[1.04b1] Traffic Sign Working Intermittently

[ramnblam]

Hi this is a new game I started and am having trouble with the traffic signs, sometimes they work and sometimes they are having no effect.

I wanted to block off the southern road from my city so more supplies would reach the troops to the west, but no bueno.

[Malevolence]

Indeed; that appears to be a terrible error if all LP's are moving out from Central.

Are any LP's coming from other Truck Stations toward Central?

[ramnblam]

That's the starting city and the only one I've got. No other truck stations. Never had this problem with traffic signs until now.

[GodwinW]

This is a result of the way Logistics work.

Traffic signs only work at crossroads. Or forks, splits, w/e. Not on straight lines. The 80% you set the traffic sign to means that 80% of the logistics has to go down another path. But since logistics points cannot reverse course and go back where they came from (this would make no sense in the design because it would mean you can solve bottlenecks by putting a 40% sign behind it.. that would be quite unworkable), the only course of action they have is to say: oh well 80% of us goes no other way because there's nothing: let's all continue.

Edit: A full 100% sign does block btw. But once you allow some % to continue if there's no other way it'll all flow through because there's no other way.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: GodwinW

This is a result of the way Logistics work.

Traffic signs only work at crossroads. Or forks, splits, w/e. Not on straight lines.

Was this a change in some v1.03-beta? I may not have placed a traffic sign like this and noticed.

However, if this is true (and I believe you are correct), the interface should not allow such a traffic sign.

[zgrssd]

Supplies will never flow back.
If they have literally no other way to go and there is no different directions to choose from (or they both have the same % of blockage), they will just ignore traffic signs.

The Crossing near Bezet could just redirect all teh excess towards Bezet.

But for all the other ones:
Where would supply capacity go, if not ahead?

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Supplies will never flow back.
If they have literally no other way to go and there is no different directions to choose from (or they both have the same % of blockage), they will just ignore traffic signs.

The Crossing near Bezet could just redirect all teh excess towards that asset.
But for all the other ones:
Where would supply capacity go, if not ahead?

Nothing about the traffic signs implies backflow. The truck points could simply stop as directed by the sign.

One or the other, the trucks should not ignore the traffic signs or the establishment of the traffic signs should be unavailable in the first place under those conditions.

The issue is not best course of action, the issue is that interface does not convey a consistent behavior to the player's command. Failing a command silently is bad design.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Supplies will never flow back.
If they have literally no other way to go and there is no different directions to choose from (or they both have the same % of blockage), they will just ignore traffic signs.

The Crossing near Bezet could just redirect all teh excess towards that asset.
But for all the other ones:
Where would supply capacity go, if not ahead?

Nothing about the traffic signs implies backflow. The truck points could simply stop as directed by the sign.

Why would you ever want to limit the throughput for truckpoints on a straight road?
You want supplies to go as far as possible. You only decide the rough direction.

Cutting a size 400 line off after 3 hexes would serve no purpose.

I agree on the UI Update, but why would you even want to do that?

[Malevolence]

Nothing that I wrote has anything to do with a why. Why does not matter.

It's naive design to assume a player would never want to do something, therefore ignore it.

The better response is, "I never thought someone would try that!" and then fix it.

[GodwinW]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

Nothing that I wrote has anything to do with a why. Why does not matter.

It's naive design to assume a player would never want to do something, therefore ignore it.

The better response is, "I never thought someone would try that!" and then fix it.

Agree with that in general.

It would be fine if that percentage of LIS just stops continuing, it wouldn't break anything.

But it's friendlier to disregard the sign, especially now that we have infrastructure demolition.
This means someone could forget about a sign and kill fork (so that it's a straight line).
In this specific case the system has your back.

So I'm not sure it isn't already the best way possible: just cause of some mild confusion if it's being examined in this way.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: GodwinW

Agree with that in general.

It would be fine if that percentage of LIS just stops continuing, it wouldn't break anything.

But it's friendlier to disregard the sign, especially now that we have infrastructure demolition.
This means someone could forget about a sign and kill fork (so that it's a straight line).
In this specific case the system has your back.

So I'm not sure it isn't already the best way possible: just cause of some mild confusion if it's being examined in this way.

If that is the intent (and I think it is), then the interface should not allow the player to place the traffic sign in the first place.

[GodwinW]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

If that is the intent (and I think it is), then the interface should not allow the player to place the traffic sign in the first place.

That would be great actually, if the interface of the Traffic Sign only allowed a 100% block there (for whatever reason.. maybe a sort of map-reminder to yourself?), and explained that any other percentage wouldn't do anything.

I'm not sure the UI can handle such things so it might be quite some work. But yes it would be great

[Malevolence]

So what am I doing differently here? This is the Preview Points map layer view.

By using a 100% block traffic sign, it blocks all truck points.

[GodwinW]

You're doing nothing differently.

But maybe you didn't read my edit in my first post in this thread, above?

To quote that one again: "Edit: A full 100% sign does block btw. But once you allow some % to continue if there's no other way it'll all flow through because there's no other way."

That's also why I wrote: "That would be great actually, if the interface of the Traffic Sign only allowed a 100% block there (for whatever reason.. maybe a sort of map-reminder to yourself?), and explained that any other percentage wouldn't do anything."

[Malevolence]

... and by blocking 95% it blocks nothing. That's just odd. I don't think that was intended.

... Ninja'd my big reveal!

[GodwinW]

Yes, you haven't read my posts thoroughly [:'(]

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: GodwinW

Yes, you haven't read my posts thoroughly [:'(]

Yes, I did. I was proving it with a test. [;)]

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Why would you ever want to limit the throughput for truckpoints on a straight road?
You want supplies to go as far as possible. You only decide the rough direction.

I remembered a use case. In order to view the preview points layer of only one truck station. I sometimes block straight roads to simply find the best location for supply bases.

Because I always block 100%, I never noticed this odd behavior with less than 100%.

[GodwinW]

Hm but I think you missed that edit otherwise you'd already have known that 100% traffic signs would block a straight line.

And your use case is fine, perfectly ok to do that, but you can also select a specific Truck Stop in the overview, it's just below the buttons for the different overviews.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: GodwinW

Hm but I think you missed that edit otherwise you'd already have known that 100% traffic signs would block a straight line.

And your use case is fine, perfectly ok to do that, but you can also select a specific Truck Stop in the overview, it's just below the buttons for the different overviews.

Yes, I missed that little log assets windows for weeks until zgrssd or someone mentioned it. [:@]