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Hello all!
I’ve been having a lot of fun with the game so far! I’ve been trying out a couple of things on how to get the most passengers on my lines and one important aspect of that is of course for travel time to stay within the magic ’20 minute’ limit. At first, I rather naively thought (as many others here, I think) that the travel time was ‘actual travel time’ + frequency (i.e. the waiting time for the train/tram/bus).
However, upon closer inspection, some routes seemed to be doing much better than they should if that was the case. So I tested a few scenario’s on a small test map (medium difficulty):
- A bus line from the edge of village A (residential) to the edge of village B (industry). With only one coach, the frequency was 27 minutes (one way travel time of 13.5 mins). Obviously no one was taking the coach in this case.
- Adding a second coach reduced the frequency to 13 minutes. Still no commuters.
- Upon adding a third coach the frequency was reduced to 9 minutes. Commuters appeared and started using this line! Even though the travel time + frequency is now 22 mins.
Does this mean that the ‘waiting time’ is actually frequency/2? That would make sense since that would be the average waiting time if a passenger arrives at a station randomly. And in the third case that would give a total travel time of 18 mins… leaving 2 mins to walk to and from the stops.
Then I ran a little test with freight… and on a line with a frequency of 31 mins (one cart), the oil well still sends it’s one production / year to my waiting horse cart! So it would appear that freight does in fact not care about waiting time at all, just about the time actually spent travelling?
If so, I find that a particularly nice touch, as people are generally a bit more picky about waiting than lumps of coal. 🙂 I guess I will be a bit more liberal with the ‘wait for full load’ option then. It also makes it a bit easier to kick-start production chains as you don’t really need frequent services to connect distant industries.
If others (or the devs 🙂 can confirm this is actually how the game works, that would be great. 🙂
May your lines run ever smoothly,
Reblet
i’ve tested this for freight yesterday. frequency didn’t seem to matter indeed. lines with a frequency of over 20 minutes but a travel time under 20 minutes worked. lines with a low frequency but a longer travel time didn’t work.
frequency means, how often a vehicle comes by a station.
For two diffrent stations it is pretty simple to say that, 1/2 of the frequency is travel time for thatvehicle.
the magic 20 minutes limit does not refere to the travel time for a vehicle, but the time a passenger/cargo is willing to travel. meaning, the walk from his destination to the station and then travels by vehicle and then again walking from the station to the endstation. walktime point A to station+waiting time for vehicle+travel time with vehicle+ walktime station to point B.
With faster vehilce and more stations we can influence the travel distance. with lowering the frequency on one lane we reduce the waiting time. 3 variable which can influence the travel distance.
another thing that i do not yet know, how is frequency calculated with more stations. i don’t think it referes to a whole cylce of a vehicle, meaning how much time goes by until vehicle A reaches station A again.
your example of the cargo is interesting, because that can mean two diffrend things.
1. cargo does not care about waiting time (like you said)
2. cargo production is not actualy frequend but more spontaneously (meaing: it will be produced, when in the next 20 miutes or less, cargo can reach a destination where it is needed, it will be produced)
I agree that walking time, speed and frequency are the three variables you can use to influence the maximum travel distance. However the difference between using ‘frequency’ or ‘frequency/2’ as waiting time is pretty significant to judge the viability of a given line (especially trains) as you need to run long trains (consequently at lower frequencies) to get a good return on investment.
I appears that for longer lines the frequency calculation stays the same, i.e. total time for one round trip divided by the number of vehicles. I think the game (thankfully) assumes that our vehicles run at perfect separation. 🙂 However, there does appear to be some timing mechanism to determine the actual roundtrip time, once the line is actually running.
With regards to cargo, it seems that this is purely time-based (at least for the primary industries). In the example I mentioned earlier, the oil well’s one production / year spawned exactly on January 1st. 🙂
Regards,
Reblet
I’m sure frequency also affects cargo. For testing purposes I made a long line between two industries, where the frequenct was around 30 minutes. No cargo. Then I added some more vehicles to decreate frequency, and the cargo started using the line. When I sent most of the vehicles back to a depot, leaving only one working, so when frequency went back to 30, cargo stopped coming.
Interesting!
I did some further testing and it appears that cargo is indeed affected by frequency, but is willing to travel much further than passengers are.
Based on a few different testing lines I gather cargo is willing to take about 35 minutes (give or take 1 or 2 minutes, tested on medium difficulty, medium map size) to get to its destination, rather than the 20 minutes for passengers.
Even in 1850 this makes possible some quite long freight lines with just horse carts!
Hope this helps anyone.
Reblet
are you talking about 35 minutes of travel time alone or combined travel and waiting time?
in my tests cargo would not travel any longer than 20 minutes, but the waiting time was ignored.
Cargo will stop going to the depot if it has to wait too long. Early on I had like 5 wagons doing a short run between two industries. At first it was okay, but cargo started to back up, when there was 16 cargo waiting, cargo stopped going to the depot and started going by foot. after a couple pickups it started going to the depot again.
35 minutes of travel time including waiting (assuming waiting time = frequency /2) is what I’ve observed.
I observed as well that if you create too much of a back up with pickup (even before the station hits capacity) the industry will indeed start sending out its production by foot again. But the industry window will still mention ‘Line Usage: Yes’ and if you pick up enough freight, deliveries to station will continue again.
how much of that 35 minutes is travel time and how much waiting time? did you also check for the real trip time or did you just calculate it from the frequency? because it seems that when you start a line the frequency is often stated a little higher than it actually is.
the results from my own testing are a little irregular. i seem to be able to sometimes create rail lines, which despite having a trip time of around or over 20 minutes (derived from the frequency) are used to transport cargo, but only if the frequency is ridiculously low. so frequency might to have an influence, although its difficult to say how it works really, especially since it seems that with a trip time of well under 20 minutes frequency seems to have no influence at all.
Yes, I did derive the travel time from the frequency – it isn’t always completely accurate, but I think it’s the same data the game uses to decide whether to use a cargo line or not. 🙂
The most exaggerated example I found was a line with a travel time of 19 mins: one vehicle, no cargo. Two vehicles (freq. 19 mins). Of course, if the travel time is much shorter than 20 minutes, you will always stay under the 35 min and you can basically use any frequency you want.
I have derived all my data from trucks as they are easy to set up next to the industries (to minimise walking time). Do your trains deliver straight from industry to industry? If there are any feeder networks in between you will of course have to include their travel time as well!
Regards,
Reblet
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