Cost balance (bus/tram vs train, infrastructure vs maintenance)

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  • #16213
    gcampono
    Participant

    Hello, I find the game is interesting to play, however as many pointed out there seem to be an inbalance between costs:

    1. Busses and trams seem way too cheap with regards to trains, especially the running costs of busses and trams is too low. I think it would be interesting to raise it a bit, considering that one also has to pay the driver. On the other hand running costs of trains seems too high.

    2. Maintenance costs increase greatly with each new model. While this may be realistic due to inflation (and increased performance), I’m not sure ticket price also increases (it would better balance revenues and costs)

    3. Cost of infrastructure is way too low with regards to the running cost of vehicles.

    What do you think about the economic model of the game. Do you have some suggestion on how to modify the different costs ?

    Does anybody have an idea of how the ticket price (or transportation revenue) is calculated ? Does it depend on distance, speed and other factors ?

    #16215
    kimmaz
    Participant

    1. No, Its just fine the way it is. I want a hard game, not a fair game. I like the challenge! After all its Single player ffs.

    2. No, Its just fine the way it is. I want a hard game, not a fair game. I like the challenge! After all its Single player ffs.

    3. Infrastructure don’t make money on its own But raise it to 10x the cost, id like the challenge.

    Ticket price depend on length, and how full the train is.

    #16219
    Pasi
    Participant

    Balance mod works this out reasonably well. The biggest issue is that anything moving on the roads has too much capacity. Whilst the realistic capacity for trains is divided by 4 to get the game capacities, same doesn’t apply for the trucks and horses for example. Or do you really think that couple of horses used to pull 16 tonnes? Even the latest 40 tonner truck has too much capacity in it, it should be closer to 8, if we assume 40 ton total max weight.

    For the building costs, i’ve changed my costs.lua to make it harder:

    function data()
    return {
    — per m^3
    terrainRaise = 20.0,
    terrainLower = 25.0,

    railroadTrack = 1000.0,                — per m
    railroadHighSpeedTrack = 2500.0,        — per m
    railroadCatenary = 1500.0,            — per m
    railroadSwitch = 250000.0,            — per instance
    railroadBridge = 1000000.0,            — per instance
    railroadBridgeVol = 5000.0,            — per m^3
    railroadTunnel = 2500000.0,            — per instance
    railroadTunnelLen = 100000.0,            — per m

    — fraction of the road cost
    roadBusLane = .5,
    roadTramLane = 1.0,
    }
    end

    These prices will force you to think carefully how to lay out your tracks along the contours of the landscape to minimze the cost.

    #16234
    gcampono
    Participant

    @kimmaz

    I also like a hard game (that’s why I suggested raising busses/trucks and tram costs), but also wish it was fairer (better balancing the different transport types, although this may already be obtained by raising the other costs)

    I know it depends on lenght and number of passengers/cargo, but do you know if the function is linear/increasing/decreasing with distance ?


    @Pasi

    Thanks for the suggestion, I think I will check it out. I like some of its concepts (like making cargo wagons heavier) but I did not find information on how much costs are rebalanced. Does anybody have this information ?

    Has anybody experienced with some custom modifications on its own ?

    #16236
    Traian Trante
    Participant

    I made my own cost modifications like this: track: 200, HStrack: 400, catenary: 200. I also reduced running the cost of cargo wagons to 25% of original, cost of passenger wagons to 50% of original. I also reduced the capacity of late game wagons by about 30% so that i would have a reason to use longer trains.

     

    So far i’m pretty satisfied with this.

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