Cars do not merge/mix as expected at Junctions.
I assumed that vehicles waiting to enter a junction would enter in a logical/sequential order i.e. each vehicle in turn starting from the North East ‘entrance’ and going clockwise (NE, SE, SW, NW) but this does not appear to be the case.
This has become more noticeable as I consider the efficiency of the factory and maximising sales off the production line.
Apologies for the longish post… I also wanted to explain why I think an improvement to junction merging is important.
This could be a moot point at the moment as the vehicle sales ( though improving ) are still almost guaranteed given enough time even if the car has missing parts, however its a consideration as factory efficiency is the main theme here.
To explain further:
The Car Stock (showroom) - Market Tab shows us the demand per hour for each main type of vehicles (body / price range)
If you are only producing a single body within one price range e.g. a Budget Sedan then you can scale up your factory to produce a sub 1 minute Sedan and have two or more Front Axle slots just pushing out Sedans. (not very ‘game’ realistic, but you could)
When you have two or more body designs and lets say a Budget and Mid-Range Model of each, so four plus ‘green’ options in the ‘Market’ tab ‘Matrix’ each with a different demand per hour and lets say three front Axle Slots that can produce these different designs you should really balance (spread) the production of the different designs across your front Axles Slots.
To keep it simple I will say it takes one game hour for a car to make its way through the production line, Fit Front Axle to Export.
If you have a demand for 30 Budget Sedans and 30 Mid-Range Compacts per hour… not so bad… One Front Axle Slot Produces your Budget Sedans and the other your Mid-Range Compact and leave the third Front Axle Slot ‘dormant’
Now add to this the demand for 15 Budget Compact Cars / hour.
If the third Front Axle Slot was set to produce Mid-Range Compacts then you would be pushing on to the production line an equal amount of all three designs. Overproducing the Budget Mid-Range cars by twice as much as is necessary.
Now add a demand for 9 Mid Range Sedans / hour.
Knowing the numbers of cars produced per hour (given in game on the efficiency and statics screen) and the demand for each design / hour you can work out a ratio and calculate a production Schedule for each Front Axle Slot to at least keep and relevant amount of in demand cars on the production line and in the showroom.
(spreadsheets help)
If you first produced the 30 budgets Sedans and then the 30 Mid-Range Compacts… and then after that the 15 budgets Compacts and then 9 Mid Range Sedans, in the first hour the showroom will have received no stock of the Budget Compacts or Mid-Range Sedans… missed sales till you can increase production.
Ok, you can only make 60 cars per hour anyway so you are never going to satisfy all the demand until you increase production but you may only be making a very small %'age on your Budget models, also as customers may now consider buying more than one car it would be good to keep a range of different designs in the showroom to maximise sales.
So what has all this got to do with Junctions?
This careful planning to optimise Production at the Front Axle Slots and so improve efficiency and sales all comes to nothing if the cars do not mix/merge correctly on the production line… just get mixed up once they leave the Front Axle Slots.
Some configurations block the Front Axle Slot totally rendering it useless as it never puts a car on the production line.
Right out of the Front Axle Slot the mix/merge does not always work as expected:
So it seems that a junction placed right against a slot has an issue.
Lets look at three Front Axles:
Merging three front Axles equally seems to need at least one space after the Slot and before the junction.
However the above isn’t true, but a perfect mix is possible.
This unusual junction behaviour happens at all junctions … and i am finding hard to predict what will happen.
I thought at first that each entry to a junction was ‘polled’ in sequence once the junction ‘space’ becomes available, perhaps each entry being flagged as ‘used’ once a vehicle is passed from the entry to the junction and the flag not removed until each other entry to the junction has been ‘polled’. So the junctions directly on slots were maybe preventing the correct ‘polling’ in some way. However this theory falls apart when I look at junction behaviour all along the production line.
Is anyone else bugged by this?
In conclusion; Junction behaviour needs to be predictable and consistent to be able to maximise the efficiency of the production line.