satisfactory - trucks / tractors using wrong station to pickup / unload [FIX]

[Sethioz]

i never came across this until recently, where i had 3 trucks carrying goods from stations that are close to eachother.
i setup first tractor and it was doing fine, i later built another station that overlaps with first tractor's path and it had no problems, but when setting up 2nd tractor's path, i recorded the path as normal and pressed F on the station where i wanted to pick up stuff.
in fact i'm using 3 tractors now that transport coal, rubber and plastic.

when setting up and recording 2nd tractor path, i crossed over 1st station and during recording it had no issues, but once path was complete and i enabled autopilot and hopped out, it automatically made 1 second stop at coal station and grabbed quite a lot of goal from there, cuz game starts loading/unloading before truck even stops, there's certain AoF (area of effect) where vehicles can already interact with station.

i didn't notice till my machines stopped working and then i noticed lot of coal in the station.


FIX:



fix is quite easy actually, after recording the path, don't just save it, leave the "show nodes" enabled and drive back to each wrong station (station that truck should NOT interact with) and you will notice a yellow pause icon, hop out of vehicle and press interact (E by default) on it, then DELETE node. if there are multiple pause nodes, delete all except the one in the station that you want that truck to interact with.

now get back in the vehicle you recorded the path with, save path (use name that you recognize later), enable autopilot and hop out.
now it will ignore all other stations and will only interact with the one that has the pause icon.

i haven't tried, but by using this method, you should be able to make trucks pick up goods from multiple stations and offload in one or vice versa. for example if you use the big truck to split the load between multiple stations and make it stop only for 1-2 seconds, in theory it should unload much faster.

if you forgot to save the path or it happens on vehicle that is already running, then do the same (delete pause nodes on wrong stations), but after you do that, save path as new. save it under new name and delete old path.

HOWEVER for some reason one tractor re-produced that bug and i have no idea why/how. it was when i added 3rd tractor. i have 3 stations in path of 3 tractors. they were working fine for a while, but at some point i found my machines halted again and found plastic where there should be rubber, maybe i was just tired and forgot to delete the node, but i highly doubt that was the case, i'm not that incompetent. i double-check everything.
perhaps it was some bug, but they been running fine for 2 days (obviously i have quit game between sessions) and it haven't re-occured.

this bug shouldn't affect vehicles that are already running, like if you build a new station that is on previous truck's path, then that old truck should not interact with the newly placed station, but if this happens, then hop in the vehicle that is interacting with wrong station and delete all the yellow pause nodes under wrong stations.

NOTE - this also happens if you have multi-level buildings where stations are above/under eachother, then vehicles will interact with both stations as station AoF is 2D and it doesn't count height. So you have to delete pause nodes from other stations.