AI Bus and Tram Companies Possible?

[Morat]

I don’t know if this has come up before, but the big draw for me with this game is the trains and setting up track layout and signalling. From one of the pre-alpha vids it looks like it may be necessary to set up bus/tram routes in towns in order to drive demand for the railway.

Is it possible, possibly as a future addition to the game, to have AI companies create and operate these non-train services?

[Berry]

If I’m right, there won’t be any AI competitors at the release, but devs said they are planned.

[Morat]

I’m not thinking so much about competitors as having companies that complement your rail setup – i.e. when you set up a rail station they set up the road-based services that exploit and make use of it.

I’m sure it would be very similar from a development perspective, but with a slightly different twist to save the player having to operate parts of the game that they have no interest in.

[douglas]

As stated in the Simulation blog post: http://www.train-fever.com/2014/01/simulation-basics/

 

Note that if you don’t construct or if your transport infrastructure is not efficient enough, the world will not stop to move! People will walk or use their cars. Mines, refineries and industries will transport their items by their own (manually or by using trucks).

[Morat]

Hi Douglas, I’m aware of that blog post, but that’s not quite what I’m describing. In that post the devs seem to be saying that if there’s no route, or no easy route between A and B that agents will use their own means (presumably private vehicles) for transport.

They’ve also described that if we build a station at, say, the Northern side of a town and we want the people on the Southern edge to use it that we may have to build bus/streetcar/lorry services to connect the station to the rest of the town.

What I’m describing is that the AI would be able to bridge that gap by creating those intra-town services, basically to make a profit from my station. We’d have a symbiotic, rather than competitive, relationship. You could even have towns that already have an AI-run tram or bus service but no rail, which would give you an incentive to place a station there.

So the AI would:

• Not create or operate any rail services
• Not create or operate any inter-town services
• Prefer to place stations/stops near player rail stations in order to benefit from freight and passengers moving through those stations

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Morat.

[Goemoe]

Is it possible, possibly as a future addition to the game, to have AI companies create and operate these non-train services?

Sounds interesting. Perhaps when we will get some further AI, (competitors and multiplayer stuff have been named for a possible addon, if successful enough) intown services could be competitive as well. One of the AI competitors could actually be eager to provide more intown services than railroads. We too could think about adding busses to cities of our opponents. Is it more profitable for us or for them?
And players like Morat could ignore it, because at some point the AI will join in and provide intown services for him anyway 🙂

[Author]

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