Fluid wagon loading/unloading is unintuitive (2024)

This could probably be worded as both a feature suggestion or a bug but in my opinion it's a clear problem in any case. When you place down a pump next to a rail tanker nothing special happens:

To whoever knows how rail tankers are loaded (including me now), it's clear that you need to place a pipe before the pump so that the fluid wagon loading/unloading magic happens. But to me last night it was not clear and I felt something was wrong with the setup since it didn't seem to work. The pump didn't seem to react to the rail in any way!

In my opinion, the pipe before the pump should not be a necessity for the pump to react to the fluid wagon. A pump pointing at or from the rail should be enough. That way the game would acknowledge that it's indeed going to be a fluid wagon loading/unloading and the player (e.g. my past self) can play on without worrying about whether it's going to work or not.

Tumeden wrote:You just didn't power the pump...

This is not a matter of whether it actually works. It's about whether it looks like it's going to work. The game should express that "yes that's right go ahead".

teemu wrote:

Tumeden wrote:You just didn't power the pump...

This is not a matter of whether it actually works. It's about whether it looks like it's going to work. The game should express that "yes that's right go ahead".

Thanks for the report,

Since the game is kind've limited in the fact we use 2d sprites, the animation is only to work if the fluid wagon is in a precise location,
The best way to align the wagon to the pump, is to use a train set to automatic mode

Perhaps i will write a mini-tutorial about how this all works,
But for now this isn't a bug

Links: log-file, Applicaton directory, desync-report, update issues.

It's not about the animation. The robot arm appears on the pump when placed next to a rail. The problem I'm finding is that this only happens when there's a pipe behind the pump, which makes it unclear about whether it's correct or not and the game does not preview it.

cellular wrote:I can confirm that the issue still occurs in 15.12 even when the pumps are powered and a train is perfectly aligned to the station. I thought there was something wrong with my setup when the pumps didn't extend, which is how I found this post. Here's a picture, with a pipe added to the middle pump.

It's just a minor usability thing, but it would be good to fix it if possible.

Your two side pumps won't connect because they can't possibly be doing anything without other pipes connected behind them to pump to/from.