Feeder service

From OpenTTD

A feeder service is, put simply, one where vehicles perform a "relay" with the cargo. For example, a bus might pass passengers onto an out-of-town airport so that they can be flown across the map to gain more revenue.

The only disadvantage to this feature is that, currently - only the final vehicle in the chain will get the revenue.

To enable feeder services, go to Configure Patches, go to Stations and make sure "Deliver cargo to a station only when there is a demand" is set to OFF. Then use the Unload command in the first vehicles orders.

For example Passengers arrive at the bus stop and a bus picks them up, the bus takes them to the local airport which is out of town and doesn't usually accept passengers. The bus is set to "Unload" at the airport and it does, as long as the Patch mentioned above is turned off. A plane will then arrive and pick up the passengers.

It does not always make sense to set up a point-to-point service for every possible route. Often, a hub based system makes more sense as it eases load on your network and enables passengers and cargo to use different types of transportation to move from A to B more efficiently. This is what the transfer button is for.

[edit] How to set up a transfer route

So, imagine you have an airport in town and you wish to use a bus to bring passengers from the town centre to the airport. This can be easily accomplished: Set up the route as normal, and select the "Transfer" button to tell the passengers to wait at the airport for a flight. To prevent the bus from stealing the plane's passengers, also select "Unload" so the order now reads "Transfer and Leave Empty". Otherwise the bus will unload passengers at the airport and subsequently reload them. This way, the bus always moves passengers to the airport for flights.

[edit] How to set up a more complex system

You might have noticed that (and wondered why) you can combine "transfer" with "full load" and "unload". This can be used to set up more complex feeder services. Imagine you have that very same airport as in the example above. This airport has a number of towns around it, and you'd like to have a shuttle train that goes through all the villages to collect passengers.

• The first village gets a normal (un-flagged) order, and thus a number of people board.
• In the second village, you want people to hop on, but no one to leave. So you set a "transfer and take cargo" order, which unloads passengers but subsequently reloads them, ie: Pick-Up only.
• All subsequent stops get the same order.
• The Airport gets "transfer and leave empty".

This way, all the people from all stops are dropped off at the airport and board their planes.

Another appealing aspect is to employ a local bus network in order to take passenger from all over town to a central train station. The transfer and take cargo is also useful if a vehicle is supposed to pick up cargo from several regional stations and then to deliver it to a destination far away, just like trains do in real life.

Enjoy the realistic and complex transport systems that are enabled by this great feature!