snowfall DLC for this) solution to this is to just use trams instead, which have no such problems.
Also, road assets with the right number of lanes (and/or tram tracks, monorails, etc) help too.
Though with the response "*Exception: Vanilla busses and bus lanes are handl....." I personally love busses though I do agree it takes a bit to figure how to use them effeciently so as not to trap them (citizens, tourists) at stops.
It works, and there is NOTHING wrong with using mods to fix things that are just plain bad in the game. And no need for the totally stupid interchange, in my opinion and game play, so many use to work around the problem of too many empty or almost empty trains clogging the network.
And it may not have been a bugged map, but a broken node, or even a broken train car clogging the rail, which again can be fixed with a mod... and be found with 2 other mods that allow you to cross the line see the problem and fix it.
Yes many people use TMPE to cover up a problem, not actually fix it, which eventually causes a bigger problem.
Stop signs do work on rails, and do give priority to the other track when two trains approach the junction...which if you have built your junctions with the correct spacing between junctions, is quite beneficial. And if you have built your tracks,with understanding of the mechanism that controls trains, the situation you describe of a train only pulling half way through does not happen. It is understanding the interaction between the trains, and the nodes you place as you build the tracks. And yes, it was time consuming to figure out how to make the vanilla stop signs do what I needed them to do.
As for buses, I use them quite extensively throughout my city. No dedicated bus lanes. I make sure that each bus stop only services one bus line, and that the curb cutout is large enough for the bus to not stop traffic. And to get the correct number of lanes in many areas, again requires mods, not vanilla assets. I also have 4 types of buses, a 25 passenger, a 45 passenger, a 60 passenger, and a 90 passenger bus. Vanilla are 30 passenger... Don't need a mod to make that happen either, using the tools CO has given us all, called the asset editor. And with the changes to the base game from the campus DLC can quickly and easily change each bus line to the bus I want used, in the Vanilla game.
There are always more than one way to approach a problem and overcome it.
Trains are a bit pointless in this game as they cost so much to run and you probably have bus and metro already set up before you get them. Can just use one connection for tourists.
There seems to be a bug with intercity trains. If your train traffic backs up, then deselect the "Allow intercity trains" option for every passenger station you have and the jam should clear up.
As far as I can tell intercity trains stop right at the edge of the map and wait until they eventually despawn through a time-out.
I found it a bitter pill to swallow because I was counting on tourists coming in by train. :(
You need to split cargo and passenger lines at the earliest opportunity and make sure everything that enters from the east and west can go east or west on the way out as often a train coming in from the east will want to go back east after its visited your city - to do so it will change tracks as it leaves your station and this can causes issues if there's a lot of other trains that want to come and go. If you think there's genuinely a bug I would be interested to see your savegame.
I'm playing on a self designed map. I was aiming for a transport heavy map. The map editor has a glitch. If you select train tracks in the editor, you get a pop-up with the connections you can make. So, initially, it says "0/4 connections used". Add a connection and it says "1/4 connections used", Adding a second connection gives "2/4" and a third is "3/4". Now if I add a fourth connection it remains on "3/4 connections used". This <i>could</i> be responsible for the intercity train system not functioning properly.
I didn't see this happen so I started playing the map. When my city was around 150K pop I finally connected to the track of connection 4 and ... nothing. No trains at all.
Has anybody else seen this in map editor? If you are having trains backing up did you make the map yourself? It would be interesting to solve this phenomenum once and for all.
I have thousands of tourists arriving by train. I have only one Passenger station dedicated to all outside connections, all other passenger stations are intercity stations totalling six. I have separate lines for intercity and outside connections line.
I have three Cargo stations connecting to the four outside connections. I have six local cargo terminals (and growing) that access these three outside connection terminals not including the three at the rail yard. Again the are two separate lines.
Every outside connection will send a train to a station. So if you have four connections then every time you add a station or terminal to the line you add another four trains to the line. Not including the trains each station/terminal runs between themselves.
In my city alone if all stations were connected to outside connection line then with just the trains added by those connections there would be 60 trains. 15 stations x 4 trains = 60 trains. This is plenty to create a jam. At the moment I have three Cargo terminals and one passenger station connected to outside or National line. That is 16 trains on the national line, instead of 60.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1775643628
That's two things I need to start implementing in my cities.