Improve Switching Lane Behaviour

InfraSpace InfraSpace General Discussion
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One of the most severe problems I’ve been having with the game is how trucks switch lanes. This has been causing serious traffic issues in my saves and so far I’ve found no solution to the problem.

Problem 1. No matter what road you’re using, trucks will come to a full stop to switch to a lane. This will back up traffic since any other truck will also have to stop. This causes truck lines to form because only one truck can move at a time, with all other starting and stopping.
Solution 1. Allow trucks to maintain their momentum when switching lanes. While not required, a simple lane switching animation would be nice too.

Problem 2. I’ve never seen a truck switch lanes outside of intersections. Because of this all trucks are forced to switch lanes only at specific points in a road, clogging said point because of Problem 1.
Solution 2. This one I’m not quite sure which solution would be best since each one would require varying amounts of coding. Allowing trucks to switch lanes in all nodes (regardless of intersections) should be the least time-consuming and easiest to implement (don’t quote me on that though because I’m no game designer).
Allowing us to decide which lanes go where in all nodes would also be a welcome change, as it would allow us to prevent trucks from switching lanes where we don’t want them to.

Problem 3. Trucks can make U-Turns in any roads at anytime, and a line of trucks wanting to do U-Turns will do so at the exact same point. And as mentioned in Problem 1, each truck will come to a full stop to do a U-Turn, causing a line of trucks that moves a truck at a time.
Solution 3. I believe Solution 1 would also solve Problem 3 (trucks keep their momentum in a U-Turn), although it would look a bit unrealistic. Another option would be to make trucks only U-Turn at intersections that allow it or at the end of roads (node with a single attachment).

Problem 4. One thing I have noticed is that solving all these problems could lead to a new one, and one very noticable to all players: it could make so no trucks going from Point A could reach Point B.
Solution 4. However I would argue that letting players know (with a simple flashing warning perhaps) that Point A can’t reach Point B or vice versa would be a better alternative than the system we currently have.

All problems previously mention can boil down to trucks being able to ignore or bypass the rules of the players’ road infrastructure if it would ever cause Point A to be unacessible to Point B despite both points being connected by a road.
While it’s understable why that’s the case (“buildings connected to roads can always send trucks to each other” is simple to understand), it ultimately leads to many situations where players want to have more control over which path trucks will take (mainly to solve or split traffic) but are unable to, since trucks don’t have to follow traffic rules if it would ever cause Point A to be unacessible to Point B.

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It seems like you’re describing trucks halting at an intersection and then teleporting to another lane.
This happens when the initial path is no longer accessible because the road network has changed and they need to recalculate their path. Fix for this is on the list, same as making U-turns less probable.

Trucks change lanes on the road (not at intersections) all the time, without teleport, but I’m guessing this has not been a cause for traffic in your save yet, so you maybe haven’t noticed it? They are very quick.

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Hey Daniel, what the OP is describing is exactly the same thing I noted on my series of posts 2 days ago about the same theme.

Trucks changing lanes and making U-turns in the middle of roads and causing a large jamming behind them. I kinda agree with what the OP said, mostly with their solution for point “4”: if a truck couldn’t go from A to B without changing lanes/making U-turns outside of intersection, let B starve and make an alert at A saying their trucks want to go to B but can’t.

BTW, please keep going with the game - it’s one of the better both in factory games and traffic games.

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Hi @cpeosphoros yeah I saw that, it’s similar but not the same.

As far as I understand the OP is seeing cars halt at nodes and intersection and teleport. (he says it only happens at intersections and they have no animation). You’re talking about lane changing on the road.

As I said, we’ll deal with U-turns and the halt+teleport behavior.
Lane changes are more complicated, we can not just outright forbid them completely because building streets that work would be too hard. The best solution is either using faster roads or taking traffic off the problematic area.

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Maybe add a difficult option for that? I mean, on normal, keep the current behavior. On hard, forbid out of intersection lane change/U-turns?

I guess, for experienced players, having builds starving for badly designed networks should be an option.

In the mean time, yes, faster roads and derouting are the workarounds - but, still, even for that to work better, the problem I pointed out in the other thread about lorries choosing to change lanes instead of taking the correct off-ramps should be addressed (I, of course, will not tell you what priority that should take on your work load, lol).

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Alright, let’s talk about this in the other thread to keep it organized.

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