Why some industries in Kickstarter County II don’t work correctly?

I noticed two types of industries in Kickstarter County II (built-in route included in TRS19). The "Multiple Industry New" objects don’t work correctly there, because their initial number of units don’t change at all. For example, Ricochet Freight ships general goods. In the beginning of session, it has 10 units and produces 7 units every 900 seconds (15 minutes). But after 15 minutes still offers only 10 units to load, although at this time should offer at least 17 units. I waited even 20 minutes or more, but nothing’s changed.

The same issue appears if particular industry is set as a consignee. For example, let’s look again at Ricochet Freight, which is also the consignee. It receives fruit and vegetables. In the start of the session it has 3 units of this commodity and consumes 7 units every 15 minutes. So, after 7 minutes and 30 seconds this industry should be empty, but it’s not!

Other type of industry object (Industry Warehouse Small 2, i.e. Los Pinos Manufacturing) works well. For example, when session starts they have 50 units of general goods. This industry consumes 1 unit per 1 minute, which means industry will be empty after 50 minutes. When session starts, there is really written “50 minutes till empty” and what is more important, after 4 minutes it shows “46 minutes till empty”.

So, anybody knows what’s wrong with the first type of industry? Do I need to set anything?
 
There are problems with the M.I.N. (Multiple Industry New) assets but a great deal depends on how they are configured.

There are several threads in the forums dealing with this - for example https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?161915

Solutions: I have found that the following does work.

However, the good news is that after further experimentation (call it stubbornness) I have managed to get the M.I.N. (the much maligned "red arrow" M.I.N.) working. The trick, it seems, is to only enter a single product in each queue and after after entering that product move to each of the other tabs to complete their details before repeating the process with the next product in a new queue.

ADDENDUM: I have found that if more than 4 of the 6 available product queues are occupied, even with a single item in each, then the problems begin. So hope has its limits!

So only 1 product per queue and no more than 4 occupied queues seems to work.
 
Multiple Industry New uses "Processes" to consume/produce goods. The process will only occur if all of the inputs are available - think of it as cargo getting converted into other kinds of cargo. In the case of Ricochet Freight, it is configured to consume 1 unit of lumber, 9 units of pallets, and 7 units of fruit to produce 7 units of general goods. The initial queue contents are 1 unit of lumber, 2 units of pallets, 3 units of fruit, and 10 units of goods. There aren't enough of pallets or fruit for the goods to be produced so nothing will happen. If you edit the queues to start with more units, then every 900 seconds 1 lumber, 9 pallets and 7 fruit will get consumed and 7 goods will be produced. This will continue until there is no longer enough of one of the inputs.

If you deliver lumber/pallets/fruit to the track it should get unloaded and added to the queues, possibly enabling the production to run the next time the 900 second duration passes.

Also, note that the process happens in one batch every 900 seconds - not a little bit at a time throughout the 900 seconds. So even if you had ample input you wouldn't see it halfway used up at the 450 second mark. For example, let's say you had a process that consumed 10 fruit and nothing else and you started with 100 fruit in the queue. You'd see the fruit suddenly drop from 100 to 90. Then 900 seconds later it would suddenly drop from 90 to 80. You wouldn't see it gradually decay from 90 to 89 to 88 etc.

It is possible to configure MIN as a producer or a consumer (instead of a converter). It all depends on what is on the left and right of the Processes arrow:

A -> consume A
A B -> consume A and B (both must be present in sufficient quantity or neither will be consumed)
-> C D produce C and D
A B -> C D convert A and B into C and D (A and B must both be available)
 
In my experiences the operation of M.I.N. assets is a bit different to that described in the post above.

The left side of the Process Arrow is the consumption side and the right is the production side, as described above.

[TABLE="width: 700, align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]1.[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: left"]A[/TD]
[TD]->[/TD]
[TD="width: 50, align: left"][/TD]
[TD]A will be consumed and nothing will be produced[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]2.[/TD]
[TD]A, B[/TD]
[TD]->[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]A and/or B will be consumed (both do not have to be present in the consist being unloaded) and nothing will be produced[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]3.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]->[/TD]
[TD]C[/TD]
[TD]means nothing will be consumed and C will be produced[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]4.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]->[/TD]
[TD]C, D[/TD]
[TD] means nothing will be consumed and C and D will be produced. What and how much of each is loaded into wagons will depend on the wagons and other settings[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]5.[/TD]
[TD]A[/TD]
[TD]->[/TD]
[TD]C[/TD]
[TD]means A will be consumed and C will be produced. A does not have to be consumed first.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]6.[/TD]
[TD]A, B[/TD]
[TD]->[/TD]
[TD]C, D[/TD]
[TD]means A/B will be consumed (if available) and C/D will be produced as per statement 4. A/B do not have to be consumed for C/D to be produced.[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]















As an example of statement 5, I have a stockyard configured to unload sheep and load cattle. I can bring an empty rake of livestock wagons (configured to load cattle) to the stockyard without a previous delivery of sheep and the wagons will load with cattle as long as there is a supply of cattle waiting. The supply of cattle waiting depends on the initial number (or weight) of cattle and the size value (maximum allowed) in the Queue Tab and the production rate set in the Process Tab.
 
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I guess we're seeing very different behavior in MIN. I tested this for both Ricochet Freight in Kickstarter County 2, and a blank baseboard with just a single MIN on it and in both cases production would not happen until the queues contained the required input. Note that the input is consumed first, then after the processing delay the production is added to its queue. Thus it is possible to observe the production queue increase one time after the consumption queue is empty. But once that last run finishes, there is no more activity and the queues remain stable.

I was looking at the Commodity Overlay so I could observe the queues directly rather than loading/unloading wagons. Is it possible that your queues were starting with some initial contents? In example 5, if the queue for A starts with items, then those items would enable the process to run even before anything was unloaded. Similarly, if queue C starts with items then you'd be able to load those even if the process never runs.
 
... with just a single MIN on it and in both cases production would not happen until the queues contained the required input.

Is it possible that your queues were starting with some initial contents? In example 5, if the queue for A starts with items, then those items would enable the process to run even before anything was unloaded.

You are correct on both counts. It pays to read the small print.

In my case I am using the M.I.Ns as general freight unloading/loading facilities such as goods sheds in rail yards and not connected with any specific industry. So I do not want input item A to be consumed before output item C is produced. Totally independent goods will arrive and depart the freight unloading/loading facilities with no industrial production connections between those goods. If I have to set up a production sequence first then it all becomes a major pain.

There are alternatives available, such as the protoLARS and others, but all the ones I have examined so far are tied to particular industries, such as the automotive or chemical industries with specific consumables built-in, and are far too specific for my needs.

So now it is back to the drawing board.
 
I don't think MIN is a good fit for what you want, at least not by itself. I was trying to set up something where I could unload A and B (which would gradually be consumed making space for more) and load C and D (which would be gradually replenished). I came up with 3 different solutions that work, but all involve a bit of setup and/or customization:

1) LARS/protoLARS. These are actually pretty easy to set up for this behavior assuming the asset is configured for the goods you are interested in. In my case I wanted to use commodities that weren't already in the protoLARS asset I was using, so I created a custom one. Duplicate the asset in the content manager and edit config.txt. Change productcount to the number of desired products, change the username to something different so you can tell it apart from the old one, and edit the kuid-table to list the kuids of the products you want to load/unload (these should be named prod0, prod1 ... prodX where X is one less than the number of products). For example, if productcount is "3" then you'd have entried prod0, prod1, and prod2 in the kuid-table. If you just want to add a product to the existing asset, increase productcount by 1 and add the appropriate prodX entry to the kuid-table. Once you create the industry it is pretty easy to configure it to produce/consume all of the items independently. If you have a handful of commodities that you tend to use often then this approach might be the best tradeoff - a little up front editing of an asset that results in something pretty easy to configure on your route.

2) Customize MIN to have multiple processes. Duplicate it, rename, and then edit the config.txt to have multiple processes. I also wound up editing the script a bit because I wanted to make sure that all of the processes were properly enabled and disabled. This seems to work but I haven't tested it as thoroughly as the other approaches. Once you have multiple processes, you could do something like this:

A ->
B ->
-> C
-> D

Each process works on its own, independently consuming whatever A and B are present and producing C and D whenever there is room in the appropriate queues. Creating this asset is a bit tricky, but once you have it you can use it as much as you wish with whatever commodities you need.


3) Use multiple MINs and "Industry Link(TANE)". The idea is you create fake MINs somewhere hidden on your route, one per desired process, and use the link to move items back and forth between the real MIN and the hidden ones:

MIN: connected to track, queues for A, B, C, and D. Unload A and B, load C and D.
MIN_A: hidden, very small queue for A, process that consumes A
MIN_B: hidden, very small queue for B, process that consumes B
MIN_C: hidden, very small queue for C, process that produces C
MIN_D: hidden, very small queue for D, process that produces D

Configure the link to...
move A from MIN to MIN_A
move B from MIN to MIN_B
move C from MIN_C to MIN
move D from MIN_D to MIN

This one feels cumbersome, especially if you don't have a good place to put those fake industries. On the other hand you don't have to muck around with config files. It's probably the most flexible, but also kind of fiddly to get right. I managed to get it working on a simple test route but haven't tried it on anything real.

---

One more note, both (1) and (2) require editing assets. I think MIN and protoLARS were both using old .texture files and I had to find/create newer texture.txt files. I don't recall it being very hard to find updated assets with suitable textures to copy, but perhaps this isn't the best approach if you've never edited assets before.
 
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There's a new variant of the Multiple Industry New asset that I can recommend:
Please see this entire thread from the Surveyors and Engineers forum:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?161915-MIN-problem/page2

Have to say that I'm generally very happy with the recently added DLS asset: <kuid:647907:100648> CDE Multiple_Industry_New by christopher824 following our discussions initiated by C_Blabsky's query on this matter a month or three ago..
It is now my go-to MIN for creating custom-built interactive industries of all sorts and flavours.
It works reliably for producing or consuming up to 6 different commodities (from the hundreds of available options in TRS19) that the user can specify for each queue - works brilliantly for a single track siding flanked by impressive factory buildings and loading platforms of your choice - and is more flexible in operation than just about any other MIN alternative.
The only slight concern I have about this particular asset (that it has inherited from its flawed inspiration, (<kuid:-25:1356> Multiple Industry New) is its broad sphere of influence over nearby objects/ assets in Surveyor edit mode making it difficult to select and manipulate nearby objects after the MIN has been placed and configured.

With regard to the OP's initial query relating to Ricochet Freight's MIN set-up, remember that you can adjust the values for both Input and Output (Product) in the session edit dialog for the Industry. Of particular note, you can change the Duration applicable to the consumption or production of any queue item. The built-in session starts out with a rather generous 900 seconds value for the production/consumption cycle.
Suggest alter the Duration and the initial inventory values/ consumption Rates for each item to achieve a calculated balance that you can easily feed/ maintain with deliveries - and extraction - with General Goods freight trains...
 
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I don't think MIN is a good fit for what you want, at least not by itself.
3) Use multiple MINs and "Industry Link(TANE)".

Since I intend to upload this route and session to the DLS option 3 seems the most feasible. I will "give it a go". Thanks for your advice, I was considering abandoning using general industries completely.

Water tower, coal stage and a few other industry tracks are working well.
 
Industry Link (TANE)
<kuid2:160293:11001:1>

Thanks to Mr. DaveBaum for this info. |The interactive industry saga continues.
 
After some experimentation and thought, I have concluded that using the M.I.Ns with "Industry Link(TANE)" will not be practical. My current project has 51 M.I.N. assets (it has 377 route kilometers of track) and that would mean setting up another 51 Industry Links to purge and/or restore each M.I.N.

So I have decided to take a compromise route and use a variety of BI2 and BI3 industry tracks by MSGSapper and others and reorganise my rolling stock to carry some of the commodities they produce/consume.
 
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