Express trains and local trains

[ebigunso]

So I’ve been playing Train Fever for over 60 hours now and it seems people in this game doesn’t like to ride express trains but rather take the time to ride a crowded local train. Pretty annoying and completely kills the purpose of building any sort of express line over the local line.

So I had three towns, lets say town A, B and C all interconnected with a local line. Since town A was a really big town I thought more people would like to go there, and I decided to build an express line that goes from town A to town C reducing the travel times.

Despite my assumptions, only about 10 people took the express line each trip while the local line had about 60~70 people average. It’s not that people only go to the town next door, as some people ride at one end and don’t get off at town B and keeps on to the other end. Those should take the express line following the “shorter time is better” logic, as the express trains are undoubtedly faster, but they never seem to do just that.

As you can see from the fact I AM getting 10 passengers each trip, the travel time does allow for people to move between the farther towns. The intervals were something like 3min.

I hope the game fixes this problem along with allowing the use of two platforms for a single line without the need to double track the whole line.

If I missed something, please post below and tell me what I did wrong…

• This topic was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by ebigunso.
• This topic was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by ebigunso.

[vinkandoi]

Put more trains in your express line. A person travels for only 20 minutes in the game and that includes the waiting of time of the passengers at stations.

However, I feel that there could be a better calculation in which the travel time is given more priority than the waiting time at station.

 

 

[ebigunso]

As I said, the travel time is more than sufficient. I simplified the example a little bit so actually it was town ABCDE and stops at ACE. At first I had four trains that said 3min interval, that proved overdoing as so little came on, then I downgraded to two and still almost none uses the line. 6min interval for two trains.

That would be at the start 3min between the stations and at max 3min wait at the station, how much faster can you go? I’d say 6min max travel on trains is good enough to motivate people to go to the other town.

Also the point I’m making is that the people ACTUALLY go to the other town, just by slower means (i.e. local line) and ignore the faster express line that they can take.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by ebigunso.

[Yeol]

People have a choice how to go to that far town: take the slow train, or take the express. The train that brings them first wins. You will see that about 10%-20% of the people in the slow train will stay on the train and travel on.  Those 10 people are about the same amount as those taking your express train. Your express train is in direct competition with your local train.

And it is not the 20-minute rule that is the problem. The biggest issue about the equasion of travel time, is that the unload and load time are not take in account with a local train that stops everywhere. When one excludes this from the equasion, the express and local train travel equally fast (if using the same engines). The travel-simulator can not make a difference between the two train in aspect of time, and so your long distance travelers are split evenly between the local and the express train.

One could tackle the problem by constructing high speed tracks passing-by the smaller villages, and using high speed trains to go faster. Then you will lure more people to the express train.

At least, all above is my observation and deduction. So a lot of speculation, because I do not know the actual algorithm. 😉

[ebigunso]

ah I didn’t know that the load/unload times at stations are not taken into account with the calculation… weird as waiting time at the station actually counts.

This surely needs some fixing in the game’s end.

Anyways I guess the solution right now would be to make the local train even more slow… as the express line is already a TFV. I could make the express line go further for more speed but the map size doesn’t allow me that. Might as well go for the large map next time.

Thanks!

[omoikane]

I haven’t tried local and express trains on the same station because there are only 5 platforms on one station, but in separate stations, people likely to ride express trains.

Also note that acceleration is much more important than maximum speed for shorter lines, especially for later game. I’ve tested a speed race for BR 103 (200 km/h) with RABDe 12/12 (125 km/h) on same line which is longer enough to bypassing 2 adjacent towns and RABDe 12/12 wins! BR103 even can’t hit maximum speed of 200km/h and its actuall max speed was about 160km/h. That was a surprising result.

[Drexxgnom]

Today I did some testing, if load/unload times are taken into account.

So far I am 99% sure it does!
I had a savegame for speed testing just like omoikane. With minor tweaks here and there I came up with two tracks right next to each other. Line A has two end stations. Line B has two end stations and two additional stations spread over the track. For testing, each line got a Dualstox.

Interval times immediately after assigning the Dualstox`s to the lines:
Line A: 6 Min
Line B: 6 Min

Interval times after each Dualstox got back to the first station:
Line A: 6 Min
Line B: 9 Min
Here it seems like line B has taken the additional stops into account.

Then I connected the two additional stops in the middle of line B to a city with busses feeding the stations to get more passengers.

Interval times after a while, with line B transporting about 50 to 60 passengers each time.
Line A: 6 Min
Line B: 10 Min
Now it seems like line B has taken the passenger load/unload into account.

After i disconnected the stations from the cities, the interval time on line B again went down to 9 minutes.

So far, passenger load/unload IS taken into account. To me it seems like every vehicle tracks its own interval, so it is not calculated, it is actually recorded. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say 😀

Also, like omoikane said, the length of the track is pretty important. The TFV has a horrible acceleration. I did a speed race between the BR 103 with 1 Einheitswagen IV, a Dualstox, and a TFV. The Dualstox wins on a middle map with the track taking about 3/4 of the map. Even the BR 103 wins against the TFV in this case. So yeah, acceleration often is more important than topspeed.

Btw, I’m not a native english speaker, so sorry about any misspelling or something like that.

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