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@Gasolene I agree with you I do the same thing. As far as I know the extra maintenance is the only hit. I’ve left profitable stagecoaches running many many years and keep using them after ‘better’ vehicles are available since their maintenance is so low. In fact I will sometimes not even upgrade a line if the running costs of the new vehicles (1870s trains for example) are almost as high or higher than my old vehicle including its penalty – all for just a 5kph benefit. Just not worth it.
@crossmr maybe you should play a different game 🙂  – I’m joking there is room for improvement but overall it’s a good game I feel. Personally I wouldn’t have included depots in the game – it’s silly micromanagement that exists only because it did in TTD. I’ve been guilty of same when writing software i.e. just implementing something without asking myself why and is it the best way. A perfect example is opening a vehicle window when you buy it – TTD did this so you had to assign a route, in this game you set the line from the depot and then have to close all the uselessly opened vehicle windows one by one (annoying for 10 stagecoaches) or delete close everything you’re working on.@crossmr I think that’s a bit harsh – the devs have been very active with patches and the game is very stable. A few passengers disappearing is hardly a major issue.  It certainly doesn’t keep me up at night and there are half dozen other things I’d like to see addressed first – and I have no doubt they’re working on them.
@fransgelden I did the same test and it works as frequency as I defined it. I said let it settle down. The initial number is a conservative guess, maybe the vehicle speeds are different, maybe the road speed limits are different on different parts of the line, maybe there are inclines. My point is once the number settles after actual measurement (takes about 2-3 laps and probably uses some sort of Kalman filter in the code) it can be timed at any point on the line. If you add a second vehicle the number halves, for a third vehicle a third etc.
1. Takes a 90s guess on first vehicle release
2. Settles on 66s after 2 laps
3. Adding a second vehicle halves the time
4. Adding a stop adds a few seconds
5. Now pick any point on the line, I used the mouse cursor by the tree let a vehicle pass and start a timer, the next one will pass in frequency seconds – 38 in this case. But as I said the line has to settle down and vehicles space out.
My point was if you’re defining frequency in a guide keep it simple – it is how often a vehicle passes any point on the line. The fact that the game takes a few laps to work it out is irrelevant to the player apart from maybe a mention. As I said frequency was never an issue for me – it’s a fairly simple concept for anyone who’s looked at a but timetable. My initial thread question was what the game does with that number in terms of the 20 min rule. Is it just a guide for the initial pathfinding or is that the waiting time for every person on that line.
Very interesting thanks for the link @Tossi my assumption was wrong, so are we saying that once a passenger/item journey starts it has to finish no matter how long it takes? Say I stop the train for an hour – providing the origin or destination don’t get demolished in the meantime?
With regard to the frequency guide @fransgelden who wrote that? That person seems a little confused about some core concepts – for example the frequency will be the same at any given station of a line not just the first. If trains leave Berlin for Paris every 15 minutes then they will arrive every 15 minutes and every station in between will have a train pass every 15 minutes no matter what speed they travel, how long the whole journey takes or how spread out the stations are – (assuming a simple line like the game models where the trains don’t wait for other traffic, split or combine etc). From the guide it doesn’t make sense…
Frequency is calculated on the basis of how long something takes to reach the station. This means, if the frequency is 6 minutes, it says your train will take 6 minutes to arrive at the station.
Surely frequency is how often a vehicles passes a station. A particular train could take 6 years to reach a station but if you have enough trains on the line it means some train will pass every station on the line every 6 minutes.
People, including me, become confused by the fact that we got more than 1 station or stop. Bus routes accounts more than 6-10 stops. So how do you know on what station this feature is based on or does it take the average time or is it the travel time itself or what?
I think he’s still confused – frequency is same for every stop – every point on the line infact not just stops. It’s a circle.
Frequency is based on your first stop on the route. The first one you assign in the line. This means it will take ’bout 6 minutes for a train to reach your first station. This also means the train has to finish the whole line before it reach the first station and the frequency is then based from the time it takes to finish the whole line.
Again confusing.
To see the frequency for yourself go to a simple line at the start of a game with about 8 stagecoaches – give them time to space out evenly, then pick a point on the line (any point doesn’t have to be a stop) read off the frequency and count the seconds between the coaches – the number is the same.
But anyway my original question was more to do with how the frequency affects the passengers/items 20 minute timer.
Exactly @fransgelden and you can see how the cargo was an afterthought in the design and why it’s easier to make money on it. To address that they could change industries through the ages – by having many types of goods  (cars / TVs / oil lamps etc.) and as the years progress their demands would change and you need to keep up with different chains and closed and opening industries.
I think his point is that if you did a good job of providing transport needs before cars become popular then you won’t have the problem as they won’t have a need for that many cars.
Personally I have to admit I’ve never had really frustrating problems with cars especially since the last patch and the junction improvement. In my first game I had some issues until I realised how the game works. And yes all my cities are connected and roads even upgraded. In the city too I only build bus lanes on select bottleneck sections where needed and don’t block the traffic too much – some street rework is sometimes needed. I also happily build small roads just make sure my buses stick to main ones. In the late game you have to concentrate on long distance train connections that cars can’t compete with. I suspect that’s what the devs intended – the reason is probably to keep the game challenging. In TTD and most other games once you have a profitable line it would be almost impossible to go bankrupt. Since this game has no AI player then the mechanics make the game challenging.
And I have to say that I like it – there’s the easy option of destroying roads between towns or just making them longer to ease the number of cars choosing to travel.
One thing I’ve found with this game – if you’re not sure how something works just remember they tried to make it as realistic as they could and take a guess.
I don’t think that’s true Tossi. Have a look at cargo, it keeps disappearing too. It also disappears from the stations as well as the vehicles, just stop any vehicles on a line and watch – cargo doesn’t have a home. You’re right if the sum frequencies of a trip are over 20 they won’t travel at all, but the game doesn’t know how long the trip will take – only the waiting times (frequencies).
I think it works like this…
Walking time + Frequency of Line 1 + Actual trip time on Line 1 + Walking time (This is a one line example you can add more)
If the 20 min limit is busted the person/cargo disappears immediately, walking, waiting or riding – just poof. Some people don’t like this but I do as it’s a good indicator your line is on the limit if it happens a lot.
I haven’t seen the 24 minute example gGeorg but if it works as I suspect then that would explain it, your frequency was say 10min for example  but it took a vehicle 14 min to collect the person, due to bunched vehicles on the line or congestion. So the game added only 10 min waiting but you following the person and saw 14 minutes for that waiting part of their travel.
The next interesting question is what order are items/people loaded? First to arrive at station? If you time your line badly all the vehicles will be arriving almost empty.
Haven’t seen the mouse issue, but I see the key issue quite often in OSX – the main map ‘loses focus’ in software development terms. Just click anywhere on the map and you can use the keys again – may be something to do with the Steam overlay.
Or make it like TTD 🙂
Have you seen this mod? You can open it in google web translate if you don’t speak German.
http://www.train-fever.net/filebase/index.php/Entry/223-Advanced-Industry-Mod-BETA/
I genuinely feel the developers of this game don’t get enough appreciation in the forum. For a handful of them to release this game, which is very stable, is nothing short of astonishing. Yes there are things missing and there are bugs but there will always be. I’m sure they have a list of 200 issues to address and I’m sure door animation is somewhere on that list, but I for one am glad they released the game when they did and personally would have paid twice as much for it – I’ve played about 50 hours of it for the price of a cinema ticket.
Sorry when I said ‘middle of nowhere’ I meant an area unconfined by buildings. That could be in the middle of a large city where an area is being regenerated. I still think it’s realistic and frustrating in real life when a wide road narrows, usually causes traffic. It all depends on what was built first the wide road or the buildings to a large degree. But anyway as I said that’s largely academic, for the game I agree there should be an option to put down any road you want – I just don’t find the 2 sizes annoying at all.
See this link
Have a look at this thread for the speed limits. And yeah crossings are a bit unfinished in general – hopefully in the next patch.
You can upgrade (downgrade? 🙂 )the roads back to what they were.
http://www.train-fever.com/forums/topic/road-type-speed-limits/
