Thank you for the detailed reply.
After some more testing, I have another report on the
Load/Unlad all cars at this industry track function.
Earlier today, after booting my computer and starting the test route, I noticed that all of a sudden the Multi Industry II was unloading the boxcar. Then, emptying the boxcar by editing it directly in Driver, it unloaded it again. However, I was not able to replicate this, except once after editing the route, moving the boxcar, and exiting the game and restarting. Different combinations of the above did not produce consistant results. The asset's "Activity Logs" do not show much other than repeated messages stating that the user reset the time scale from 0x to 1x, or that the user reset the game clock. The logs seem to just show that each boxcar printed a message when it loaded/unloaded.
After starting a new blank route and placing two Multi Industry IIs: one for loading and one for unloading. I set the properties for both as follows:
Note that I have NOT checked the box for operating one car at a time.
I added 5 new Custom 40' Boxcars as above, with a length to fit the 250 ft loading area. (The crates are to visually indicate in Driver the boundaries.) All were initially placed outside the loading area and driven into the loading area and stopped as shown above.
The result is as follows, and suggests a 30 second interval:
Start:
Custom boxcar 1 (red, furthest from the loco) loaded after 0:29
Boxcar 5 (orange) loaded at 0:59
Boxcar 2 (green) loaded at 1:30
Boxcar 7 (white & grey) loaded at 2:00
[Boxcar 6, (the CN) didn't load after a further 1 minute elapsed, so I drove away. A message on the corner subsequently indicated that a car was skipped.)
Train moved to unloading track (arriving with 4 loaded cars):
Boxcar 1 unloaded at 0:10
Boxcar 5 unloaded at 0:40
Boxcar 2 unloaded at 1:34
Boxcar 3 unloaded at 2:36
Train moved back to loading track, all cars empty:
Boxcar 7 loaded at 0:23
Boxcar 5 loaded at 0:53
Boxcar 2 loaded at 1:23
Boxcar 6 loaded at 1:53
[Again, this is leaving one car empty after a further 2 minutes elapsed from the last successful loading event. But oddly, not the same boxcar.]
For each loading/unloading event, the interval between each good being removed was 1 second, seeming to indicate that the "process duration" intervals are correct, only the "begin after" interval is not working.
Next, I went into Surveyor > Edit Session > Restart all rules, and directly edited a boxcar to remove its load (so, now there are 2 empties, 3 loaded). Back in driver, that boxcar then loaded after 30 seconds, but the other one didn't. After editing another boxcar in driver to remove its load, it did not reload. However, mysteriously, the boxcar that had failed to load before now did load.
Next, I drove to the unload track with the log open, and all 5 boxcars unloaded, starting at 0:05 and unloading at 30 second intervals until all finished. This is the only time the track successfully acted on all 5 cars.
Next, I returned to the loading track, and it again loaded only 4 of 5 boxcars. I edited the unloading track to an interval of 0.1 minute (6 seconds) and then drove the train with 4 loaded boxcars back to the unloading track. After 6 minutes, no unloading had occurred. I switched to Surveyor, made a superficial edit to the route, and saved the route and session. Opening the route again with no other changes, after 2 minutes the 4 boxcars had unloaded successfully at 30 second intervals. Seems to indicate something about editing the MI2 caused it to stop working. Repeating the process of driving, loading, driving, unloading worked as before (though, usually, the MI2 omits to load/unload one of the cars, often in the middle of the consist).
The log doesn't show any error message. In the image above, the message about "skipping" refers to boxcars and locos that did not have any loads, so driving off early cannot explain the "skipping" aspect. Note that there are 5 boxcars in the consist, so it consistently failed to load or unload 1 of the cars. If the user arrives with only 1 car, and it doesn't load/unload that car for the same random reason, that would also cause users to believe the track is not working at all.
So, here are my current hypotheses:
* Even setting the delay time at 0, the delay of ~30 seconds may have confused me or others about whether the track was working at all.
*
Perhaps setting a delay time of 0:06 or 0:30 results in an extremely long interval, like 15 minutes or an hour, or even infinity, since a delay of 0:00 yields a delay for each loading/unloading event of ~30 seconds. This could also lead users to believe it is not working.
* Editing the MI2 properties may cause it to stop working, until the route or session are resaved and reopened or otherwise restarted. This may cause users to report the track is not working.
* Perhaps the delay in starting each process is due to the track processing a large amount of information, though I don't know what, since this is an empty route. And why does it need 30 seconds before starting a new car, instead of doing all cars stopped within the designated range?
* If the track has already performed a loading/unloading on a given car, it may not be able to recognize that car again after it has been directly edited by the user. It may only recognize it is empty if it has been emptied by another track process in game. That might explain why I got inconsistent results earlier. Restarting session rules, editing route in surveyor, restarting game, or rebooting may be necessary to clear the memory of having already loaded/unloaded a given car.
* The inconsistant intervals and some cars failing to load/unload are still unexplained.