Delivering oil to an oilfield

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Delivering oil to an oilfield

April 07, 2009, 06:18:01 am

I'm playing simutrans 102.0 with pak64. I have two oilfields (call them A,B) and a refinery (call it C) connected by a road that goes from A to B to C.
I have a truck (RenaultTH5 with a trailer to carry oil) scheduled to go from the freight yard at A to the one at B to the one at C. When the truck goes I observed the following situation:
1.The truck goes to A and filled with oil to 100% capacity. I get no money.
2.The truck goes to B and I get about 600$. No oil disappears from the freight yard at B and the truck is still fully loaded.
3.The truck goes to C, unloads all the oil and I get about 2300$.

Now my question is: Why do I get money when the truck arrives at B?
Am I delivering oil to oilfield B?
Am I get paid at B for the delivering between A and B and at C for the delivering form B to C i.e. I get 2900$ for transporting from A to C but in two parts?

Re: Delivering oil to an oilfield

Reply #1 – April 07, 2009, 06:56:58 am

Yes you a being paid for the portion of the trip between A and C that is completed by the time you reach stop B and then for the portion of the trip between B and C

You may want to considered adjusting your schedule A->C-B->C so that you get paid for delivering oil from each field or buy more trucks and have two schedules A->C and B->C
Trains could possibly be a better choice for transporting Oil due to the higher volume you could transport.

Ormac

Re: Delivering oil to an oilfield

Reply #2 – April 07, 2009, 07:21:54 am

The reason trips are paid in partial amounts is because (iirc) what would keep track of the full payment is thrown away when you save/load a game. In other words, trucks between B and C would get the $2300, but you'd lose the $600 when you reloaded (that is, no money at B, but instead of $2900 at C, only $2300)...

It's complicated, and there's historically been much debate on the best method to use, but this seems to have many advantages over other methods

Re: Delivering oil to an oilfield

Reply #3 – April 07, 2009, 08:00:29 am

Ormac, I usually use more trucks or a train, here I used only one truck to make the situation clear. Thank you and Isaac for the answers.

Re: Delivering oil to an oilfield

Reply #4 – April 07, 2009, 01:59:50 pm

Ahh, this is a confusing part of Simutrans, I know. What happens is that, every time that you stop somewhere, the revenue for all the goods/p****engers on board is calculated based on the distance between the last place where the vehicle/convoy stopped and the current stop, as a proportion of the total distance to the destination stop (the part about being as a proportion to the total distance to the destination stop was added recently).

So, if you load goods at A, take them in a truck to C, which is 30km away, but stop, on the way, at a completely disused station B (say, at the mid-way point), you will actually get paid half the money for the trip at station B, even though nothing is loaded or unloaded there.

The technical reason for this is that goods do not store the distance that they have already travelled, so the only way of measuring distance is to measure the distance between each stop at which your vehicle stops. This produces potentially confusing results, as the amount of revenue produced at each station does not correlate to the amount of goods delivered to that station.

I am currently working on a branched version of Simutrans, called Simutrans-Experimental. The next version of Simutrans-Experimental, which I hope to release within a week or two, will have a new way of calculating the revenue that will do away with this problem: the amount that will be earned at the destination station will be based on the revenue for the entire journey of the goods from their origin, not just from the last place where the vehicle stopped. See here for more details.