I thought it might be a useful addition to add a schedule randomizer so people could test their rail setups.
The idea is that once someone has the rails laid out, multiple train stations, many depots, etc, They can just click a button somewhere and the LTN dispatcher will act like they're hitting the liquor heavy for a while. Sttarts sending out trains from the depots to random providers and requestors (neither have to be real providers/requestors but real ones would be good, more on that in a sec) then back to the depot. Like normal, but random and many or ALL available trains at once
Could also do smarter routes using actual requester/provider info and variable traffic (1 per minute out or 5 per minute or who knows). You also (possibly) keep logs with LTN of how long trains stay in each station (or you could start tracking it) that you could use to get a more acurate traffic sim going. That data could be useful in otherways if you're not already collecting it.Benefits -
Stress test the rail system. Identify any potential bottle neck areas
Identify low traffic areas that might be good for a new high traffic factory
See how adding trains of different sizes may have an impact
I usually run 1-4-1 but I also sometimes add in 1-2-1s and 1-4-2-4-2-4-1s both of which can through a kink in things if the rail signals are not perfect.
Also testing of Crazy complex junctions or other things.
Would make it easy to identify any mistakes (wrong signal type, missed rail section (That one got me yesterday for 4 hours trying to figure it out)
See if there are any Long routes from different stops.
Drawbacks -
it's a change
will need work.Items actually getting transferred during the simulation.
I think this could be avoided by only sending fluid cars to item requestors/providers and item cars to fluid stops
Might have to create some more fluid cars for the sim to be accurate
Possibly create Artillery only trains in the same sizes as are being tested and only send those?
I have a use case now for it
I just re-vamped a 6 lane 4 way junction I came up with a while back.
- Capture123321.PNG (375.38 KiB) Viewed 645 times
- Grid.PNG (119.3 KiB) Viewed 645 times
Factories are planned to be off any of the connector lines (Not the junctions) and as many as can fit. The junctions are 7x7 chunks. Connector lines are 31 chunks long each. And that's the simplest it will ever be. It will only get more complex from there. I need to test getting from each possible point on a connection line to each possible other point on connection lines because there may be a factory at that point in the future. I'm going to add fake stations and manually set up some trains to hit all the stations in order for now just to test the paths. But your tool could do it so much better with this kind of addition.
Thanks!
