The scheduling system that pops up on the left is always an hour ahead.... as ridiculous as it sounds.

It runs in one-hour cycles, and everything repeats. So if you set up a train to run at 5:30, it will run at 6:30, and 7:30, ad inifintum.

While a current cycle is running it doesn't seem like you can change contracts in THAT cycle, so you are changing the next hours cycle.

Therefore a train running at 5:30 that you want to leave two minutes earlier, even if it's not 5:30 yet, say it's 5:05, i think (i'm not certain) it will still run on THAT cycles schedule, in this case at 5:30, and the schedule you were shown (an hour ahead of the current one) will make the changes there forward, and run at 6:28.

Someone else please correct any of my errors - i've barely wrapped my head around this as it is.

Originally posted by Cannon Fodder:

The scheduling system that pops up on the left is always an hour ahead.... as ridiculous as it sounds.

It runs in one-hour cycles, and everything repeats. So if you set up a train to run at 5:30, it will run at 6:30, and 7:30, ad inifintum.

While a current cycle is running it doesn't seem like you can change contracts in THAT cycle, so you are changing the next hours cycle.

Therefore a train running at 5:30 that you want to leave two minutes earlier, even if it's not 5:30 yet, say it's 5:05, i think (i'm not certain) it will still run on THAT cycles schedule, in this case at 5:30, and the schedule you were shown (an hour ahead of the current one) will make the changes there forward, and run at 6:28.

Someone else please correct any of my errors - i've barely wrapped my head around this as it is.

Thanks I finally figured out the every hour thing. Thats what was really driving me crazy on my freight line, lol. It would be a nice feature if you could adjust the repeat time.
Yeah the time thing is really weird. This whole scheduling thing seems like it is overly complex. It should be easy.

Originally posted by JerryT:

This whole scheduling thing seems like it is overly complex. It should be easy.

I have been having a love/hate relationship with this game, and honestly it is all boiling down to that statement, but replace "scheduling" with like.... everything.

First, I will assume that you are playing an Endless game rather than defining your own Timetable map in the Editor. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Indeed the vast majority of traffic is running each hour. This is clearly mentioned in the Tutorial.

The reason behind this is that the rail traffic is cyclic in general. However, the real cycle is 24 hours long that does not fit a game. You do not want to wait for hours to validate your new contract fits your network. You want to spend a nice evening building & expanding your network & seeing the results.

From the gameplay perspective, the game is not designed for the player to have to accept traffic continuously. It is an automation game, so the loop is:

• you build your network
  
• add some contracts to fill the network up
  
• set up the automation to serve them
  
• move to a different part of the map

The freights are a special thing - they are one-off in nature. They were intended to bring some interesting, random thing to the rigid cyclic nature of the game.

However, you can configure them to run indefinitely as well.

Originally posted by Cannon Fodder:

While a current cycle is running it doesn't seem like you can change contracts in THAT cycle, so you are changing the next hours cycle.

It is more fine-grained. The game does not allow you to modify the past, so when you edit a contract & its train is already on board (or just about to arrive), the next instance is displayed & the first to be edited. The already present one is already fixed. You as a passenger do not want your train to change its schedule with you already in ;-)

Originally posted by JerryT:

It would be a nice feature if you could adjust the repeat time.

This will bring a lot of complexity to the scheduling work. Once you schedule a train to run each hour, you can count with it each your & do not schedule another train to that time slot just by looking 1 hour ahead.

If you had a train running each 3 hours and then schedule another running each 5 hours, they will eventually meet after 15 hours, creating possible conflict. So you will have to look 15 hours ahead when scheduling it to have the overall picture.

Originally posted by JerryT:

This whole scheduling thing seems like it is overly complex. It should be easy.

The principal goal when scheduling is to assure that the train is able to run on time & will not block other train from using some platform (that are the bottleneck in most situations). You do it once when accepting a contract & then you can forget about it until you change something substantially. Your contract generates money you can spend elsewhere to build something new.