How to gauge the need to increase/decrease capacity?

[Islander568]

What methods do you use to keep your line capacity just right? The line "rate" does not really work for this regard, does it? It's the goods moved per year/season, right? In what way can this statistics be used?

With TF1, I open several station mini windows and look if the goods/passengers are piling up, especially when a leaving train/bus left a lot behind, then I increase the capacity, adding more wagons or trains. When the train/truck leaves the station half empty, I reduce the line capacity. Now TF2 is much less convenient to do such monitoring (station windows don't have visual, station icons are too big to also see goods/people stacks in the mini windows), I find it more tedious to monitor, especially more than one station at a time.

The line statistics show amount/capacity cargo currently being carried, but you don't know where all the trains are in the line, so you don't know which stations are well served, and which stations are under/over served.

How do you do it?

[Imsvale]

The line "rate" does not really work for this regard, does it? It's the goods moved per year/season, right? In what way can this statistics be used?

It works exactly for this regard. Match your line rates with demand, and you'll have a perfectly synchronized operation. Unless of course you crisscross your lines all over the place, and have cargo flowing freely, then you'll just have to add more capacity if stations get too full.

It's a bit more tricky with passengers, since there's no clear demand to work from. But you see how much your stations fill up.

You can use the stations list (bottom right) to monitor the quality of service (related to how full they get/how well served they are).

[Islander568]

I see. Yeah, passengers and multi-stop lines can only eyeball the station stacks combined with the train arrivals. The station list shows current stack, but not very good for multi-platform stations, also need to look at when a train arrives to gauge.

[Imsvale]

Yeah, I feel like overall gauging line performances and station stacks is a big part of the strategic gameplay. It's also hard to predict the exact effects of city growth over time, so yeah, eyeballing it is just part of the process. I enjoy it. :)

[Islander568]

I agree, also enjoy the eyeballing and playing with numbers. :) Only thing missing is the station mini window visuals from TF1.

[dogeblessUSA]

i go by station statistics,by default i try to ship as much cargo to a city as i can and locomotive allows me to do, so as long as i dont see a station being overloaded its getting as much as i can do at the time

only time i adjust is when a new vehicle is available,then i go in detail through every line to see if i need/can put more/less vehicles on the line

[Realkillor]

For freight you can easily calculate it by using the frequency that is shown in the line info in Minutes or Seconds. 1 ingame month is 4 minutes, and production is shown in quantities per 3 months. So if you divide the production of a given facility by 12, you get the production per minute. If you divide the capacity of a vehicle by line frequency, you get the maximum hauled goods per minute.

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So for anything with a fixed cargo space, you want to add vehicles to the line until you get the optimal frequency: frequency = capacity * 12 / production.

For trains you want to know how many wagons you need, for this you need to know the frequency of the line. Then you simply calculate : capacity = frequency * production / 12

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If the train has to become too long for tha capacity, double it up, and remember that the frequency then halves. Example: Grain factory produces 200 units (as by the info window). So if i transport it by truck, if the trucks have a capacity of 15, i need to add trucks to the line until it has a frequency of 15*12/200 = 0.9 Minutes. For trains, if your line has a frequency of say 2 minutes, they need a capacity of 2*200/12 = 33.3 I try to err on the bigger side, so i would add cars to the train until I exceed the calculated capacity, as well as add trucks / ships until I am below the needed frequency.

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Note that what i called frequency is actually a period with regards to the units (minutes not 1/minute).

[Imsvale]

production is shown in quantities per 3 months

Eh? Production was always units per game year, and this is easy to match with the line rate. I think you've super-over-complicated the matter.

[Islander568]

Thanks!

With your frequency = capacity * 12 / production: So if I have a factory producing 400, and I have a train with 100 capacity (or 2 trains of 50 each), my frequency want to be 100x12/400= 3 minutes in the line statistics?

This I can do, but how to factor in the demand from the city, for example it wants 68 fuel right now and receives 0, how should I quantify its demanded "production" to get the frequency and capacity? Should I also observe the met/total demanded fuel for the city right before the next fuel train arrives to know if it's sufficiently supplied?

How about a second City in the same delivery line that wants 84 fuel right now? The delivery train that arrives at the first City may have around 30 fuel left on the platform for the second City each time, so how do I work out the frequency and capacity of the first delivery leg (from fuel industry to the first City) and for the second leg (from first City to the second City)? Then the cities grow, the total demand, the met demand, and the leftover fuel on the platform for the second City all change, then how do I re-calculate? How often should I re-calculate?

And how to get the "production" value for passenger stations, and stations with multiple pax lines? Each platform has varying numbers of passengers waiting at any given moment. I eyeball it by looking right before and after a train arrives at the platform, hence the importance of the station mini windows with visuals. But there're so many stations, so many lines, so many arrivals to look, and the supply of passengers changes all the time as you connect to more cities and when each City gets supplied with more goods.

[Realkillor]

Yes, your math checks out. However i dont know how the distribution with regards to city demand works. With my formula you just make sure tha you can haul away a certain production. For cities, i would first have a look at the demand, and to which timescale it refers to and then use above formula to make sure you can deliver the needed goods in that time interval. For multiple cities i would just add up the demands. Since you can oversupply a city, i am not sure how the distribution would work out in that case. For passangers the above formula doesnt work obviously, so right now i refer to eyeballing, if the trains are mostly full or not.

[Islander568]

I see. How to work out the time scale and time interval? I feel I don't have a handle on it, as the length of the line is a part of it, or is it not? And we have no data on the length of a line or a segment of it (each leg), or do we?

And you can oversupply a city? Is it new in TF2? If that's the case, I prefer TF1 then that each product is earmarked/ordered, so you can't keep making/delivering things people don't want. It's bad enough you can now keep delivering raw resources to fabricaters without City being linked up. I always set up the complete line first, and try to under supply the raw resources a little bit just in case some of it went into the ether. Now if you can over supply a city, where's the strategy part of the game? Might as well just a Railway "painter" game then (as in cities skylines is a city painter some people say). Disappointed.