As you can see on these screenshots, there is 3 line road coming from distribution center.
The road splits into 3 separate one line roads each leading truck to their destination.
The issue is that trucks don’t align themselves to the line of their first turn upon leaving the building.
First screenshot show a truck that is on a middle line and will be going left road but, for some reason, want to change lines TWICE, like WTF???
Second screenshot shows a truck that is on a left line and will be going middle road creating traffic jam on a middle line.
This becomes huge issue when dealing with large amount of resources, making it impossible to plan smooth ride of every truck.
The issue is especially pronounced for train stations that unload mixed resources
My suggestion is trucks should appear on a line of their first turn.
For the truck from the first screenshot it will be left line as the truck will go left road.
For the truck from the second screenshot it will be middle line as the truck will go middle road.
Without the fix traffic jams are unavoidable…
In particular for the first screenshot, it looks like your intersection (that’s where the road splits into 3) allows the right lane to turn left. Click the intersection to check the lane settings. If each lane can only go to the appropriate road then this is really not smart behavior. If your lane settings are incorrect, then first try fixing those and see what happens.
As for the second case, I doubt this will be fixed. Looks like the truck is doing the correct thing: it wants to go to the middle road so it tries to switch to the middle lane. Already putting the trucks on the correct lane when they leave the building sounds nice but is a pathfinding problem and also an unrealistic cheat. If the cars were loaded on the train in a specific order (say a pretty random one) then they must also be unloaded in a specific order (again, a somewhat random one).
If this weren’t the case then the train station would work as a Magic traffic sorter. Your roads can’t do that so why should your station? Also if it could, then it works just move the traffic jam from the small 3 lane road section outside the station to inside the station. Nothing gained. I suggest making the 3 lane road stretch wider so cars have more time to switch lanes. This hopefully improves things for you.
None of them allow changing lines or turns as you can see
Regarding second screenshot, I actually can make truck produced by specific building enter the train station from specific line. I didn’t do that in this case but I tried that in one of my older games that unfortunately incompatible with current version.
Thing is this, I don’t need traffic sorter, I can sort it myself, I can make a truck go from one building to another by specific line of a road so that the truck won’t change lines ever and won’t interact with trucks on other lines. However, if I add distribution center or train station to the mix, I get random line on the output. That defies promised smoothness
I was talking about the first screenshot but good that you checked the other node as well. It seems everything is well with your setup so it really is a shortcoming of the game. No clue why the game is doing that. Maybe there’s some residue from before the station so the truck might think it’s in a different lane than it actually is?
Regarding the second case I don’t have much more to add except try to see this randomness as a challenge rather than a broken promise. Things don’t work as you expect them? Well then spend your energy trying to fix them!
As a hint on what that may look like, you can first of all try to do without distribution and collection centers. They didn’t exist in early access and were only added because so many people asked for warehouses But I can guarantee you that with the right setup it is possible to play on the highest difficulty and still run a super smooth settlement of huge size without any collection or distribution center.
As for trains, you can actually also get by without them easily. But I can see why you would want to use them for their coolness factor alone. I also used them successfully before on pretty high loads. You may need to use multiple exits of a single station to accomplish what you want or make the outgoing road longer, like I suggested before.
I hope this helps. You seem to have a pretty good understanding of the game already, I’m sure with a bit of tinkering you can make things work (except case 1, which hopefully gets fixed).
I was playing perfectly without warehouses.
I was promised smoothness but got randomness instead.
Why would I use them then.
I’m baffled.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
For large building projects like the spaceship modules, you can use them to build a stockpile of components for the next module while the current one is finishing up.
Ensuring a ready local supply of rare minerals close to a production site rather than waiting for long-haul deliveries when the incoming storage runs dry.
Even if the traffic were smarter on leaving the building, given how large the footprints are, I would be skeptical of using them for simple supply chains.
But I can guarantee you that with the right setup it is possible to play on the highest difficulty and still run a super smooth settlement of huge size without any collection or distribution center.