Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I don’t think our systems can cope with everything running. But if you do it as SimCity 4/5 with regions, where you build up a city and then it generates traffic when you play other cities and send traffic to them.
If you couple that with time tables then the intercity A -> B express train will arrive once every hour, or whatever time system they might implement.
Instead of micromanagement and mouse click fest I rather work with something complicated that require more thought then mouse clicks. A few trains, signals, switches, and building a time table.
If anyone who has the skills fix a mod so we can select the route for a train, and that the mod hold the train at the station until it is time to leave.
seems you can only make a profit with trains until you build up the traffix volume by trucks and busses. When you see you have enough volume you start a railway line and kill the by road lines. So I am not building railways this time around I am just studying roads.
Do you guys not think that lane change is only possible at nodes in the network, that is street crossings?
For the program to be efficient and able to handle a lot of traffic they need to cut down on all the if then else switch cases.
I have mostly done test playing so I am searching the net and passsing through this thread. One can say that we do NOT have any highways. We have 4 lane roads that is it. And also cargo buy truck earns mor money. And also bussing people between towns earns more money then inside the city. Also as soon as you set up your first inter city buss line suddenly the town grows really fast, it is magic.
So I build a 4 lane road between cities but the busses are using same lane as cargo trucks. I have not gotten them to jump to the “through traffic” lane yet. If the solution is to create cross roads then one can definitely say we do NOT have highways.
Seems you need to test alot about the game before you play it till the end.
Seems you need to place sunken train stations and railway tunnels around the city since we do not have subways. Railway tunnels so the game can make the city denser and place buildings ontop of the tracks. Also you need to place road tunnels under the city to make traffic be able to dive down and skip several blocks and pop up elsewhere in town.
I wonder if the game understands how to use them. I am reading everything and all problems you guys run into. Do not want to waste my time playing and then having to spend trillions to bulldoze and reshape the cities.
Seems one have to envision the future city. To stop the AI from placing buildings and roads I put down stumps of railway so the game engine runs into “collision oh ooh collsion”, yeah, give the game engine some of its own medicine.
Most of these popups have in the upper left corner a tiny white circle with an X in it.
Vehicle: If it is a vehicle the camera warps to where that vehicle is and sticks to the vehicle and you can ride with the vehicle.
Line: The camera zooms back as much as necessary to view the entire line.
—-
I personally do not replace them when they get old. I build more lines instead earning more money compensating for the old/bad vehicles. I replace them later and then I replace all like …
1) Check the current lines frequency value.
2) order all vehicles to depot and sell
3) buy a bunch of new vehicles, launch them, and keep buying till you get the same frequency value.
—–
Problem is when you replace vehicles doing 50 kph with vehicles doing 100 kph. The new vehicles bunch up behind the last of the old vehicles coming in because vehicles in this game do not know how to overtake slow vehicles. This may result in you buying to many of the new ones.
There is a solution though. When you order all vehicles to go to depot and be sold they go to the nearest depot they can find.
So at least on easy mode you can afford to place some extra depots to get the old vehicles out of the way faster.
——-
I don’t like micromanagment and mouse click fests. You should be able to specify the lines standard vehicle. And when you change the standard vehicle the game should bring the old ones in sell them and buy new ones until the line has same transport capacity as before the upgrade.
Another thing I do not like about “go to depot” or “go to depot and sell” is that to me it seems that they just drop everything and go to depot.
They can do that if they are empty. But if they carry valuable goods they could at least finnish the last leg, empty and get paid. If you have a long distance line with a lot of vehicles and they just drop everything it is a lot of revenue lost.
So on long lines I manually bring in the vehicles that are empty. It is a click fest. They need to automate this and have trigger values how worn down a vehicle should be before replacing with an exact copy. I want to focus on management things not sit and click.
I begin with taking photographs of the map with PrScr and piece together the map ( have not figured out if the game can dump out the whole map in one go )
Then I mark all cities and factories. I made up my own symbols. Resources hollow symbols. Factories filled symbols.
City: Hollow 5 edged star with yellow fill so it shines more.
Forest: Hollow triangle -> Saw mill: Filled triangle
Coal mine: Hollow square + Ironmine: Hollow Square with a plus sign in it -> Steel mill: Filled square
Oil well: hollow circle -> oil refinery: filled circle.
There are more resources and factories on the map then cities. So you begin with drawing lines between resources and factories and cities. No production will start until there is an offset for the goods. You connect as many short distance lines first.
It is a puzzle. After you been drawing for awhile you get clusters of cargo routes, You then see more easily where there are gaps and your passenger lines can snake their way through the landscape without tunneling under or over cargo rail lines.
You do it this way there might only be 1 – 3 places on each map where the rail lines have to cross.
It is better to plan well and be able to solve the entire map then build 50% and then run into tons of problems when you try to add more.
I love freight trains. Hauling gigantic loads of cargo is my goal. That is where railroads make their money. And then some on passenger trains too.
( would be nice if you could set the ticket price on the lines to suck in passengers just so that other lines can be profitable. )
Also if you predict a city becoming very large …… since we do not have subways …. and some people write trams are not enough …. why not build a circular TRAIN track with sunken stations, and tunnels between stations to feed passengers to the big train station. 😀
I suggest you do it as they do it in the real world. They use …..
A hub or hubs with lines that go out from this hub like spokes on a bicycle wheel. Then further out there is
A circle line or lines that go all the way around and connect the spokes. The spokes are lines that go out to an end point and then turn around and come back the same way. Subway lines are often in a spoke system.
In less dense cities you use loops to go through “those city blocks” on the way out and through “those other city blocks” on the way back to the hub in order to pack the buss full of passengers. But that is in less dense cities like when we start a Train Fever map.
The biggest buss station in Train Fever can handle 4 lines. This will be you hub. And it will have 4 loops going out from it.
1) residential area loop
2) industry / workplace loop
3) leasure time loop
4) “anything” loop on the way to train station. It will pass whatever type of buildings are on the way to the train station.
One big loop going through the town is not as good as the system above. Imagine a passenger whining “I was just going to the train station … why! do I have to ride through the industry area and this or that or that to get there?!?”. I think he rather walk if that is faster.
You as a planner do not know where a passenger want to go. The system above satisfies everything.
Home -> hub -> work
Home -> hub -> fun
Home -> hub -> train station.
This quickly produce a very long list of lines if you do this in every city. But it seems the game can handle if it is all just one big line. Station -> hub -> Home -> hub -> work -> hub -> fun -> hub -> station. Everytime the same line comes back to the hub it uses another parking spot for the buses.
Now, imagine the town growing. You can have several of these hubs with “4 loops”. But they all have the 3 loops and the 4th connecting to the train station.
It is now time to create the first circular line going through each of the hubs. But it seems no way to free up a slot. Ok then. Build another big buss station! well, why not build a big tram station instead! Right next to the big buss hubs is a tram station. The tram station is used by the new circular line that have to go in both directions so 2 slots are used up in the tram hub. But hey! you have 2 more slots in each tram hub. I suggest you use the 3rd to go directly to the train station. And then you have 1 slot free in the tram station to what you want with.
In this system the passengers will find they can go wherever they want, it may require changing vehicle at some point.
——–
I haven’t built any tram lines yet having too much trouble with cargo trains. But if I go a really big city in the future and too much traffic. Then maybe the direct tram lines from “tram hubs” -> “train station tram hub” could have zero stops on the way to the train station …. If they do not have any stop on the way maybe they pick another lane …. would be good, one lane for local busses … and another for through traffic ….. should increase capacity.
also this solution should make it easier to upgrade stations. And a station must not be passenger or cargo station it can be a mix.
And if you need more tracks for passenger you should be able to reassign and change a cargo track to passenger track. And then build more cargo tracks at the side / edge of the station.
You need to be able to reassign the track so you don’t need to delete it and then build one of another type.
So maybe it should work like this that you build all the tracks you want and then you paint a flavour on them , passenger or cargo. And then the game knows where the train should stop.
This type of station also make you have to pick the track the train should stop at since that is simpler then having the game figure out where to stop if you were pointing at a station built this way by adding tracks and platforms,
Topic starter is correct. There is a bug here.
I had a buss line that worked. So I continued building elsewhere on the map. Then I noticed that line was loosing money so I whent back and as the topic starter said all busses where standing still at one stop saying “No Path”.
As I said I been working elsewhere on the map.
The route was working.
The only thing that could have “destroyed” the route is the automatic upgrade / transformation of the city. Adding of roads. upgrading buildings etc. It could be a buss stop being destroyed by this process.
What is strange is that the game logic understands there “is no path”. But when the game destroyed the path it did not know what it was doing otherwise it could have reevaluate the path and picked a new path.
Seems some parts of the game is not “communicating” with eachother.
me too.
yesterday. added more trains to increase frequency. nothing happened. Added roads all around the forest and the saw mill try to get the saw mill and forest “hooked in” again. nothing. Added roads between forest -> saw mill -> town ….. nothing.
I think I have figured out something though. There has to be a need for the goods you produce. Say you set up line “A” with horse drawn transport. You add vehicles until the production stops increasing. Then you build some roads to connect more resources and set up line “B”. But …..
If the goods from line B go to the same city as line A you should see production in line A industry go down. So it seems that the city is choking on goods. Demand driven. City “ok to recieve goods”, saw mill “ok to send goods therefore ok to recieve wood”, forest “ok then I produce and send wood”.
So I started a new map. and started a train line immediately Forest -> Saw Mill -> Town. And to be sure I did not “kill the spawn point” for goods I only upgraded the road and deleted the rest. added train station and connected to the road.
No production started. And I did this test so that the goods that were to be produced did not have to compete with another source.
So I added a road again between forest, saw mill, town, and now goods started to be produced. So I added horse drawn transport and the goods started to use that “Line use YES”. Then I added more trains to improve frequency. And then I deleted the horse route and ended up with “Line use NO”.
Seemed the train route was invisible to the game.
I keep running into so many problems with this game I will never be able to complete a map…. 🙁
train lines may have many switches but most of the time most of them are never changed out on the line. And they try to assign platforms to lines coming in from various directions so that they have to change as few switches as possible, Most switches are never touched unless somthing unexpected have happened. Most of the time train after train just swishes by.
Only at large stations the swiches are used and then it is according to the time table and sending in the same train on the same platform every day.
This creates safety for the passengers and less stress in the central where they only have to to work a few critical switches.
If two tracks merge it is possible to drive through the swich from both incoming tracks onto the one track.
The rail line and the switches are rigged this way to create minimum amount of work. BUT, they do CAN direct trains onto spare tracks in the station using switches and signals. This game just don’t let you specify the platform and you can not send in trains on any spare tracks.
Only on overcrowded old train stations buried deep into large cities where they can not expand cause there is no room, then they don’t send trains to some spare track, they have to wait out on the line at that stubborn red light.
Cause imagine a buzy station with a train leaving every 2 minutes, the switches are set for minimum work, And if you have a 110% utilized station with 16 – 20 tracks and you send that train onto a totally new platform there is going to be several sweaty minutes of switching hoping you don’t cause an accident or mess up the time table for the other 16 trains.
So yeah the train tend roll in on the same platform every day at the same time, or at the same minute every hour … you get the picture.
Time tables are used with trains as well as for aircraft. It is so that you do not cause any jam out on the line that you can not undo. You are not allowed to leave station, or the airport, unless the computers can see that that hole that was planned for you exist.
And this is what I like , a time table generating tool. This tool might say you may only leave station 14:23. But WHY? and you scroll through list of track sections you line uses and then you either some switch further down the line , or a station platform down the line being , lets call it “overbooked”, too many lines are going through there.
Then you the planning tool might suggest another track or whatever, or tell you it is time to open the wallet and build some track.
Time table driven train dispacher might sound ultracomplex but I think it is not so hard. But I will die before I see that in a train game. This is how the law works. Either,
The game works and simulates everything great at highest level, but it looks really crappy. or
It looks fantastic but works really bad.
I put passenger and cargo staions very tiight next to each other using the n/m keys but the cargo station has to be rotated 180 degree, then I give it a road and then that road uses underpasses so the cargo get into city.
Then both these stations total of 10 tracks just merge at both ends into a 2 or 4 track main-line depending on needs.
So for us to be able to select the path ourselves and which station track the train should stop at is not interesting for the?
If you have cities A B C and
trains from A -> B uses the track that C should have used and
trains from C -> B have to use the track that A should have used.
Since the game picks shortest path first and then pick them in order, what you did was created line A-B first and it ended up wrong and then you did C-B. Since the game pick the track in order you delete the lines and create C-B first and then A-B. So you have a small degree of control.
It is irritating as hell though.
You have to run the game and complete building everything. THen you send everything to the depot and clear a who region from all train traffic. And then you delete all lines.
THen you drink coffee for sharpness and pour in a little vodka for mental stability and calmness. Then when you feel right you put on the thinking cap, hold the toung right in your mouth and carefully start creating the routes again checking these yellow and blue and green and cyan lines carefully. And after you done tho whole region you hopfully have tricked the game into picking the right station track.
Having paths like this is not bad since this is how it works IRL. There is a time table, and a chosen path for the train, the passengers expect train 1010 going from A to B to be ontime and always arrive at platform 10 same time every day around the year. It is out on the line though the signalling system is mostly used to separate trains but also if necessary can lead them onto some spare track if there is a traffic jam, or if the first train is a slow low priority train and a fast high speed train is coming from behind, then there is a need to get off the main line and let the other train pass.
There is so much that is missing.
But I a feeling they will have a long way to go to implement signals properly. I saw some evidence how the game works 2 days ago. I had a new double track with switches but hadn’t put out all signals yet. There were two trains on the line on collision course. Even if there were no signal the other train understood it courd not proceed. And then I though Aha!
Signals, are used to affect which tracks are to be used. The path that the line takes. BUT, no train ever watch these signals.
What the game does while you are creating the line is looking at the path only after the path has been or as it is being created. And then it detects the switches and after it has found those the game places it’s own …. well you can not call them signals …. it is just “collition avoidance code”.
This is why people one the forum have said that on the exit of stations there are invisible signals. But there NO signals in the game. The game do not look at signals while the trains run, cause the game don’t need them, it has its own collition avoidance code.
Cause if it were not like this then the trains should just contine through the switch if there is no signal RIGHT? There is no red signal that means go ahead and drive….. but no the train has a sixth sense another train is coming.
So basically it seems the trains a re running the same path following code as trams and lorries etc.
A: A create the exact route
B: now just follow this path and stop for other veicles and stop at stations and other passenger / cargo stops.
So I have a feeling this design is very deep down in the game. A line can only have one route and can not use alternative routes.
I think I am sarting to geth a feeever……
I want my money back if they don’t implement proper signalling. How can train games evolve backwards?
