Some problems, changes possible?

[seastar]

So overall the game is really great. However, there are some things that I don’t really like. Specifically, it affects everything that can hardly be solved or fixed by the player. This mainly concerns mining, production, delivery and of course the cities.

The first thing I noticed was that despite collection and distribution centers, established urban areas and resource allocations, the delivery vehicles drive all over the country. In most cases, nearby production sites are NOT served (even though they have demand), so that nearby homes cannot be supplied. This then results in a downgrading of the habitats and a very rapid migration of the population, which occurs every second. As a result, the number of workers is decreasing rapidly and factories etc. are working with less efficiency. Unfortunately, experimenting with different options didn’t help much.

It would be possible to partially offset this deficit if workers could be moved from one factory to another. But this is only possible if you change the production overview. Nevertheless, the “important” companies are not fully staffed and the workers then end up where they are not necessarily urgently needed.

That’s why, in my opinion, it would make sense to be able to transfer workers directly. Because I think it makes sense to temporarily shut down production facilities that are not absolutely necessary until there are more workers again. At the same time, one could also supply the residential areas and put some not so important technologies on hold in order to reactivate them at a later date.

In the production overview, it becomes clear that urgently needed resources or parts cannot be manufactured, so that new factories have to be built again because production cannot be increased, but can only be compensated for by additional new construction. Of course, this also leads to a huge increase in road traffic and the construction of new roads, with the result that you suddenly have a huge road network to get everything running again.

The next point is the railway lines. Just as you can name the individual train lines, it should actually be possible for the trains to be named accordingly, because you often cannot determine which train is currently pulling into one of the stations. For the points mentioned here, it would often not be a bad idea to reduce the number of trains on individual railway routes so that traffic chaos does not arise.

Such traffic and transportation situations would be a nightmare for traffic planners in real life. But because I’m not a developer and I would like to play InfraSpace according to my needs and/or ideas, I would like these options if they can be implemented. So, in my opinion, every player could implement their own preferences, needs, etc.

[SilasOfBorg]

Districts are your friend. With districts you can easily control which factories serve which areas. I actually don’t want the ability to micro workers; if the ability were there I’d probably use it and drive myself insane.

Also, I’ve never cared which train is which as long as the goods are getting delivered. You probably have a significantly different train setup from mine, with trains from several different lines serving the same stops? We do have the ability to colour-code our train routes; have you given that a try?

[seastar]

Hi, thanks for the answer. I’ve already tried everything, created districts, assigned delivery routes and also colored the trains. Since I also tried to separate industrial and residential areas, multiple train lines are also required. My train lines are probably structured a little differently, but they generally don’t necessarily deliver what is needed in certain areas. I’ve already made a number of different attempts and started trying out a lot of new games, but I haven’t yet figured out how to allocate the resources to the right areas. At times I have the feeling that these settings are ignored or simply don’t work. During my professional life, I constantly had to deal with these kinds of logistics. Hence my idea of ​​being able to transfer workers. It was the same with us. After all, I already have over 520 hours of playing the game under my belt.

[SilasOfBorg]

So, one thing that took me forever to pick up on is that district rules not only control what goes where, they also control what doesn’t go where. It was not immediately obvious to me that I had to drag a line from the district to itself to STOP the export of a particular good, and this caused me immense confusion for a long time. Maybe that’s your issue? Apologies if you already know this, but it’s the one thing about districts that I tripped over myself, to great frustration.

After that it was just understanding distribution centers and going with the suggested cardinal rule of “never have a building potentially served by more than one distribution center” – it will pick one semi-randomly on game load. It may even pick one that cannot possibly deliver to it (no path).

Best of luck, I’m having a blast with the game. My current city is a stable 180 top level habitats served by ring roads with incoming axles branching into various subdivisions and all consumer goods produced just outside the ring road to ensure minimum order/delivery delay. I might be able to scale it up to 360 (only half the inner city is currently occupied) but I think the ring roads/superhighways would be overloaded and cause total collapse (something that’s happened several times already during design and testing…lol).

So much fun.

[seastar]

Hello, I’ve already tried all of this and I’m already familiar with the “circumstances” with the districts. Because I built my industry near mining sites (and also separated it from residential areas), so only the materials that are necessary for this industry are processed here, the resources were only allocated to the corresponding districts and companies and also those that were necessary for further processing. Nevertheless, care was taken to keep the distances short and to create train lines if necessary.
Even if I allocated water, oil, etc. to the industrial district to remain for production and the quantities were sufficient, they were still picked up and delivered somewhere or a delivery was made even though there was no need for them. And often resources are delivered everywhere, only the companies in the immediate vicinity have not received anything, even if they were marked as needing delivery. (You can see it if you click on the storage icon, for example at a mine)
Manufactured finished products, such as computers, were then allocated for delivery to the residential area, but unfortunately they were always delivered to where there were already sufficient quantities, but not to where they were actually needed, and so the habitats were then downgraded again , because the distribution center there remained empty, despite the adjusted delivery radius.
Hence my idea of naming trains according to their affiliation to the individual lines, because they often delivered goods that didn’t belong here and were stored in the distribution center, while the others simply remained empty. These were precisely those who had a need. And in between there are endless traffic jams because all my vehicles are going back, but searching for where the problem is just takes too much time.
For me personally, it would be more practical to only have to intervene when necessary and still get an overview before having to search forever because I’m still working but want to switch off every now and then. And unfortunately I don’t have time to concentrate too much on the game.
But as I already wrote, I still really like the game and my wishes and ideas are now known. It wasn’t a criticism on my part, just an observation.

By the way, I also created a kind of ring road around my settlements and several 3-lane roundabouts to calm the traffic a little. It works quite well so far, but it does become problematic at some point if you select in the settings that vehicles drive back after delivery and therefore require slightly different traffic planning. This challenge alone ensures that you never get bored.

[SilasOfBorg]

Ah… I think I see what you mean. I share your frustration in that the resource allocation seems to go according to “find the closest building that isn’t FULL” and service that one, even if one next door is about to downgrade.

edit: that leads me to overproducing consumer goods by around 15%, which even then takes some time to propagate through a community. You can watch this happen in real time if you click on a consumer goods producer and highlight the available destinations.

[jb2]

Now i have made zones aka aliminum and car for condola, So it should send it to condola and bottom one should send to train, but it just doesnt do it. so i am obviously missing something here.

[seastar]

Hello jb2, I had a similar problem, but my cable cars (condolas?) that mainly mine uranium and adamantium work perfectly because both mining areas are on steep mountains. To ensure safe delivery to train stations, I have NOT built any roads that lead outside of these areas. In your case I would suggest following the road from the aluminum mine to the surrounding area and breaking this connection so that only one remains that leads to the mountain station. Normally the vehicles then transport from the valley station to the railway line.

The picture shows one of my uranium mines. The roads in the mining area only lead to the cable car and from the valley station to a free entrance or exit to the train station. This ensures that ONLY uranium is delivered to the train station and my industrial buildings on the mountain are supplied. The opposite entrances or exits lead to my industrial and residential areas, which are all at ground level. If you have a lot of railway lines that you use to transport mining products, I would recommend that you do not create roads that lead to other areas. Otherwise it may happen that the cable cars are not supplied because the delivery vehicles drive to other customers who are not supplied via the railway lines. But here it’s time to try it out. And I’ve already spent over 600 hours with this game, trying out a lot until I found a solution. But everything still doesn’t work the way I imagine. Best regards

[jb2]

yeah breaking the road forces it to use the rails but then no workers get to the mine in my case…even funnier my aluminum mine bypassed my gondola and train station and some go via road and some go via my copper trains station, so it’s puzzling to why its doing it,

[seastar]

Hi, you first have to check all the road connections at the mines to see whether they can be reached by road. Normally I would connect the aluminum cable car to the train station alone. My mines only serve the train stations and cannot be reached by roads from outside, so they are only distributed across the individual trains. Your streets suggest that the other mines and train stations can also be reached by vehicle. Then of course they also drive to the other mines (it’s hard to see in the picture). Workers then come to the aluminum mine via the cable car. Same with me. It’s best to try it out and save the game again and again so that you can test it again and again. I have spent over 600 hours with the game and have a lot of train lines that are connected to each other and also large train stations built in the main centers for trains to deliver from different areas. Especially when there are large distances. This way you can separate residential and industrial areas and if you do it cleverly, the supply chains will also work without any problems. In addition, you do not need to create your own areas (city districts) for the mining areas.

[Chieri]

In your setup, the blue route is a lot shorter and therfore faster than the red route.
Thats why the trucks will use the blue route.
If you increase the length of the blue route so it is longer than the red route, the trucks will change to the gondola.

Districts only work between a producer and a consumer. The gondola building is not a consumer, so putting the gondola building inside a district will not work.

[jb2]

yeah kinda figured producer and consumer part. so by default they would take the shortest route and not depended on volume? mmm interesting…
also the red vs blue route…they not even going to the first train station thats totally ignored but gone part to the second station and part via road.changed the road. trucks ignore first station by gondola. ignores copper station but climbs on by the chem station…weird

[Chieri]

@jb2

so by default they would take the shortest route

Cars will always take the route that requires the least amount of travel time.
That is not necessary the shortest route.
Traffic jams are not measured, the only calculation done is road speed divided by travel distance.

If you use trains, the holding time of a train in a station is included in the speed calculation.
The cars use the road because the travel time is faster than with the train.
Trains are only useful for longer distance travels.

[Ant]

You humans are making some excellent points! To summarize and add a couple of my own observations:

Traffic will always take the shortest physical route. This means if your regular road is less grid-units long, your cars won’t take the slightly longer super highways.

Here’s the thing about districts import/export rules. You don’t need them. Use your districts to check the resources’ production within them.

Use distribution centers to move them around your map.

If your units aren’t flowing to a building, check district rules. If you export sand and use it within the district, you have to tell the district that you want to use it. In district mode, click within that district; drag to another spot in that same district, release the mouse. A green arrow will appear.

2nd thing to check is distribution centers. When you click on the DC serving it, does the building turn green? If not, it might be staving.

Check physical routes. If you were in a car, could you drive from that factory to that home?

Hope that helps someone! Keep enticing InfraSpace! Or, as my boyfriend calls it, “Space Game!”

[jb2]

i also found my collection point and distribution point disconnected. now pop kept falling all way down to 20 and wont go back up. i switched every things and delted virtually all water and oxy.lol
ed. the pipes messing around with transport of oxy and water. delted them now pop climbing slowly

[jb2]

yeah dc work until they auto disconnect from collection center