Does TLR recognize and assign tasks to Consists entering from a Portal or iPortal

[KLawson03]

I have a TRS 22 Trainz Plus "Distribution" or "Transfer" Route that requires Consists to appear through a Portal. I can stage them if I have to but I am wondering if TLR / Dispatch Manager will automatically recognize commodities after arrival and Dispatch to Industries? Once I have figured out how to disguise Locos as Semi Trucks and delivery vehicles and drive them to unload and load commodities (as road vehicles) and using Invisible track to drive them over roads.....Is next step to completing Distribution or Transfer from Rail to Road.
Thank you in Advance for your replies

 

[wreeder]

I don't know if TLR knows anything about portals as destinations but my experience is that any rolling stock added to a route manually while a session is running is recognized by the dispatcher and added into the pool of rolling stock. The dispatcher will make use of the newly added cars to route them to an industry that has a commodity ready to ship. I have not tested to see if loaded cars are treated in the same way.

 

[JCitron]

I don't see why these would be any different than any other consist on the route. Trains entering from any kind of portal are "blind" until they completely exit the portal. Once they exit, they act like any other AI-controlled trains. You will have to assign them to the dispatcher yourself I think unless there's a way to automate this. If not, I have a feeling this will be something some smart script writer will figure out.

 

[wreeder]

That was exactly what I was thinking as well. My biggest concern is that once a driver is coupled to a car and assigned tasks, there is no working methodology to change to another type of car to be assigned a different task. The driver just keeps being assigned the same task as long as the industries can produce and consume the commodity. Every now and again I see a driver display the text of "returning car" and I assume that means to return the car to the location where it was found but that never happens. Instead the same task is assigned by the dispatcher. Perhaps slowing down the consumption rate might help.

 

[JCitron]

That was exactly what I was thinking as well. My biggest concern is that once a driver is coupled to a car and assigned tasks, there is no working methodology to change to another type of car to be assigned a different task. The driver just keeps being assigned the same task as long as the industries can produce and consume the commodity. Every now and again I see a driver display the text of "returning car" and I assume that means to return the car to the location where it was found but that never happens. Instead the same task is assigned by the dispatcher. Perhaps slowing down the consumption rate might help.

There's that issue that I didn't think about, and then there's the bigger issue of AI trains clogging the route and getting stuck as the AI dispatcher grabs various consists if there's an automatic way of doing that if multiples of the same consist get extruded from a portal. The way around something like that would be run TLR dispatcher for N-number of times before sending the consist off to another portal or elsewhere using some kind of scripted setup.

 

[KLawson03]

Thank you all for your swift replies! I'm trying to test if the Dispatch Manager will recognize and AUTOMATICALLY assign Dispatch once becomes an actual consist available from Portal as a loaded and ready to supply Industry

 

[KLawson03]

And another question, Can I add manual commands to Driver/consist if Automatically assigned in Dispatch Manager... ex..... after completion of a Task(s) like.....<Return to Staging.......and wait>

 

[wreeder]

And another question, Can I add manual commands to Driver/consist if Automatically assigned in Dispatch Manager... ex..... after completion of a Task(s) like.....<Return to Staging.......and wait>

From my experience the answer is no, when a driver is under dispatcher control any commands in the driver's queue are simply ignored. You used to be able to add commands to the list of commands assigned by the dispatcher but they were ignored and then erased when a new task was assigned. I haven't tried that experiment in phase 2 of TLR.

Edit: I just tried this in Phase 2 and it appears to be working correctly.
Here is how to repeat what I am doing.
In the Driver Control Center, choose the driver you want to modify. Click on the button for View Driver Details.
In the newly opened window, you see the dispatch assigned task as a string of driver commands.
At the top look for Dispatch Status. Click on the downward arrow to open a menu and choose to pause the task.
At the end of the string of driver commands you will now see a tiny grey downward arrow. Click on it and it opens the command menu listing all the command available for the session. Choose a command such as "wait for 1 minute" and it appears at the end of the string of commands.
You can click and drag the new command to any place between the existing commands and let go.
Go back to Dispatch Status and click to open the list and choose resume task.

It will now execute the added command in sequence along with the dispatcher assigned tasks.
I successfully added a run around train to the end of the command string and it executed after the other tasks and then the dispatcher assigned a new task to the driver.

 

[wreeder]

after completion of a Task(s) like.....<Return to Staging.......and wait>

As I say above you can add any driver command that is available in the session. If you have a Trackmark named Staging then you could add a driver command such as "Drive to Trackmark Staging" and it will execute it. You can add a wait for (period of time). Be aware that once that period of time expires, it will be assigned a new task by the dispatcher.

 

[KLawson03]

Thank you so much! that will definitely answer my second question I will add ...Drive to Portal out; or staging and as you said, it will be called up when it meets requirements if in Staging.