Bug? constructing in pieces cheaper than all at once

[chatman]

I don’t know if this is a bug or if I’m missing something here but I came across several situations where a track (street or rail) is mich cheaper if construckted peace by peace instead of at once. Given the same routing of course (I can’t guarentee a 100% anology but I’m talking about 100 an more % price difference here)

Is there a explanation or is it a bug?

cheers!

[christiansok]

I’ve found that constructing track in smaller pieces hugs the contours of the ground better requiring much less removal/build up of ground to support the tracks. If this is the case in your example then that would make sense as moving all the earth costs a lot more money than just laying track on the ground level.

[Dozer]

i made the same observation as christiansok. raising or lowering the terrain from its normal level while building, makes the costs of building go skyrocket. and banking up or digging away is what the game engine does when you lay a road or track in one piece, to make it as level as possible.

[grimdanfango]

This is a vital element of the game.  If you want your trains to run as fast and smooth as possible, you need to keep a consistent, flat gradient, so you’ll need more embankments and cuttings.  If you want to keep costs down, you can have the track rise and fall over the hills and dips, but they’ll lose speed when climbing even a relatively shallow incline, and will have even more trouble if they happen to stop at a signal or station and have to accelerate from standing uphill.

That’s how real trains work… especially the earliest trains – I’ve heard that older trains could have trouble with anything beyond a 1 or 2% gradient (to the point where they could literally grind to a halt and slide backwards if it was too steep).  Hence why real world train lines are usually far flatter than roads, and tend to run along a lot of embankments and cuttings.

[Neldot]

This is definitely a realistic element of the game, but we need more info on the gradient and/or the altitude of the line to make a correct use of this feature and to consistently build a line. And we need also a way to make the project of a track in segments before building it.

At the present, building a track works a bit too randomly without these tools.

[christiansok]

I agree with Neldot. Track laying would work much better if the approval check box before building was after laying multiple segments rather than approving and building each one before moving on to the next.

While getting the hang of track building I end up bulldozing and rebuilding a lot which leaves lots of modified terrain left over (embankments or ditches) which look bad and can be a hassle later.

[leew]

Something I would really like to see is a display of the gradient (in %) of  a track section when you are building it, often it is difficult to see the gradient of a track section when building it.  Also more precise control of the gradient would be nice, perhaps a box where you can type in your desired gradient in % down to as many decimal places as you want.

 

[TylerE]

You can sort of see it. That’s what the arrow near the check box means. There are 5 levels: steep up / shallow up / level / etc. You can click the arrow which will turn it blue and give you up/down to adjust the gradient.

[Author]

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