Things backing up at the port

[clif9710]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2961998868

[Hailstorm]

Build another loading dock :D Especially on the other side of the island. So the trips are shorter from the other island they come from. Also reduce loading times with items on ships and a harbour master :D

[clif9710]

I thought only two non-oil harbor extras were allowed - the capacity expansion and the extra dock for loading/unloading. I have those built. Can I put another load/unload on the other side of the island?

[Hailstorm]

Just tested it, because I generally don't build more than 2 anyway, but i plopped 4 Piers right next to eachother and 2 in other areas. You just need some free harbour space anywhere on the island.

[Hundinger]

You can build a lot of them, only space is the restriction. If you have docklands I'd recommend building the dockland version a lot and also add the modules that speed up loading.

What led you to believe that you can build only two of them?

[clif9710]

Originally posted by Hundinger:

You can build a lot of them, only space is the restriction. If you have docklands I'd recommend building the dockland version a lot and also add the modules that speed up loading.

What led you to believe that you can build only two of them?

When I build them there is a number shown 1/2 after I put up the capacity expansion, for example, and 2/2 when I add the second dock. I'm glad to hear there is no limit but space

[Hundinger]

Ah interesting. Might be a tutorial quest that tells you to build two of them, hence the numbers. But I don't remember.

[pemmons1]

It is possible to tell ships plying trade routes not to leave a port until they are full or (if unloading) until they are empty. This is occasionally useful to determine whether production on an island and the ships on the route are well matched, but keep an eye on the situation. When a ship is held up at a trading post or pier because of this constraint, no other ships can use it and a huge backlog can develop.

[clif9710]

Originally posted by Hundinger:

Ah interesting. Might be a tutorial quest that tells you to build two of them, hence the numbers. But I don't remember.

When I build a capacity expansion, it shows the 1/2, so possibly only two of those are allowed per island...

[olympe]

Originally posted by pemmons1:

It is possible to tell ships plying trade routes not to leave a port until they are full or (if unloading) until they are empty. This is occasionally useful to determine whether production on an island and the ships on the route are well matched, but keep an eye on the situation. When a ship is held up at a trading post or pier because of this constraint, no other ships can use it and a huge backlog can develop.

I don't think this is useful at all. Yes, you'll find out if ships and production are well-matched if you keep watching your ships like a hawk. But with dozens, sometimes hundreds of trade routes, you won't be able to do that.
Worse yet, every ship that waits to be fully loaded/unloaded blocks your harbor some more.
If, on the other hand, you don't have that "wait till (un)loaded" feature enabled, you can still find out you produce too much of that good if the ship sails back not fully unloaded. And if it's not fully unloaded, it will need less time to be loaded again, making the time it waits in port that much shorter.

What does have some good uses, though is the "dump what cannot be unloaded" feature (no idea what it's really called). Especially if you have to get rid of a lot of alpaka wool to keep your fertiliser production goin.

[Sarsgamer]

Originally posted by olympe:

Originally posted by pemmons1:

It is possible to tell ships plying trade routes not to leave a port until they are full or (if unloading) until they are empty. This is occasionally useful to determine whether production on an island and the ships on the route are well matched, but keep an eye on the situation. When a ship is held up at a trading post or pier because of this constraint, no other ships can use it and a huge backlog can develop.

I don't think this is useful at all. Yes, you'll find out if ships and production are well-matched if you keep watching your ships like a hawk. But with dozens, sometimes hundreds of trade routes, you won't be able to do that.
Worse yet, every ship that waits to be fully loaded/unloaded blocks your harbor some more.
If, on the other hand, you don't have that "wait till (un)loaded" feature enabled, you can still find out you produce too much of that good if the ship sails back not fully unloaded. And if it's not fully unloaded, it will need less time to be loaded again, making the time it waits in port that much shorter.

What does have some good uses, though is the "dump what cannot be unloaded" feature (no idea what it's really called). Especially if you have to get rid of a lot of alpaka wool to keep your fertiliser production goin.

Yea I don't like wait to load or unload either. Only time I could see it possibly useful is if it's loading just one type of product. But usually i'm trading multiple items per lane and I don't want to hold up the other items just cause one might not be full. It'd be more useful if the maintenance cost was different while waiting versus out on the open sea with a partial load, but it's not.

I don't like dumping either. For Alpaca and beef I just set a trade route to sell to the one pirate in the south in new world and set it to not trade when I have less than 1000 of either. If you're trading with other AI you can try to sell them from your harbor, but that's not very consistent. You could even sell the finished product instead of the meat, but I just do the meat. I found it easier to get trade rights with him over the the pirate in the old world. And once you have trade rights it's easy to keep their happiness up towards you up, if its going down just go buy something from them.

I suppose if you're playing with no AI dumping the alpaca or beef is the only option. Though might be able to still trade at the prison or somewhere, I haven't checked since never played without AI.

Other thing I've found that works well, at origin say you're sending schnapps, but destination can get full i set the slot to load and unload schnapps at origin and unload at destination. This has prevented the issue I see sometimes where like schnapps you're only loading in one slot but ends up taking over your whole trade ship cause never drops off a full load of it. I'm not sure if there's something specific that causes it but doing this has prevented it so I'm good.

Speaking of fertilizer I'm having trouble keeping enough (i'm supplying multiple islands with it from one island) so I'm setting up an island that is just going to process beef and or alpaca and sugar (another item I'm low on) so entirely hacienda items. The beef and or alpaca won't even be used, i'll sell it to the pirate. I might do some Ponchos though, i'll have to check, I might be a little low on those. At the moment just getting the residents up so the hacienda range is larger.

[olympe]

I suppose if you're playing with no AI dumping the alpaca or beef is the only option.

I mean, you can still sell to the NPC Isabel, but even her port can only deal with so much traffic, so... Plus, alpaca wool is very cheap anyway, so no great loss tossing it (after supplying all other islands with all the wool they can handle).