Matrix Games Forums

DTurtle wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 2:34 pm So, you have some logistical network going out from your SHQ and it is going through some cities. You want to be relatively careful when those cities have their own logistical assets (which they should!). After all, when the points from a truck station meet another truck station those points are refocused - resetting all their AP but also losing at least 25% of their points. The same goes for rail stations.

The last thing you want to do is this:

(Adjusted a bit from a real case).
So we have four Rail Stations 1 (each providing 2000 rail points) and two Rail Stations 2 (each providing 4000 rail points). That is a total of 16000 rail points.

However when we add together the three legs going out from this system we only have 2906 + 459 + 7502 points: a total of 10806 points leaving this network to the other outlying zones! We already lost more than five thousand points through refocusing!
In fact we can look at the individual stations and see that the rail station in the center (sitting on the SHQ) lost almost all rail points:

Only 693 of the original 4000 points made it out!

So what do we do instead?
Well, the obvious solution would be to simply have a level 3 or 4 station in the SHQ and not have built all those level 1 stations at all.

But, how about this:

I think that the basic idea is clear: Have a main route (that runs through the SHQ), with all other stations sitting one hex off of that route, adding their rail points to the main route. A traffic sign stops the points from diverting off the route to those stations. I also added some traffic signs on the direction away from the SHQ so that more points go towards the SHQ (after all, that is where we need the most points).

So what does this result in?
4698 + 2775 + 6670 = 14143 rail points leaving this part of the network. We only lost 1857 points - because we are rerouting some stuff from the outside towards the SHQ, which refocuses them. We can adjust how many points we want to have in the SHQ - the higher the proportion, the higher the lost rail points.

There is one slight disadvantage when you use this approach of having the logistical asset sitting beside the main route: Usually you build that asset in a city. And as you can see in the screenshot above, the amount of points available where that asset is sitting are only those produced in the asset. However, we can address this:

This way, the city gets the full number of points available on the main route! You don't even have to have the rail station right next to the city, but anywhere along the route where needed (though having it right next to the city will have it have the maximum amount of rail points available).
As I noted on the picture, you can also do this with truck stations. However, you will need to have a lvl 1 truck station mothballed in order to stop the civilians from building a new one. Also, usually trucks are a lot more AP constrained so you need to refocus a lot more anyway. So it might only be useful in certain use cases.