I've got about 8 hours into testing this. And I can say you're right. Good mod, way better than the primitive vanilla minecarts. And it includes about everything that I could wish for.

If only I could get it to work somewhat faster, or even a bit more reliably or efficiently.

It's the "View Inventory" button in the freight system monitor UI that is causing problems. There's no information and no buttons there, unless maybe you have mass storage attached?

Workaround: Save and reload the game fixes it, at least until the next time you click that button.

I'm pretty sure the glitching buttons are a bug in vanilla though, as vanilla dialogues do it even in unmodded games.

General failure to update it's internal status is a real problem with this mod. For instance, I created a separate network down at -145 to load lithium and iron ore onto a lift. After some experimentation, I decided to cut iron out and just do lithium. But the network labeled "iron" in the UI still lists iron ore, with active demands. Again, reloading the game seems to fix this. This also happens when, for instance, I corrected the network name of one of the stations on my topside network.

Taking the wrong path of a track junction and dropping as an item. You cannot make 'T' junctions, as the carts don't see that, try to take the empty leg, and vanish. Took me a bit to figure that out. If that was fixed we could also use junctions as a "turn around" point to assist carts in pathing back to a station that's currently occupied.

Strangely, carts will path that direction even if there's nothing out there? Odd. I'd rather see the "minecart depot" thing live up to it's name: unused carts should path back to it, to be stored in the attached hopper until needed.

Failure to pick stuff up. I've got dozens of carts going through a station that's got an offer, and nobody is picking stuff up. I've tried increasing the demanded amount (in an attempt to get a whole row of cars headed over there) but that doesn't work either. I'm at a loss as to how to make them actually pick stuff up efficiently. They go around about five times for every time they stop to pick stuff up??

This problem seems to exist in even trivially simple loops of track.

Is there a way to see stations? And maybe some routing status? "Station Iron Ore has two Ore carts enroute, eta 30s and 1m" perhaps as a detail button on the "iron ore" line on the network status screen, detailing which station(s) have the demand which are fulfilling? That'd go a long way towards debugging the routing logic, i'd think

Can't figure out how to attach mass storage. Putting mass storage blocks next to a station like they where hoppers doesn't do it. Maybe I need an input port? But then the station can't be output too? Unclear how this is expected to work. (I'll be putting an input port next to a station to test that, I guess.)

This mod isn't open-source perchance is it? I'd love to fool around with it.

Wow that's a more in-depth test report ;-). But in general I can confirm the odd behavoir in most cases. As you said the mod fails already on simple track layouts. Carts get stuck for no apparent reason and this can only be fixed by saving and restarting fc.
Steveman0 puts all of his mods on git. This one you can find at https://github.com/steveman0/FreightCartMod . But i do not know if it is up to date.

Please check out the handbook entries as they explain some of the basics of the system and how to use carts in various ways. If it still doesn't help please let me know as I'm always will to put effort in to improve it. I don't know of anything it doesn't cover but it may need more detail in some places.

As for UI issues there's only so much I can do there as I'm using the vanilla machine UI which has some low level bugs possibly with the NGUI itself that I've not dug deep enough into to understand why they happen.

Other points:

I assume by failure to update status you mean when using hoppers? I'm not sure if my code to detect it missing actually works 100%. The interface doesn't have a delete flag so I don't get notified when the hopper is broken. It might not clear if other data remains hung up on something. The mod was written primarily for mass storage so the hopper elements are still somewhat untested.

Taking the wrong path a junctions is due to running out of options to check. I have a note to have the cart take a 'safe' route but last time I put that in it broke other things so I need to review all the code in that decision tree.

I'm not aware of a reason a cart would fail to pick up stuff. Are you sure there was a network deficit for the item?

The limits of routing information are on the freight system monitor track system display. I don't centrally store the destinations of each cart so I have no way to provide that in the UI. I still have a long list of things that need to be properly network sync'd before I begin adding new data to the display.

Mass storage works just like hoppers but the aforementioned issue with the station dropping the hopper connection may be to blame. I can't push any patches due to no internet for two weeks on my laptop but I'll see about reviewing the code for some of these matters so a fix can go live once I'm reconnected.

The feedback is much appreciated! I don't get enough detailed info to identify some of these issues so it helps to get a better idea of what stands out as a problem.

Also, stop by discord if you have questions. There are others who have used the mod who can offer tips.

tried this mod for a few hours, i can confirm that the monitor ui is stuck showing nothing after clicking inventory with no mass storage attached, but it works fine when at least one is present (cart station next to a mass storage block does it).


Furthermore there seems to be a real problem with routing. If there are junctions with only two connections ( so they are no real junctions) like track --- junction --- track with station --- junction --- track, carts tend to cycle back and forth between the junctions, meaning they are stuck.

If there is a loop with one or two junctions exiting (more not tested) and a (un)load station, carts also tend to cycle inside the loop. In both cases they dont seem to be (un)loaded, despite the station offering requested items or requestion their cargo (the monitor gui shows no items intransit while they circle when they try to load items).

This might be due to the carts failing to pick up items (as mentioned in another post here), each junction sending the cart back to pick up or drop the items, but the cart failing to do so would explain circling around the (un)load station.


There also seems to be an issue with internal updates of track and cart states. After changing some parts of my tracks, the track system tab (or something like that, where you can see the tracks with id's) in the monitor ui showed all kinds of tracks with no junctions, stations or carts (that were not present, maybe have been once during construction but are now connected to a network) and even some with (un)load stations that had been deleted some time ago. simply resetting the junctions doesnt seem to do the job.

On track systems with only hoppers attached, i had some issues were the wrong number of carts (some were missing in the monitor gui) or number of items requested was shown (all stations wanted 100, but some had 0, some other 200 or 300 as requested numbers, all hoppers were empty)


I really like this mod ( well mainly what it promises to do) but for now its nearly impossible to get an efficient track system running that uses junctions for more than loops at the end of straight tracks (a small system delivering bars from a mass storage with 5-10 carts has normally at most 1-2 carts worth of items in transit, the whole network is less than 100 tracks). if some log files or further testing might help, let me know.

edit:
after restarting most track systems work, and much better than vanilla minecarts. ghost entries in the track list also disappeared, and wrong item request numbers are fixed.
i still have one network where the carts wont go to the station requesting items, but circle forth and back on a different track section.
bsides that it now really works well for me, and much better than vanilla carts. only downside is you practically have to restart the game after changes to the track system, changing only goods offered/ requested or adding/removing carts seems to be fine without restarting.


edit 2:
restarting again fixed the last network with problems, but after upgrading a scrap network with normal tracks, ghost track networks appeared in the monitor ui and the carts had routing problems again. seems like the update junction (pressign q? on a junction) does more harm than good or at least does not update the network completely. i guess a restart will also fix this, but there is definitely a backend problem with track networks.

carts leaving a straight track only derail after two blocks, so somethign like -straigh track - empty - any track in any direction- can be traveled by carts, i dont want to know what it would do to routing in a real network.
scrap carts load only 5 items instead of 10 as mentioned in the description ( total items in transit are never more than half the capacity they should have, cant really tell if a cart with 5 items can load another 5 later on)

after restartign everything works great so far, and i had no problems with wrong routing that im aware of, carts seem to go where they should and (un)load without problems. if you know the problems and the work arounds (restarts, restarts and restarts) the mod works well and is a really good improvement for vanilla minecarts.

Yeah, restarting seems to be the solution to most (all?) problems with this mod. The ones that really chap my hide are the bugs that reoccur. Like carts getting permanently stuck in stations. And circling forever trying load up the tin bars desperately needed by all sorts of manufacturing elsewhere, etc.

Having looked at the code, and messed around with it, I've reluctantly reached the conclusion that it needs an (almost) complete rewrite. It's simply too complicated, trying to do to many things in to many widely separated places, etc.

So I started a rewrite. I don't know if I'll get it completed. At this point, it's almost back to the point where it at least compiles. Spending too much time trying to figure out serialization and network communications etc. Testing and debugging are always more fun, especially when we A. Don't have any debugger access. B. Have a long compile - load - wait for game to load - test - examine log file for results cycle. Things'd be much easier if that cycle didn't take so long, but it is what it is I suppose.

I think I've finally figured out the purpose of the "networkwrapper" class though. It's simply to encapsulate the information displayed on the network monitor windows so that clients can "see" things that aren't withing the 64 block client loading distance limit. Etc.

Anyway, I'm moving to a non-connected house, and chaos will, I'm sure, ensue. So no promises.

I'm seeing carts path to a station, open their hopper they say 'cannot route to station X' with the name of the station it is in.