Tram & Truck fever – or to much realism

waflija — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:59:22 +0000

Many Player recommend using trucks, until you have enough money to buy trains. But trains are really not necessary. – I played a whole game without a single train on hard to 1980.

Short version:
The running cost are realistic, but the map size isn’t.
In reality trains beat trams / trucks on long distance, not 2-5km. Nobody would be stupid enough to use a high-speed train like ICE or TGV for a line from cologne north to cologne south or London North to South station.
Another point is that passenger choose between car, walk and train ONLY by speed. I think there should be some “money” factor.

What do i suggest:

bigger maps
change balance (running cost) of trams and trains.
change acceleration and top speeds (to be more playable, less realistic)
add an “travel cost” factor to path finding – making long-distance car travel less attractive.

Long version:
Trains were only useful in 1850 for distances over 5km with no stops. The averange distance in my living area is about 5km for interurban train (rapid city transit), 10-15km for city-to-city connection and 50-70 for high-speed trains.
An Example: The city I live in has a area of 16x16km, with about 4-5 train stations none of them connected by inter-city lines. Historically they (taa-daa!) were connected by trams. Today these got replaced by buses or faster trams.

Some simple math – assuming a line with 9min (for the train) end-to-end travel time including stops:
Cost for a small train (6 cars passenger) at 1850: 201k + 6*25k = 476k
Running cost: 120k + 6*16k = 226k / year –
Capacity: 72
Estimated frequency: 18min (which means average wait time is 9min(!) )
travel time for passenger: 9min + 9min = 18min (time to walk to station not included)
Infrastructure cost: 350-550k, running cost are also more expensive than tram…

Equal amount of trams for 72 passenger = 14 trams (70 pass)
Buying cost for 14: 700k
Running cost for 14 Trams: 70k
Estimated frequency: 18min (end-to-end) / 14 * 2 = 154 sec (which means average wait time is 75sec )
travel time for passenger: 18min + 1min = 19min (picked up at his door step)
Infrastructure cost: 70k almost no infrastructure costs.

What does this mean? Trams are better:

scalable (buy as much as you need, 1 by 1)
less infrastructure needed
almost no maintenance costs
1/4 running cost

Traffic problems in big cities

jorgenRe — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 13:14:51 +0000

I’m playing on a game at 2080 and ive been having great problems for the last 50-80 years because the traffic is so bad.

Because of that the freq of my bus lanes plummets to the ground and so i can follow on how good the traffic is by just looking on how much my main train line is doing. Some years it’s at 10-15 m pluss then others only 2-4 m pluss.

When i’m looking on the bus lines i see the buses are stuck in huge traffic congestion usually made because, well theres no signal helping the traffic to flow so the cars are driving like 4 – 5 at a time through a road cross then those in the other direction can cross. Also they tend to choose the closest route available instead of that big avenue(which they mostly only use 2 of 5 lines of) So basically traffic isn’t very efficient atm.

And also bus lanes don’t work :C IF they did then most of my lines would be turning huge profits at this moment of time because more people would have used the buses :/

efficiency – Train Fever

Tram & Truck fever – or to much realism

Traffic problems in big cities