trains leaving stations empty

[bjerringholm]

is it just me or is there no way to avoyd the trains from leaving the city stations empty from time to time, it apears to me that the city consumption far exeed that of the production. i dont care that they leave warehouses empy but as the raw materials needed for production (generally) is the same i allways end up having to dispatch trains empty for food or otherwise. it just seems very ineffitient use of stations when trains leave empty.

[Doc Savage]

That would/could/should be highly situational and dependant on so many things... With no idea what you're running, where to and how often you run the gamut of trying to get a gumball out of a soda machine to trying to pop a balloon with a 12 guage.

When I start a double line, I start with 2/3 trains and check how full they are. As a rule of thumb I add another train when there's say 2 full and 1 running 1/2 or so. I always want an extra bit of room because Passengers and Mail can fluctuate. I use Auto fill, no dedicated anything. My trains carry everything until I have 60k or 90k cities, then I mess with Express service. Maybe. Truth is by then I have more money than I know what to do with and I don't need the boost unless it's a specific task.

I don't worry about empties on a city to city line, as long as it isn't *all* the trains on the line. Management and growth will fill them in if I'm doing it right. If I'm seeing empties, it's a hammer to the forehead I need to be checking on something.

If you really want to see every train filled, give the game every incentive to do so and fill those demands. Passengers may make money, but freight is King. It drives everything from the back seat and every city just has to have it to grow (or simply maintain) their population.

As for cities outpacing production, yes, it can happen. However you have tools to combat that situation whether it be buying a resource or industry and boosting it or flooding the city from multiple lines inbound.

And you should care if trains are leaving your warehouse empty... If they are you don't have enough coming in. Never run dead trains unless you have to, especially freight. Make them wait for full loads and get paid. Running empty is just costing you fuel and wear and tear.

Cheers..!

[chaney]

You can FORCE a train to wait until full. In Route Manager, click on the pad of paper and pencil icon for the particular stop and you get the Station Manager dialog box. You can set min and max number of cars to leave with. Set min to 8 and you WILL fill the train (or wait forever because it can't fill.) Conventional *rural* Stations will usually work well with min 8 set so you always deliver full trains, maximizing net car delivery per time at a Platform and minimizing train wear.

Be careful if more than one "line" is using a particular Platform. A train sitting for many weeks waiting to fill (because supply is not available or because demand at the other Station(s) is not made) will prevent other trains from filling up. For example, a Small Station at a Fruit Farm (Orchard) could be hooked up to deliver to two different Cities. If one of the Cities is too small to demand Fruit, the train for that City would sit at the only Platform forever, loading nothing, while the train to the larger other City would wait outside the Station because the first train occupied the Platform.

More common is a low demand City having a train sitting at a Rural Platform too long, blocking a high demand City's train. You may not want to always set 8 carloads as minimum! If you can, don't put any specific Platform in this kind of contention for use - give each line its own Platform if you can.

[bjerringholm]

hmm well you are only parltly on to what i mean, this is going to be a nutcracker to explain. Lets face it, this game is about resource management and efficiency, that means trans running empty will allways be a "problem" especially in the citie as they are a chokepoint.

Originally posted by Doc Savage:

As for cities outpacing production, yes, it can happen. However you have tools to combat that situation whether it be buying a resource or industry and boosting it or flooding the city from multiple lines inbound.

Thats the very heart of my problem, ill try to explain.
City produce meat: Train gets cattle from farm, unloads in city and pickup meat, unloads at warehouse (where other cities can pick it up) and then goes back to farm and it all goes in a loop becourse production resourse consumption, production outcome and city consumption of goods is rougnly 1:1:1 on average this way i will never have to worry about empty trains when it comes to production and the consumption of said products, only thing is that cities allso need corn, grain, fruit and vegstables so at some point ill have to dispatch a hole lot of trains to fill this gap


I set my trains to transport everything, from city to city, on auto so every city gets what they need of people, mail, meat, beer, cloth ect ect.... no empy trains and no production left behind now i have a gap in transport of material for production as well as veggies and fruits so i have to dispatch emty trains from city go get corn, grain, fruit and vegstables

I set my trains to transport production resourse from farm to city and production goods from city to warehouse in an infinate veriatys of loops, now i have a gap in transport of corn, grain, fruit and vegstables. nomatter how i seem to do it, i aalways seem forced to send about 1/3 to 1/2 of my trains out of the city empy, simply becourse the cits consumpion overall is much higher than what i can produce

i hope it makes sense.

[bjerringholm]

Originally posted by chaney:

You can FORCE a train to wait until full. In Route Manager, click on the pad of paper and pencil icon for the particular stop and you get the Station Manager dialog box. You can set min and max number of cars to leave with. Set min to 8 and you WILL fill the train (or wait forever because it can't fill.) Conventional *rural* Stations will usually work well with min 8 set so you always deliver full trains, maximizing net car delivery per time at a Platform and minimizing train wear.

Be careful if more than one "line" is using a particular Platform. A train sitting for many weeks waiting to fill (because supply is not available or because demand at the other Station(s) is not made) will prevent other trains from filling up. For example, a Small Station at a Fruit Farm (Orchard) could be hooked up to deliver to two different Cities. If one of the Cities is too small to demand Fruit, the train for that City would sit at the only Platform forever, loading nothing, while the train to the larger other City would wait outside the Station because the first train occupied the Platform.

More common is a low demand City having a train sitting at a Rural Platform too long, blocking a high demand City's train. You may not want to always set 8 carloads as minimum! If you can, don't put any specific Platform in this kind of contention for use - give each line its own Platform if you can.

yup i know that, problem is not running empy (or half empy for that matter)from orchards or farms, my problem is that i have to rum empy FROM city in order to get what i need TO the city

maybe im just not balancing it right.... i dont know, is there any optimal routconfiguration ?

[chaney]

The only way to run all full trians would be to do a chain as you describe then delete them, and buy a new train at the start of the chain. There is no way to make a route including a Rural source that will always run full.

Don't worry about it if your routes include "dead-head" runs, that's fine. That's fundamental to source-only locations. The game usually pushes you to trains running between only two locations. That may not be satisfying, but usually is the optimal setup for the game's rules.

[bjerringholm]

ok, thanks for answering, aparently its not my inadeqate manedgmentskills that seems to be the problem

[Doc Savage]

Actually you should check Adyken's latest warehouse video on YT...

He answers this question (albeit indirectly) and shows the only way I know of to address this exact problem.

The set up he uses is highly situational, there are maps where it just isn't feasible or will require some serious route wrangling, but he ends up with full trains out of the city back to the warehouse and then some.

Bonus: Easily hits 100k pop in the 2 cities in 2 years time and is cranking dollars like they're donuts. Interesting watch at any rate...

Otherwise, when it comes to resources dead head runs are just a fact of life. Even in other titles where you would haul Grain to a Cattle Farm for it to grow, you will still have at least one dead run to start the chain.

Cheers..!