How does the game determine which type of cargo has priority on the same line?

[Gojak_v3]

I had a truck station that had two different types of cargo for the same line. I was still using horse carts so they could accept all types of cargo. The trucks would contine to take construction goods every time. I had food that sat at that truck stop for years and they wouldn't take it.

Second, I've noticed the game will start to use lines for certain cargo types I had never planned for them to use. I know the game looks for any way possible to ship cargo it can. This isn't a problem for the lines doing it yet. My question is, should you let the game do this and ship whatever it can, or should you specify the cargo load specifically for the line?

[SirLANsalot]

if you want complete control over where stuff goes, then you will need to set each truck with a type per a line so no cross talk can happen.

only time where I have 1 line handling multiple goods, is the delivery line that distributes the goods throughout a city. Usually to fix any issues of stuff just sitting there forever, I just add a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of trucks to the line, and in later years, I take a few off as capacities increase fewer are needed to satisfy demand. If its not doing its job, then I will add a few trucks to the line with specific types depending if one type isn't getting picked up.

[SBGaming]

From my observation, cargo tends to be picked up in priority to how it is listed in the truck or train station. In this case, Construction Materials are probably listed first, and so trucks are grabbing construction Materials first before picking up Food.

One suggestion I might make is to split up your trucks into separate routes that feed different parts of the city. If you have a stop that covers largely industrial, more Construction Materials should feed into that line, whereas if you have another stop that is largely commercial, more Food should feed into that line. It'll take a bit of time for cargo to correct itself. In such a situation, it helps if you have the money to trim some of the zones, by removing industrial buildings from Commerical areas, and Commercial buildings from Industrial areas so that each truck station becomes more focused.

Of course, the above only works if you don't expand beyond Food/Construction Materials, because as soon as Fuel gets added, it'll probably also get lower priority leading to Fuel sitting around waiting for pickup.

Either that or just ramp up the number of trucks on the line as SirLANsalot suggests. If you have that much accumulating waiting for transportation and the quantity isn't decreasing over time, that indicates you don't have enough trucks on the line.

[Gojak_v3]

Just from my observation, it's taking what it's being supplied the most of I think. In my example, construction material was coming in at a much higher rate. I could be wrong though.

Also my cities are still small enough there is gonna be station over lap. And not just a few stray buildings. If I was thinking I would have done what the first poster suggested and make a central depot and distribute from there. I may get around to that eventually. I'm making money, but don't think I could take the supply hit transitioning to that right now. Especially since cargo just disapears when you change lines or upgrade.

[SirLANsalot]

Passenger stations also work for delivering cargo (cannot pick up cargo from one, but you can drop off), and if you put a truck station next to/within the catchment area of the passenger station, you can deliver cargo to it, then just have a loop line delivering the con mats/food ect throughout the city.

[Gojak_v3]

Originally posted by SirLANsalot:

Passenger stations also work for delivering cargo (cannot pick up cargo from one, but you can drop off), and if you put a truck station next to/within the catchment area of the passenger station, you can deliver cargo to it, then just have a loop line delivering the con mats/food ect throughout the city.

Really? I had no idea. Then why seperate stations? Do bus stops work the same way?

[canophone]

Originally posted by Gojak_v3:

Originally posted by SirLANsalot:

Passenger stations also work for delivering cargo (cannot pick up cargo from one, but you can drop off), and if you put a truck station next to/within the catchment area of the passenger station, you can deliver cargo to it, then just have a loop line delivering the con mats/food ect throughout the city.

Really? I had no idea. Then why seperate stations? Do bus stops work the same way?

Cargo stations may allow the city to give a preferred industrial or commercial zoning in its catchment area! While the same cannot be said for passenger stations.

Though I haven't tested this, it's been assumed by others.

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by Gojak_v3:

Really? I had no idea. Then why seperate stations? Do bus stops work the same way?

It was a bug that was discovered and left in during beta testing, but the developers left it in because people liked it too much, for obvious reasons. It's a lot easier to put down a bus stop to supply a large chunk of city than it is to demolish potentially $millions trying to fit a truck station in.

Cargo can be dropped off at Passenger Stations and bus stops, but cargo cannot be picked up from them.

Depending on how you structure your freight network, you may be better off using Freight Stations. For example, I tend to structure my supply of Consumer Goods near a city to come to a central distribution point near a freight station so that they can be loaded onto trains with compatible products so for example, train rolls in dropping off Food, and then picks up a load of Goods. If I were dropping off Food to the Passenger Station, I wouldn't be able to load Goods onto the train, and would have to send the train empty elsewhere to pick up those goods. The purpose of this setup is to maximize how often trains are running full, thus maximizing revenue.

Many people seem to run individual freight lines that haul goods one way to cities as end-points as opposed to transfer points, with no goods ever being picked up in the cities themselves, so Passenger stations work fine for them.

The primary reason I use Freight stations and truck stations rather than the Passenger options is because it otherwise doesn't make sense. If the facility (Passenger train station or bus stop) does not have the ability to load cargo onto a train or truck, it certainly should not have any ability to unload cargo from a train or truck. For this reason, I believe the bug should be fixed, or the bus stop and passenger stations, should have a significant reduction in it's catchment area for cargo drop off.

[KiwiRik]

Just to clarify this....if you have multiple cargo types on a single line, they will be picked up in list order from left to right (if you click on the depot). But IF the cargo amount is greater than or equals the vehicles capacity, then that cargo type gets preference, still from left to right. Example...if you have 10 grain, 25 oil, 10 stock, 400 coal, the oil will be collected first, until it drops below the vehicles capacity. Then the coal will collected until it drops below, then freight will be collected from left to right in that order.

I don't understand why the devs didn't set it so that the highest amount is always collected first. It's super annoying when you have 400 food that never gets collected because something listed to the left of it keeps getting dropped off so that there is always more than max capacity waiting.

[Fortune Calls]

If finished products are left at a truck station not being picked up for a long time then you just need to buy one extra truck and set it to manual operation targeting the specific finished product. That is often enough to control unshipped finished cargo.

[Vimpster]

I struggled a bit with this issue early on. But eventually I learned, as SirLANsalot alluded to, that I need to put the proper throughput of vehicles in order to ensure everything gets taken care of. If you are transporting food and construction materials to a town via a single distribution point then you need to do the math. How much is demanded of each? Lets say the town wants 200 food and 175 construction material then the line from your distribution point needs to have a "rate" of 375. With a rate matching the demand it does not matter which product gets prefrence first because both will get taken care of properly.

I don't recomend simply adding more vehicles and hope it fixes the problem. Do the math and add the exact amount of vehicles on a line to make the rate match the demand. The demand is seen by clicking on the town name and the rate of your line can be seen by looking at the line in the Lines window. There is a saturation point at which point adding more vehicles to a line can actually start to decrease the rate. This is a bad thing. You don't want to over saturate. If a line reaches saturation and the rate is still not enough to match demand then you may need to upgrade the vehicles to ones that have a higher capacity or you may need to break up the distribution to several lines because a single line is simply not capable of matching its rate with the demand.

[KiwiRik]

Originally posted by Tactical Combat Peanut:

If finished products are left at a truck station not being picked up for a long time then you just need to buy one extra truck and set it to manual operation targeting the specific finished product. That is often enough to control unshipped finished cargo.

I try and avoid this, as it often results in 'specific' type trucks only running freight one way, or transporting nothing once that freight type runs out. I much prefer to leave them as generic freight type. I still don't understand why the devs can't tweak the terminal maths so that the highest freight amount always gets collected first.

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by Rikko:

Originally posted by Tactical Combat Peanut:

If finished products are left at a truck station not being picked up for a long time then you just need to buy one extra truck and set it to manual operation targeting the specific finished product. That is often enough to control unshipped finished cargo.

I try and avoid this, as it often results in 'specific' type trucks only running freight one way, or transporting nothing once that freight type runs out. I much prefer to leave them as generic freight type. I still don't understand why the devs can't tweak the terminal maths so that the highest freight amount always gets collected first.

If the trucks are hauling the final mile to the end consumer, those trucks are almost always hauling in one direction, so having a few trucks hauling a specific cargo on lines that are backing up, isn't necessarily that much of an issue. I usually only have such trucks running temporarily though.

It's probably not a matter of the developer not being able to tweak this, just not something that the community felt was a big enough deal to provide feedback for because we often just find ways to work around issus like this.

There's other areas where this sort of default priority often occurs. The farm will always for instance prioritize the production of grain over lifestock (when given the option to supply both) because it's listed first, not just in the Farm but the Food Processing Plant. The Food Processor will for instance consume grain first, and then livestock. When it reorders, it reorders more grain. Eventually the Farm/Food processor chain will get to a point where the Food Processor is not using Grain fast enough to actually start using the Livestock in it's storage, thus no consumption of Livestock, no demand for Livestock and thus no production of Livestock.

It might be a simple change for the developers to make, to a point where a modder might even be able to do it. It might also require a re-writing of the code.