I want my trains to space out in a specific way so they are evenly distribured across the network. Therefor I want to b able to set waiting time according to the last train of the same group to leave the station.
For example now I have 2 trains of the same group which enter the station almost at the same time they will also leave at the same time. I've set a time for the trains at each station in the timetable but times are set for each train.
Is there a way to make it so a train waits for X amount of days after the last train of the group has left the station?
I'm playing on the JGR patch pack. Inside this pack you can set the timetable to automate but I've noticed that it doesn't work well if distances are long and it also tends to mke trains stop at waypoints which I don't want.
Best Answer
I'm not specifically aware of a specific way to have a vehicle depart an exact number of days after the previous departure, but you can achieve consistent separation and departure intervals by using the automation functions. The two automation functions in JGR's Patch Pack, Automation and Auto Seperation, are the right way to go about this, but it's important to understand how they work and also what problems can arise with them! Each of the functions does slightly different things;
Both of these are often used together, but require that your vehicles are using shared orders - as they'll need to share the timetable values and the separation algorithm needs to know what vehicles are part of the 'group' it needs to evenly space.
You'll need to take care when using the Automate function too, as it will continue to update and adjust the timetable over time based on what actually happens rather than perhaps what you intended to happen. Critically, this means that delays get built-in to the timetable as expected durations - so if you have a point on your network that is particularly congested and vehicles need to queue for, the timetable will account for that. However, this can have the unintended effect of vehicles experiencing less of a delay on their journey to the station then waiting at the station because they are early compared to the timetable. If your stations are shared by multiple routes this can then spread a timetable problem from one route to another as the route with the problem will cause all platforms to be occupied, thus causing other routes to experience delays, thus adjusting their timetables, thus causing delays elsewhere and so on! This is probably what's happened with the automate function in your game - your vehicles have 'learned' that the waypoint should have a stop and this is now part of your timetable!
If you're just getting started with the automation functions my advice would be;
Hopefully that helps you understand what each of the functions does and how they can be used, along with some of the potential problems! They're both very useful functions when you're aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and can be vital when building massive networks with thousands of vehicles - no one's got the time to go and manually adjust the timetables and separation on all of them!