01-03-2011, 09:30 AM
Been thinking on this: Seems it is important to get the numbers balanced to allow ShipIt to act in a random fashion.
Example - Our layout operations has the following characteristics:
18 industry spurs
average 2 cars per shipment
average 3 days between shipments
Note: the last two are averages - some spurs would have more cars, some less, some would ship more frequently, some less, this would all need to be calculated from the actual layout characteristics.
To calculate the number of cars switched per day, we would multply 18 by 2 and divide by 3 to get 12. We need to switch 12 cars per day to maintain the averages given. I suspect that if we use a max train length of less than 12, the train will always be maxed because the program is trying to keep up with the industry needs. We probably should make the train length greater than 12, perhaps 14 or 15. Or, if the layout won't accomadate trains that long, then we do two trains at 7 or 8 cars per train.
Hope that makes sense. Point is, we need to balance the numbers to allow the program to work as intended.
Example - Our layout operations has the following characteristics:
18 industry spurs
average 2 cars per shipment
average 3 days between shipments
Note: the last two are averages - some spurs would have more cars, some less, some would ship more frequently, some less, this would all need to be calculated from the actual layout characteristics.
To calculate the number of cars switched per day, we would multply 18 by 2 and divide by 3 to get 12. We need to switch 12 cars per day to maintain the averages given. I suspect that if we use a max train length of less than 12, the train will always be maxed because the program is trying to keep up with the industry needs. We probably should make the train length greater than 12, perhaps 14 or 15. Or, if the layout won't accomadate trains that long, then we do two trains at 7 or 8 cars per train.
Hope that makes sense. Point is, we need to balance the numbers to allow the program to work as intended.