I have some ships going to multiple oil rigs because each rig doesn't generate a lot of oil. However, sometimes it gets full after the 2nd, 3rd or however many rigs, and wastes time fulfilling the rest of the orders (it's full and can't unload) until it gets to the dock. Is there any way to give this boat an order to go back to the dock once it's full? (For example, below, if ship 2 fills up at Slunthill South, it would just go straight to Gondinghall Docks skipping the 2 stops in between.)
I guess I could have it transfer but I'm not sure how efficient that is.
Best Answer
The way I usually do this is, after every "Go to place" order add a "Conditional order jump" with something like "If 80% full Go to Order 1".
When the ship is done with loading somewhere it will check that order, and if nearly full it will go back to the first order (change the numbers if this is undesirable). The downside to this is that the last stations will be visited less often than the first ones.
Its also possible to to the reverse, after every "Go to place" order add a conditional order with "If less than 80% full Go to Order N+3" (where N is the order number of the "Go to place", N+1 is the conditional order, etc). Then add another order to go to the depot where it has to deliver (which will be N+2) and then the order to go to the next location (making it N+3).
This will cause the ship to go to 1, 2, think "Oh I'm full, lets go drop off something" and go to the drop-off depot, continue to 3, 4 and loop back at the end of the order list.
More detail: http://wiki.openttd.org/Orders#Go_To