Rule about transfer

[Poohatek]

Hi,
I have a question about rule no 12:
"No station spread cheating, e.g. transfers may not be done for the mere purpose of increasing the spread of a station."
In my first apperance to n-ice server 1,5 - 2 years ago I was banned for building transfer station (as I remember by YorVeX)
Yesterday another admin informed me, that it doesn't brake rules.

IMHO this rule should be redefined or clarified when transfer is allowed or when not.

[Poohatek]

http://wiki.x-base.org/wakka.php?wakka=OpenTTD/Rules, point 4.2:
Stations must serve a normal purpose, so they have to play an active role in loading, transferring or dropping goods/passengers where they are accepted.
Transferring means that one wehicle leave goods at station, and another takes it and moves do destination.
So wehicle from this station transports goods from origin which is outside of this station, so every transfer breaks rule:

http://www.n-ice.org/openttd/rules.php, point 12:
No station spread cheating, e.g. transfers may not be done for the mere purpose of increasing the spread of a station.

Im I correct?

[alex879ro]

Poohatek, i was the one to tell you it wasn`t station spread  cheating cause it simply wasn`t. You showed me a station that contained 2 rail platforms and 1 truck stop , each of them serviced very well. So where is the station spread cheating?

If you have 2 station on which into one of them u put all the transfers, and in the other , the mainline, and they have a short distance between them , then a transfer between the 2 stations would be forbidden. I will probably post you a screenshot so you can understand the meaning of this rule, but a bit later.

[Poohatek]

alex879Pro,
"short distance" is discretionary. One of you could tell 10 units, other 25.

Where is spread cheating - trains transport goods from the main source of the stations and what trucks bring, which increases the spread of station.

My meaning of this rule was created by my first warning and kicking during my first game on n-ice server.

[alex879ro]

I said i`ll post some screenshots. You might as well have some patience.

This is an example of station spread cheating. You can see 2 stations that function as one. The right one is used to gather all the transfers. The left one is used as Mainline station and because. Such pairs of stations act as one without problem. The problem would be that u simply do not have space to add transfers because of max station length , so this would be an example on how to cheat it. Totally forbidden!

[alex879ro]

Another example of Station Spread Cheating. Basically, the same form, but different vehicles

To conclude : I dunno who kicked you and why(perhaps you could share that with us). Also, a printscreen of the reason of kicking would be great.
But you are right, I think that this rule can be more easily understood if it was followed by a screenshot and an explanation.

Hope I helped

[vitalikk2005]

Alex, could you clarify please, what rule exactly is violated in your screenshots?

Also, consider a situation. Station A gets cargo from a nearby industry. We load and transfer it to station B which doesn't have any industries nearby. Then we load it further and deliver cargo to accepting station C. Is this setup allowed?

[YorVeX]

can you provide screenshots of what you mean? either from a game where you see a questionable situation or start up single player, cheat yourself some money and quickly build the setup you are talking about.
for the question which rule is violated: read the first post. actually that rule was created because of exactly such situations as you see in alex' screenshot.

[vitalikk2005]

Here is an example of what i was talking about. Seems completely valid to me, but essentially those short transferring trains' purpose is to make the big station cover several mines at once, that is increasing its spread.

[YorVeX]

each of those additional stations all have a purpose of their own (getting coal from the mines), so the "for the mere purpose of increasing the spread of a station" wouldn't be satisified here. so you're right, it's completely valid and also clearly not forbidden by rule 12 (or any other rule).

but now imagine Sulkyhead South would be your main station on a big server, so it already has the maximum station spread and all tracks are used very frequently. how would you attach the incoming coal from the other 2 stations now, without getting limited by the station spread? how do you get more tracks?

this is where players get the idea to separate incoming and outgoing tracks into two stations. they set another huge station (let's call it "Sulkyhead South Incoming") right beside and do a small transfer from there to Sulkyhead South. all trains dropping cargo will arrive at Sulkyhead South Incoming, all trains taking cargo from there will take them from Sulkyhead South.
this effectively makes Sulkyhead South Incoming be another part of Sulkyhead South, but that station now has doubled maximum spread (e.g. instead of 20 tracks for both incoming and outgoing trains it now has 20 for incoming and 20 for outgoing).

probably a picture once more explains it better and makes clear when a transfer is illegal and when it isn't.

[YorVeX]

In my first apperance to n-ice server 1,5 - 2 years ago I was banned for building transfer station (as I remember by YorVeX)

i don't remember you (did you have a different name back then?) but i am sure this wasn't what you were banned for, that's just not how us admins work, including me. here's some facts:
1. many players mistake a kick for a ban (they could easily return and continue, but they think they can't so they don't)
2. some players argue for minutes and minutes about a rule instead of complying with the admin request first and joining a discussion later - an admin at some point has no other choice but to sanction the player (but not by a ban)
3. during such discussions and especially as a result of sanctions (company lock, company reset, kick...) some players get angry and start to insult the admin - this DOES get you a ban

players affected by 3. later often claim that they have been banned for the original rule break, when in reality it was for their reaction to an admin asking them to fix it. in fact, ban reason number 1 on our servers is players getting angry because they don't like a rule an admin asks them to obey, starting to offend other players or admins or trying to ruin the game (flooding it, building a crash train...).

but banning for an illegal transfer station alone? no. the only exception would be if you keep on returning and repeat to build them.

[vitalikk2005]

Okay, now it is totally clear to me what exactly this rule is intended to forbid, thank you.

Still, I'd like to notice that your 'illegal' setup doesn't look to me more efficient than 'normal' one. Basically, in order to transfer cargo to your 'main' station continuously, you will need to have half of its tiles dedicated to unloading anyway. Otherwise your loading trains will waste time waiting for cargo. (I assume here that loading speed equals that of unloading.) So, you don't get 20 incoming tracks and 20 outgoing, but rather 10 and 10.

Update. I'm not sure about ships though, but if they can stack without collisions and load/unload simultaneously at the same dock - then it would be possible to increase throughput with your 'illegal' setup this way, indeed.

[YorVeX]

one could argue that there is no unfairness, as every player can do everything. if all players can block, destroy road vehicles of other players, terraform the whole map to one even plate or surround a city by satellite station parts it would still be fair, right?
but imagine how the map would look like. go and check every picture from our rules pictures with a red X and imagine the whole map would be full of it.

so you shouldn't forget that besides trying to keep the fun up for all players aesthetics are also part of the rules. this cannot be applied to every online game but a game where you try to build nice systems that everyone else can see it definitely is. if you exploit the game engine and something really ugly (that doesn't look like normal transportation in any way) comes out you can already guess the rules forbid it. and if they don't, then they will be changed to forbid it.

so even if there was no advantage from it i would have wanted to stick to that rule. i don't want a 40x40 monstrum with a weird ship or train transfer between them.

[LowTop]

I might be wrong about this, but it looks like transfers make your min profit score zero.  Otherwise, that stat makes for an easy 100 performance points.

[ST2]

the yellow numbers that "jump" from when a vehicle transfers are counted as vehicle profit, virtual. 
but counts for min profit.

Edit: hope it helped LowTop