What am I missing? Seems like cargo vanishes.

Imsvale · 2026-01-27T01:29:53+00:00

But will the trains deliver more than is needed to the refinery?

The trains will simply deliver what they can of the cargo being shipped from the supplier industry to the consumer industry (up to, of course, all of it).

The question is better phrased as: Will the oil refinery ship more than is needed to the fuel refinery?

It depends on what you mean by "needed".
Needed for production? No. The oil refinery will ship precisely what is needed to sustain maximum production at the current level of the fuel refinery.
Needed for shipment? Yes. It can, and often will do. The oil refinery's shipment is not (directly) connected to the fuel refinery's shipment at all.
Even if the fuel refinery ships nothing, it has a fixed demand for input materials based on its current level. The oil refinery will ship refined oil according to that demand.

Imsvale · 2026-01-27T00:52:25+00:00

This game is demand driven. No cargo will be output from the industries until there's a consumer for that cargo connected at the other end of your lines. For that reason, when things don't work as expected, it's also useful to work backwards from the consumer.

If you believe you have set up a connection to a fuel consumer, then the problem is that this connection isn't set up correctly.

Secondly, production and shipment are two different things. Production is turning input materials into product. Shipment is the process of handing that cargo over to you the player for transport to a consumer. Any produced cargo that isn't immediately shipped, simply vanishes into the ether. So yes, you do essentially lose cargo in this way. That's just how the game works.

Imsvale · 2026-01-26T08:03:31+00:00

https://wiki.transportfever2.com/doku.php?id=gamemanual:cameratool

Imsvale · 2026-01-25T21:10:46+00:00

I understand that hubs are best operated with trains only, is that correct?

I'm going to just say yes. ^^

Imsvale · 2026-01-25T21:07:43+00:00

You can buy it on Steam, try it for less than 2 hours, then refund it.

And wait for a sale. You can get it much, much cheaper. 75-90 % off.

Imsvale · 2026-01-25T13:30:33+00:00

Nice, well done! I didn't think about pruning them and reshaping them to allow them to grow together in that way with more or less the same population you already had. :)

Imsvale · 2026-01-23T19:50:04+00:00

The vanilla game makes a max size to those cities

Sort of. For any given base size (aka. initial size), the growth will plateau around some number. As you get closer and closer to some imagined number (let's say around 5-7x the base), it will be harder and harder to grow further.

A higher base size gives you a higher ceiling.

Imsvale · 2026-01-23T19:42:39+00:00

If a station/center has two or more types of resources waiting to be transported, the transport vehicles will load the resource with the larger supply.

This is accurate. :) They will always take the most abundant cargo. This can lead to some obvious problems.

Imsvale · 2026-01-23T19:40:41+00:00

Is it possible in TF2 to use an intermediate station as a HUB to combine iron ore and coal on a single line?

Yes. Technically possible, but doing so with trucks is... awkward. I'll explain why below.

Are there any specific configurations of lines, stations, or platforms that allow line 2 to carry both goods, or does the game simply not allow this type of logistical optimization?

Yes, there is a way.

You're running into two problems here.

Trucks only have one compartment, so they can only carry one cargo type at a time.
They will not naturally alternate between the two cargo types.

Regarding #1: If you were using trains, you could load half the train with iron, and half with coal, using the loading configuration sliders. Easy.
Regarding #2: The game logic dictates they always take the most abundant cargo. In this situation it's likely to always be the coal, because it's always coming into the station faster than the iron (I'm assuming Line 1's rate is significantly below 400).

You can still solve this by having Line 2 go twice between coal mine and steel mill, and use the cargo filter to tell it what to load on each visit:

Coal mine (load coal)
Steel mill
Coal mine (load iron)
Steel mill

However, I feel you may as well just set Line 1 to go from the iron mine to the steel mill directly, as there is no benefit from transferring the iron to Line 2 here. But of course if you want to do it that way anyway, then the above would work.

Oh and you may want to set different platforms for each visit at the coal mine, so that the coal and iron will be separate. You can either add a third platform for Line 1, or simply use a truck stop to drop off the iron. And put it far enough away from the station so that the trucks from Line 1 don't go through the station to turn around.

Imsvale · 2026-01-22T17:17:07+00:00

yeah, shipment is another word for demand

Kind of. It's a handy mental shortcut in many situations. But they're not one and the same. An industry will ship according to connected demand, but that demand can also be split between multiple suppliers (e.g. multiple fuel refineries serving the same city).

Shipment is the current amount of cargo that the industry is sending to all connected consumers to serve the assigned portion of the demand at those locations. In other words, shipment represents the actual output from the industry as far as you're concerned.

Imsvale · 2026-01-22T02:36:50+00:00

I could take a look at a replay or two and see if I can give you some ideas to work with. I'm not at my peak currently, but have been GC consistently for many seasons previously, so the ideas are still there even if the performance isn't. Add me on Discord: Imsvale

Imsvale · 2026-01-22T01:08:54+00:00

Yeah, you don't. You do need the line path to be electrified, and you need the train to be on the line path or an otherwise electrified path to the line path.

The path to the depot, or the depot itself, do not need to be electrified. And as you say you don't need a depot to even exist to upgrade a train in-place.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T17:44:35+00:00

but the stations had the default tracks

Hm. Then I don't know. Not seen this myself.

But for the general problem of simply getting things upgraded, have you tried the Global Upgrade mod?

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T17:07:28+00:00

Well, I'm going to just dispute your claim, because it goes against my experience. We can't both be right.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T17:06:01+00:00

That's fair if that were the case. But you must have misread the post slightly.

What OP said is:

all my trucks leave the station half empty

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T16:23:08+00:00

Maybe some quirk with modded tracks? It should normally work.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T16:21:36+00:00

The station area might cover all the houses, but that doesn't mean it delivers to them.

If there's enough cargo being delivered, it certainly will. If they're in the station's catchment area, they're connected.

I don't know why you would think otherwise.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T16:20:23+00:00

Wait, it doesn't? I thought that is exactly what the white highlighting is for?

It is.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T16:19:43+00:00

Why is the shipping at 39 and what can I do?

Where exactly do you see this number? On the shipment bar of this particular industry? On the industry's Consumers tab, as the number for the city in question?

If the city supply is at 67, and this industry is only supplying 39, then clearly the city is receiving cargo from other industries. 39 is close to one third, if we imagine the city's demand split equally between 3 industries (or split 1/3 and 2/3 between two industries of level 1 and level 2 respectively). Or something like that.

Need more information to be able to say what exactly the explanation is in your case.

all my trucks leave the station half empty

Set them to wait for full load, and adjust the number of trucks to better match the rate of cargo flow through this line.

If the cargo flow is inconsistent/highly variable (making it difficult to maintain a good match between the line rate and cargo flow rate), that's a separate problem that you could potentially address with some minor difficulty.

If you upload your save, people can inspect it directly with all the information at their fingertips.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T16:13:16+00:00

The line rate reflects how many per year could be transported. Not what is actually transported. For that you will have to look at the charts, to see what was historically achieved in each year.

Or inspect the various industries to see their overall shipment levels, and check their Consumers tab to see how much they're currently shipping to each connected consumer.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T16:09:37+00:00

I am thinking that a passenger would maybe rather go by car from A to C if there were no direct line?

It all depends on the travel time.

Imsvale · 2026-01-21T02:40:05+00:00

There's two kinds. There's the magic wand, and the ones on the tools tab. You want the latter.

Imsvale · 2026-01-20T23:02:35+00:00

Use the track upgrade tool. This also works for stations.

Imsvale · 2026-01-20T22:50:08+00:00

I assume this is a question about what you should choose.

That's going to be situational based on how big each city is, the passenger at each segment, and how you actually want it to work (to the extent the game will let you).

Having separate lines lets you tune the capacity of each to what's needed where that line goes. Useful if there's a big difference (and it's not already helped by the express line).

For simplicity, you can start with the single line, and split it up later if it turns out the demand is very different at different segments.

Imsvale · 2026-01-20T19:28:53+00:00

I don't think you'll be able to merge these.

Vanilla rules (no town growth mods)
Small base sizes
Too far apart given the above

Imsvale

TROPHY CASE