Transport Fever 2

Transport Fever 2

Yeol's Senseless Industries
Zill4449 Jan 20, 2020 @ 7:13pm
Help understand mail system please
Hello I have started using the mail cargo in their mod in my latest game. I thought I knew how the mail system worked but now I’m unsure. I can get unsorted mail in very very low quantity to go to the postal sorting facility but then it only produces very little sorted mail.

I now have two towns of 150-200+ population connected to the sorting facility. One directly via cargo truck stop and wagons. The other is wagons-train- wagons.

The first one with just a wagon line is short and I have a very large amount of wagons to cover any possible mail (8-10 wagons)

The train has like three cargo box cars.

I never see more than about 10 mail moving any direction

I also have at least 90% coverage at the truck stops for the city’s

Please help me in increasing the mail thru-put.
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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments
veyder Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:24pm 
Unsorted mail (same goes for the waste) is produced by buildings similarly to "regular" factories. You can check it out by switching to the Cargo Layer view (or faster: by selecting a vehicle station, e.g. a bus stop, to be placed down somewhere). You'll notice that most of the buildings produce unsorted mail by converting it from COM, IND or sorted mail. Supply the required products and you'll get the unsorted mail.
Yeol  [developer] Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:26pm 
Mail is generated in active, consuming towns. The more goods you deliver to a town, the more mail and waste the town will produce. Verify that the entire town is covered by caption areas of cargo bays, and collect the mail from all cargo bays. It starts slowly, but when all towns on the map are connected into the mail network, the amount of mail will become substantial.

During the start, I also use a few mail cars in existing trains, Later dedicated mail trains become interesting.

Simple truck stops do not collect unsorted mail. You need the cargo bays to do this. ;)
Last edited by Yeol; Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:29pm
Zill4449 Jan 21, 2020 @ 9:15am 
So will mail load at a passenger stop onto a assembler train? Like do I need to add a box car to my passenger trains to move it around? Are there any passenger cars that will take mail like in real life?
Yeol  [developer] Jan 21, 2020 @ 12:20pm 
Mail is considered as freight, and not as a passenger. You need to handle mail via cargo stations. It should be possible to mix passenger and mail (box) cars in one train, but you will have to stop at a passenger station AND a freight station. But combining passengers and mail in one train is not practical because mail goes to, and comes from, the Postal Sorting Centre. There are (almost) no passengers that are interested to go to this unit.

So, mail is freight, and needs to be collected by cargo bays, and dropped of at cargo halts or cargo bays. All unsorted mail goes to the Postal Sorting Centre, and all mail from the Postal sorting centre goes back to the houses... all by freight vehicles. I hope this helps. ;)


luftfisch Jan 22, 2020 @ 12:26am 
Does sorted mail has a destination address in a specific city or is it just an unspecific product that can be delivered to any house asking for mail?
Is the idea that we should build a sorting center next to 3 or 4 towns and then connect all sorting centers or is mail just a local service that doesn't need connections to others?
Yeol  [developer] Jan 22, 2020 @ 1:26am 
Sorted mail has, the moment it is created, a specific destination. The destination will be chosen from any sorted mail receiver (house, HQ,...) to which there is currently a route possible. The unit of mail waits for you to pick it up and carry it all the way to it's specific destination (or better, the cargo station/halt's caption area in which the destination is located.) To my knowledge, there is no time limit, but there is some kind of expiration process running on each cargo platform while waiting.
luftfisch Jan 22, 2020 @ 5:09am 
Yeol, you obviously know much of the game's data structure. Don't you think that the creation of so many new producers and recipients can have a bigger impact on performance? (with mail and waste every town building becomes a factory, sending and receiving products). I just know that path finding is one of the most intense operations in games like this and the performance of TF2 is already critical...
Yeol  [developer] Jan 22, 2020 @ 5:35am 
My knowledge of the game's data structure is rather poor. There is so much I would like to do, but I'm not able to, because of my lack of knowledge. But that is not the issue here. ;)

Every town building is already a factory. They all produce and receive several, to even dozens of persons. Adding 1 mail and 1 waste will hit performance a little, but it's participation will stay far below an estimated 10% of the total agents (cargo and people) walking around and finding a path to their destination.

But something had to be done to make the dull vanilla game a little more interesting and varied. Mail and waste are a welcome distraction from the industrial production tree and passenger services. And, the developers are looking with priority how to smooth the game play, and limit the memory consumption. It will all get better. ;)
Last edited by Yeol; Jan 22, 2020 @ 5:36am
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