That's a big ask. Cargo stations/harbors etc. don't participate in the transfer offer proces - they don't offer or bid for cargo, and are not destinations in their own right.

They're merely 'waypoints' - think of it as a bunch of "invisible" trucks are carried in on a train/boat/etc. and are then unloaded and made 'visible' when they arrive at the cargo hub (and vice-versa).

So while it might seem like a simple request, it's actually a significant and new piece of work, separate to everything Transfer Controller currently does.

This does not mean that it won't be added to Transfer Controller in the future, but neither will it be in any of the immediately planned updates (and, if it happens, may even need to be a separate mod altogether).

Nice to know. Thanks for the kindness.

Would there be any way of looking to see how much freight a depot had "on hand"? I get frustrated watching trucks pile in and waiting for a train/ship to spawn. Even if we can't control anything about the depots it seems like there has to be some sort of trigger that we could watch for. It would be cool to be able to look and see that the next train was 30% loaded. Or to see how many trucks had passed through. Maybe tangential to the purpose of TC.

@Sasquatch In a completely unscientific observation, train/ship spawning seems to be a mix of timed schedule (as some export vehicles spawn with less than 100% cargo) and cargo fulfilling basis (as they spawn when at 100%).

Each freight station (either train or ship) seems also to have a trucks/time processing capacity - if trucks are piling it's because you have surpassed that station's capacity, give them another one to go.

That said, yes, it would be quite nice to be able not only to see how much cargo is at the moment in each station but also a "time table" of vehicles departed.

Hello, you can put warehouses, or silos etc near your cargo stations, near your required destinations. This is working for me about 60-70%. Also in real life, industry areas sell to factories, the stations and intermediaries are in the chain as a service to them.

Not only in real life. The game logic works pretty much the same way. Extractors sell to processors which sell to final industries (either generic or Unique) which sell to exports (The intermediate steps will also export their excesses).

Intermediate warehouses are "optional", in the sense that if you don't plop them, the trucks will still try and deliver the products between the production chain.

The need for warehouses (and whence the quotes on "optional") comes from timing - whenever a producing building reaches some quota, it will search for another one demanding their products, if none is found at that exact moment, they will immediately spawn an exports truck.

Next time a consuming building needs some input, it will see no available offers at that exact moment (as most probably all input producers will either have not reached their quotas and/or have all their trucks busy exporting), so the'll request the game to spawn an imports truck.

The warehouses, specially if set to "balanced", act as a buffer between the chain steps. If not full, they will be demanding their set product all the time, so the producers will send to them instead of exporting, and, unless empty, they will also be offering their set product all the time, so the consumers will take from them instead of importing.

It then becomes a matter of having enough, but not too many, intermediate whs so they are never either empty or full, and also that the amount of trucks available in them is enough to supply the downstream chain.

I've found that a particularly useful setup is placing whs all way along the chain. So, my farms have barns near them, then my animal sheds also have barns, plus a wh for animal products, then the unique factory has whs for animal products plus whatever else they take and a wh for unique products, then both the commercial zones and exporting cargo stations also have whs for unique products (and goods, from the other chain) nearby. I also always place some type of cargo (train, ship or plane) near to the intermediate steps, so they can export their excesses without resorting to sending trucks out of town.

It's always useful to bear in mind that trucks **always** spawn from the provider buildings, never from the ones requesting the products, and that they will return to their "owner" before despawning.