Number of Cargo Ships is... Nuts.

[Mister Dawg]

The number of Cargo Ships seems way out of proportion to the number of harbors/hubs (approximately 10:1) shown here. Granted there is a lot of Industry, but still...

Eight of eleven are hubs and have working train connections that are used. In addition I have 6 cargo train terminals that are also heavily used.

Why so many boats, and why do they get all backed up? I purposely left room between the route and the teminals, yet they still get caught up.

Also - there's not one of them that's more than 50% full... many have less than 10%... in fact less than 5% is not unusual.

This could use some improvement in the base game I believe.

Is there anything I can do to improve the flow shown below? There are a total of four routes in/out of the inner harbor (see last shot)... As-is I'm going to have to resort to using purely trains if I'm going to finish this map off.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648838965

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648838907

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648841071

[MarkJohnson]

When I was getting too many ships with light loads it was because I had too many of them.

Try shutting down half of them or more and see if it clears up.

How are your import/export, you forgot that screenie.

[Mister Dawg]

I tend to keep adding ports when the existing ones seem to be used to max capacity - though I judge this by the amount of road traffic... lol. Not sure if that's good or not, but when the access road is a solid red I tend to think I need another port.

I really wish I had made those frontage jetties wide enough for a Train Cargo Terminal :(. That will be in Version 5 of this map.

Import/Export as follows.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=649159818
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=649159736

[grapplehoeker]

It's the same situation as with train cargo terminals. Each one that is connected to the outside will spawn their own trains, or in this case, ships.
For this reason, it's not wise to have more than one or two at most connected to the same shipping route. You need to reduce the number you're using... or use these mods together to convert most of them to local traffic only.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=638786709
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=639833119
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=512314255
Hope that helps ;)

[Mister Dawg]

... but isn't Exporting goods a significant source of income, and wouldn't this reduce that? Forgive my ignorance :)

[grapplehoeker]

One cargo terminal per outside connection will result in maximum capacity of shiploads. When more ships are spawned by each of the other terminals, then that load is split, resulting in the minimal load % you have noticed.
Now it could well be that you can provide more exports than one habour's ship capacity can handle, so perhaps you could use two, but I doubt that you could fill any more than that. Therefore anything more than two is superfluous to requirement... and of course will prevent the ship armadas ;)

[Mister Dawg]

I learn something every day in this game LOL. Thanks. I'll do some bulldozing and see what happens. I do have a fair amount of remote natural resources so maybe I'll move and convert some of them to local only. :)

[Mister Dawg]

Does the same go for outside Cargo Trains?

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Mister Dawg:

Does the same go for outside Cargo Trains?

hell yeah lol
No more than 1 per outside connection to prevent train jams and connect those to your innercity cargo rail by road link.
Here's an old example,
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=456180601

[Mister Dawg]

Is this still the only mod for editing terrain in game?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=411095553

[grapplehoeker]

That one is out of date.
This is the only one that I currently recommend using.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=502750307
Within acouple of short weeks, we will get a free new update for canals and quays, which includes a built in terraform feature. However, this uses a novel approach. Terraforming will be limited. It will be a balancing act between moving soil from one part of the terrain to another. This sounds like fun and an interesting concept, but I think I shall continue to use the mod in any case ;)

[Mister Dawg]

Thanks for that. It works well.

In other news - I ripped out maybe six of my Cargo Hubs. The Armada slowly alleviated.

I placed several Cargo Train Terminals (yes I heard you, but I'm stubborn). They just don't get used like the Cargo Hubs.

Everything was fine for a while, then I started getting "Not Enough Raw Materials".

Went to watch a movie. Checked on the City a few times. More NERM.

Came back after two movies... City bankrupt. Still had Water/Power/Sewer, so I assume the NERM took over.

I saved a few times, so no worries... though I'm going to have to try to find a balance between the armada and having enough raw materials... or leverage the Local Only and develop the remaining Natural Resource areas ahead of time.

[MarkJohnson]

Do you have enough specialized industry. I find you need it on large cities, or some kind of import cap is reached. I use the Extra Landscaping Tools mod to make new oil-ore-agr plus the Infinite Oil and Ore tool so they don't deplete my resources in mere minutes. Bloody Penguin has also updated this mod himself, so look for it as it is up to date. (I forgot the name of the mod)

I had stopped using it back before x-mas as I was having import/export issues and found specialized industry not behaving as it should. I removed all specialized industry and it was working fine for a while, but now I get the Not enough raw materials errors and had to reinstall the mods and go back to by pre x-mas save and try again and deal with the inefficient specialized industry.

I hope CO are working on an official 25-tile mode with proper AI behavior to help us users who surpass the 9-tiles the default AI is meant to handle.

[Mister Dawg]

I 'think' I have enough Specialized Industry. I'll attach a shot below. Out of the 10 'Islands' zoned Industrial - almost exactly half are Specialized.

What's interesting is that many of the Specialized Industry were the ones without enough Raw Materials - though it was more the 'Processing' ones rather than the actual Extracting/Farming/Whatever ones.

I put a couple of the Cargo Hubs back in... and spaced a couple of the others out. So far so good... though yeah... it does seem odd and isn't the first time I've noticed a somewhat 'sudden' change in the availability of Raw Materials. I use the Mod for unlimited Natural Resources, though sometimes I wonder if even it has a limit.

... and yeah, an official 25-tile model with proper AI behavior would be awesome. I haven't played the 9-tile for a long long time.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=650202391
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=650202442