train -> road -> train -> road; broken?

[Nekozji]

Hey peeps,

One of my favourite tricks pre-Mass Transit was to bring all external rail lines into an isolated interchange area, where they would have to transfer by truck or foot onto the internal network. This gave me at least some level of control over the volume of intercity trains and helped avoid clogging my internal lines.

Since MT however, I've had no luck enticing external cargo trains to visit an interchange area. The only way I can get imports/exports by rail is to hook up all the cargo stations to the outside line. As yet it's not proving disastrous, and the trains seem inclined to despawn after arrival, thus solving half the problem, but... was that behaviour intentionally removed? Is there a cap on the number of transfers between carrier types, or does the game now target only the closest cargo station to the ultimate delivery destination, and then send by road if that one is unreachable by rail? (Or is it really simple and it thinks that using the interchange would be slower than going by road, assuming no traffic?)

Tourists by contrast WILL disembark at the interchange and hop on the metro.

 

[Pops121]

So far I have noticed that internal cargo traffic does prefer road to rail, thats so far. I have set up 3 systems so far and none seemed to work the same as it did pre MT. Over short distances, feeding farming, forestry and ore (so far), to generic they prefer to export by road than cater for the needs of generic and generic has been importing. I will be trying to place the generic further away next.

I have by no means played with it enough to come to any conclusion as to how the rail-road system has changed if indeed it has. Just made these small observations.

 

[Norppis]

I don't know how it is in game, but to think of real life analogy.. as a manufacturer, would you really like your supplies to go through 3 different cargo terminals, each with their own fees and transfer delays of a few days, instead of just hauling them from/to intercity cargo terminal? One rail hub could be acceptable.

 

[Nekozji]

I don't know how it is in game, but to think of real life analogy.. as a manufacturer, would you really like your supplies to go through 3 different cargo terminals, each with their own fees and transfer delays of a few days, instead of just hauling them from/to intercity cargo terminal? One rail hub could be acceptable.

It's not a bad suggestion, but I think my annoyance is that the behaviour has changed... In an update dedicated to getting away from roads, cargo haulage is now specifically preferring roads where previously it would have used rail :/ I feel like if this is an intentional change, it could have done with patch notes and discussion.

 

[Luckless]

I don't have my gaming rig set up currently, but does the behaviour change if you isolate your industrial sections behind no-trucking roads to force the cargo to route through the internal rail lines?

Could be something has changed in the cargo route path finding, and it isn't valuing efficient rail transit as highly as it did before so stuff is happily routing along roads instead.

 

[Nekozji]

I don't have my gaming rig set up currently, but does the behaviour change if you isolate your industrial sections behind no-trucking roads to force the cargo to route through the internal rail lines?

Could be something has changed in the cargo route path finding, and it isn't valuing efficient rail transit as highly as it did before so stuff is happily routing along roads instead.

I haven't tried that, but I'll look into it next sesh. I've tried using bus routes from Network Extensions, but the trucks just use them anyway, and one-way roads leading into the loop only so that trucks aren't allowed out. The latter prevents inbound trains from appearing at all, although a few trucks use it as an export point, then despawn...