Why do new vehicles always go to the wrong depot first

[mjrudolphi]

Seems like all my new vehicles go to the drop off depot first. This seems backwards/wrong. Shouldnt they go to the pick up first which is always my first depot in the line?

[SBGaming]

I've not confirmed it, but from some of the responses to questions like this, and some of my own experiences with some vehicles always going to the first stop on the line, and others going to the second stop on the line, I think it matters how the vehicle enters the road, and the more I look back at the setups, the more this is true, although my experience is not always the case.

Several possible scenarios how trucks decide which to go to first.

Truck Station A <> Depot <> Truck Station B

If the Depot is placed on the side of the road where the vehicle makes a right turn out of the depot to get to Truck Station A, it is more likely to travel to Truck Station A. If it's placed on the side of the road where the truck is making a right turn towards Truck Station B, it's more likely to head to Truck Station B first. This presumes that the depot intersects directly with a section of road where the line is passing, and the same applies if the depot is placed directly across so that the Truck Station and Depot share an intersection.

I'd have to go back through all my various setups to see whether this is (always) true, but I think Road Freight Vehicles are always more consistent with the truck station they head to first, whereas Passenger vehicles will try to space themselves out.

Having just gone back to my USA Campaign Mission 4, I've found an example that breaks the above:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=834948907

According to the theory, all trucks leaving the depot should head to the second stop on the line, in this case, it is the Chicago Food Processing Plant, rather than the farm. Instead, what the trucks are doing as they are leaving the depot is turning Left, crossing over the line going the opposite direction, ignoring that theoretically they should be heading to the second stop, and instead going to the pickup point for Livestock.

In most cases the behavior seems consistent, but in this case, it goes contrary to the theory. What I'd like to see is that by default vehicles always travel to the stop that is closest to where they are purchased, but give an option on a line-by-line basis to auto space vehicles out (in the case of in-city Passenger bus services).

[Harag]

@SBGaming I agree with you, at first it always seemed that the best spot for the deport for me is to put it on the left side of the station, so the trucks come out, turn right, then hit the station line and turn right again into the station - this worked 80% of the time for me, however I've seen it completely fail at this.

What I've been trying to do is look at the station and the line coming out of the station and then place the deport so when trucks first join the line it's heading to the station.

E.g. in your screen shot above where the deport is on the right of the station, when the truck comes out of the deport when it touches the "line" the line is flowing right, so the truck goes right, if the deport was on the other side, the line would be flowing towards the correct station.

[SBGaming]

In the case of the screenshot, this was an example where this theory failed, and instead of turning right, as you can see, the truck is in the process of turning left.

[Harag]

Originally posted by SBGaming:

In the case of the screenshot, this was an example where this theory failed, and instead of turning right, as you can see, the truck is in the process of turning left.

Ahh didn't look at the truck - you're right the way the deports work is really strange.

[Ric]

Seems odd this is even an issue but have noticed exactly the same problem.

It would surely be a very simple line of code to set this is a strict parameter of say "always go to first stop in line".

[maculator]

1. Didn't read lol (So it might be stated allready)
2. For me a depot "outside the line, but close to the desired stop on the same side of road always worked. Behold my Ascii skills:

__DEPOT ___STOP A_________________STOP B__
.........................|______LINE 1___________|.............
_____________________________________________

[mjrudolphi]

So I may have figured it out and its probably what maculator is trying to say. If you click on the line to show the flow, the vehicle will find the closet route to the flow. It will join the flow that it is closet to and follow it, regardless of what stop is next.

[canophone]

Originally posted by mjrudolphi:

So I may have figured it out and its probably what maculator is trying to say. If you click on the line to show the flow, the vehicle will find the closet route to the flow. It will join the flow that it is closet to and follow it, regardless of what stop is next.

It was more predictable pre-patch (Dec 20). Now it's not.

[mjrudolphi]

Yea and I was wrong. Forget what I said as that is not it.

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by canophone:

Originally posted by mjrudolphi:

So I may have figured it out and its probably what maculator is trying to say. If you click on the line to show the flow, the vehicle will find the closet route to the flow. It will join the flow that it is closet to and follow it, regardless of what stop is next.

It was more predictable pre-patch (Dec 20). Now it's not.

Yep, my screenshot shows a vehicle turning left crossing the flow of the line.

Here is another example at the Oil Well. Vehicles are crossing over the flow and into the Truck Station immediately after leaving the depot, while at the Stone Quarry, with an otherwise identical setup of truck station with depot opposite to it, all trucks decide to go with the flow to the second stop. Why do the Oil trucks want to go to the first stop when the Stone trucks want to go to the second stop, and these screenshots are from a mission I did on the 21st (after the previous patch). Is it the angle at which the depot joins the line? The curve at which the depot connects to the road is practically the same for both lines, except the curve at the Stone Quarry looks slightly more curved.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=836460875

My experience with this seems like the game decides the default behavior of which stop trucks go to first on a depot by depot basis, unless there is some game logic that explains otherwise.

Ideally we'll get the option to toggle automatic spacing, so that if we always want vehicles on a line to go to a specific stop, we can do so, though by default I want it to go to the nearest stop first, because especially in the case where I have a bus route between two towns, I'll usually buy buses from one town so that they stop immediately at that bus station first to pick up passengers before travelling out of town. When I buy a bunch of buses at one time, what tends to happen is that half the buses will go to the nearby stop, while the other half will travel to the other town to start their route. Which is of course not what I want them to do, since if I wanted them to start their route at the other town, I would have bought them from that town.

[canophone]

Originally posted by SBGaming:

Originally posted by canophone:

It was more predictable pre-patch (Dec 20). Now it's not.

When I buy a bunch of buses at one time, what tends to happen is that half the buses will go to the nearby stop, while the other half will travel to the other town to start their route. Which is of course not what I want them to do, since if I wanted them to start their route at the other town, I would have bought them from that town.

Yes, for buses it's intentional. For trucks, it's unclear what the intent is!