OK, back in town. missed my computer (and all of yous, of course) (and the DLS is down, heh).
Thank you all for clearing this up. Mass coming into the picture as of build 3.4 makes some sense. The MINs were part of the confusion as well as a clue to the answer (switching between tons, items and units):
The unit for bulk loads and liquid loads is liters. The mass tag of the commodity specifies the density in kilograms per liter.
Peter
However, when a commodity is used for loading/unloading with an industry track, MIN-BI-PL, the units are kilograms or liters.
John
The MIN objects use a traincar, defined in the settings, to calculate the units for displaying. For configuring queues in the config.txt (and most property pages) the units are
- for category-class IC (container) and IP (Passenger): number of units (pieces)
- for category-class IB (bulk) and IL (liquid): liters
Peter
I sorta thought that was what was going on: The size of hoppers and tank cars supported the idea of liters... then I'd run into a a streak of glaring exceptions (a 100 ton Quadhopper with a queue size of 9000 is my favorite). MIN's tons vs. units was pointing that way but it has some strange ideas about the densities of certain products (the examples of which escape me right now). Very good to know for sure.
The reason I ask is that I'm trying to put more realistic sized queues into Vulcan's most excellent Ore Carriers and Ore Barges. --- Have you seen these things? They slow load (like a minute or so for the barge, changeable in the config) and settle deeper into the water as the queue fills. Totally rad. --- What needs some fixing is the part where 2 hopper car-loads fills the barge and 10 or so fills the hold of the ships.
My half-fast research suggests 1500 tonnes for the barge, 5400 tonnes for the Whalebacks and 26,600 tonnes for the Edmond Fitzgerald. Superficial measurements of the barge tells me that 1500 cubic meters is about right.
SO:
For products lighter than water (more or less) volume is our constraining factor and a queue size of 1,500,000 liters is fine. (I just found out
here that Bituminous coal floats - 833 kg/cu.m ).
I have found that just using units works well, as I always max out the amounts available to load or unload. This of course doesn't work if you use the "external" system.
cheers,
Mike
Yeah, that's what I've been doing. Funny I never cared about GVW until there was a boat involved. If I'd seen a place to put 38800 liters of mercury into the poor old GATX tanker I woulda. Let's see at 13593 kg/cu.m (also found
here http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm) or 13.593 kg/liter, that comes to 527408.4kg. What's the max vehicle weight of the GATX? Less than that.
The trick here is going to be keeping from putting 1500 cu.m of Iron ore or Taconite pellets into a barge...
Just cause it fits...
