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Thank you for putting together this list. I have a couple to add:
– add button to send vehicle to depot and send vehicle to depot and sell to the vehicles list as well. We still need the automatic replacement but this would make it a lot easier to manage vehicles anyway. These commands are there in the lines panel so it’s only a matter of improving the interface.
– in the line display it would be nice to see the travel time between stops. These numbers already exist in the game for pathfinding so again it would be easy to show them.
– add possibility to choose the platforms train lines use in multi-track stations. It would be even nicer if they could pick them dynamically but this would be already better.
What does the game get right?
Obviously the core gameplay works, that is laying tracks and roads, running trains/road vehicles, growing cities etc. We can discuss details such as the choice and number of transportable goods and ease of track laying. Honestly I don’t think we can find much common ground if you don’t agree with this.
That being said, I’d much prefer to return discussing the balance between road and rail traffic in the game as it is. We can have another topic for debating if the game is a complete failure and should be abandoned.
Well then let’s list the things it’s good at:
I’m not saying that the game is perfect or that it’s not missing anything important (such as automatic replacement). I’m merely objecting to your choice of words. Unpolished, or even unfinished? Yes. A failure at all levels? No.
Please tell us even one thing this game does well. Balance is only the tip of the iceberg and trying to handwave this with “every major release” no.. that’s apologist speak. Every major release is not in the state that this is. While most major releases have bugs of varying degrees, they usually still do some things right and well. This does nothing right at any point.
I refer to the other released games only in the context of balance between trains and road traffic. These kind of relative numbers are hard to get right with the first try in a complex game like this and this is normal in the gaming industry. These things are then tweaked in patches.
The game was simply not well thought out at all. It just about fails from one end to the other at every level.
Can’t agree with this. The trains vs. road traffic balance is not very good at the moment, especially in the cargo business. These balance issues are something that can only be fixed via through testing by a large amount of players. Almost every game suffers from the same issues, just look at any major release during the last years. For example Civ 5 was horribly unbalanced at release and still I’d hardly call it a failure at every level.
This is a great initiative. The game is great fun but the balance is horrible. These things come to mind for me:
– The low speed limits for passenger wagons in early 20th century. For example Class A4 with its top speed 145 km/h is useless (at least for passenger traffic) at the moment because the passenger cars only go up to 120 km/h until 1960 by which it is already obsolete.
– I’d consider increasing the capacity of Red Arrow and Railbus slightly. Capacity of 15 is a bit low for a 320k year train when you can have a bus carry the same for 36k a year.
– How about changing the top speed of ordinary rail to 160 or 180 km/h and increasing the cost of high-speed rail significantly. Currently there is little reason to not use the high speed rail when it’s available because the price difference is very small and the top speed of ordinary rail is only 120 km/h.
I guess these balance issues are because the game is just recently released. It takes a lot of testing by a large community of players the get the balance right eventually.
My guess is this: The game chooses the method of transport based on the travel time and the travel time is calculated by adding the walk to the bus stop /train station (also in the destination), waiting time at the stop and the actual travel time. However, the waiting caused by long queues at the stops is not included and probably neither are the delays caused by car traffic.
While in your case the train might be faster, the additional walking and/or waiting caused by bus-train-bus transfers probably makes the train less attractive. Remember that if they have to first with bus to the station, then by train and then by another bus, they have to wait for a transport 3 times instead of just once.
The mechanics of the game are very opaque as it is. It would be nice to have more information from the devs. Could be useful for the modders as well.
I like the landmark idea. A harbour could demand goods and airport could be a passenger destination. There could be also other landmarks like stadions or touristic sites. It could be something for a DLC.
I think the scale of the game is just fine. The issue here are the high running costs of trains compared to buses and trams. All it takes is a couple of small tweaks.
