Yeol

Home Forums Behind the scenes #4 – Sales, distribution, piracy and marketing

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Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 179 total)
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  • in reply to: TF citizens hate Trams? #17114
    Yeol
    Participant

    Douglas made an interesting observation. Especially since I experienced, like Trainvan86, the opposite! I get good results (financially and city development) with trams, but with buses I never seem to get a positive result. I typically get financial loss and poor to none city development with buses. So, what makes it opposite in behaviour? I don’t know.

    I mainly use point-to-point lines with parallel paths for going there and back. I rarely use circular lines. Buses work fine for intercity connections, but I use them only early game, and replace them with railway connection as soon as possible.

    in reply to: Center City 10 Platform Tunnel Station #11023
    Yeol
    Participant

    Very inspirational! Great stuff! Thank you for sharing this with us. 😉

    in reply to: Best way for bus/tram routes? #11022
    Yeol
    Participant

    The best way for tram or bus routes depend upon your aim with those routes. Inhabitants do not need your buses or trams to get anywhere within the town. In 20-minutes tile they can walk across town without problem. So, what do you want to accomplish with your bus/tram routes. For lines within a city:

    1 – Gaining money – Circular route are quite efficient, minimal upkeep and working fine until automobile cloggs up all streets. Frequent stops are fine, but do not overdo.

    2 – Get them to the station – radial straight lines from the station to strategic points in town work best. Key is fast travel from those key points to station without delay. Just a very few stops on the line are enough. the goal is to get as many people as fast as possible to the trains, so they can travel farther, and thus make more money with trains.

    Combining both strategies is fine, and will do well until automobile takes over.

    But the big money bringers are the town to town lines. Place one stop in each town centre, and setup up a bus (or tram) line between the two stops. Guaranteed big profits, even with stage coaches in the early game. I use typically 20 stage coaches per city-to-city line, and make 100K to 300K per year per line. Easy win.

    in reply to: Passenger unloading #10621
    Yeol
    Participant

    In the late game, the unloading and loading take more time than the frequency upon which you like to operate the line. Unloading and loading can take up more then 60 seconds. The frequency of the line is dropping because of that.

    Secondly, the load and unload time are presumably not in the equation of the travel time simulator. The 20-minute rule is not taking in account all loading and unloading times lost during all stops between start and arrival. People jump off the train because they did not arrive in time at their destination. Or, they decided to take the wrong (slow) route because they did not see the time lost during all stops on the slow route.

    in reply to: Express trains and local trains #10619
    Yeol
    Participant

    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. 😉

    Yeol
    Participant

    in reply to: My Metropolis (1500 population) #10525
    Yeol
    Participant

    I made my goal for the current game to grow a city beyond 1500 inhabitants before the year 2000. I play on the small map, so the number of villages to connect to is limited (6).

    In 1850 I started with a village of 220 residents. In 1860 they were with 330. In 1880 I had about 580 people, and now in 1900 I have 870 residents. Cargo is maxed out all the time, coverage is always 90% or more. I don’t know how I could have grow my town faster. 1000 residents by 1900 seems to me quite a lot.

    in reply to: Traffic Management #10470
    Yeol
    Participant

    I’m not convinced about that. Firstly, in reality, the same people are sitting each and every day in the same traffic jam. They also do not take in account that the route they take is the slowest at that time of day, but they took it anyway.

    I have the impression the cross road management is bad. Cars get too easily stuck in a simple deadlock, while trying to turn. And, once a jam notices it is waiting for itself (eg around the block) it should pull out cars, which turn around and look for another path.

    But I think that the installation of the announced traffic lights might bring some slack in the jam… I hope so.

    in reply to: Traffic Management #10465
    Yeol
    Participant

    That is a good question, especially for the late game (1950+). It is impossible to make a profit with trains (I play hard mode), so one has to rely on trams and buses to get some profit, enough to cover the losses of the trains. So once it gets 1950+ it becomes a real struggle against the ridicules traffic, and the horrible traffic manager. I do not have a satisfying answer for the problem at the moment. Pre-1950 is playable, post-1950 not.

    in reply to: Anybody with local and regional passenger lines.. #10448
    Yeol
    Participant

    In my current game I’m trying the metro-principle; all underground, except for the stations. For the moment without any traffic at all. May in 50 or 100 year time? I’ll see…

    in reply to: Auto-replacement of vehicles/trains #10447
    Yeol
    Participant

    +1 from me too! Replacing dozens of vehicles every couple of months is cumbersome. Any amelioration is welcome!

    in reply to: Timetable and/or Priority-function #10446
    Yeol
    Participant

    I read somewhere that the game had a mechanism to spread out vehicles over a line. It is clearly not functioning in practice. Probably it works on a clean line without too much interferences from other traffic, but in practice vehicles bunch up more of the time then not. So i presume the developers just need to adjust their already programmed mechanism, and make it work… and play with their own game to test it.

    Yeol
    Participant

    I agree, they decided to go on the train, so they have to pay. They can abandon their journey after the ride, but jumping from a running train is nonsense.

    By the way, I’ve seen numerous times large number of people walking (as by foot) the full distance from one city to another. Are those the guys that abandonned their trip, and walk back home? I never followed them, nor do I know where they are coming from. (maybe from a bulldozed station, so they decides to go home by foot?)

    in reply to: Intercities? #10442
    Yeol
    Participant

    With the TGV you go within 5 minutes from one end of a large map to the other. Plenty of time left to take a bus, tram or cup of coffee. You have a point about long range travelers, but they just would have a marginal effect on the total traffic mass. I like the idea to make things more realistic, but I find the 20-minute rule challenging and yet quite realistic and simple to grasp. Not for cargo of course, that needs a little tweeking.

    But mostly what I miss is, are travel patterns. And that is only possible if the little people get more natural and realist living patterns, not just a random destination each day.

    in reply to: Intercities? #10422
    Yeol
    Participant

    During the early years, with slow transport, people will indeed not go very far, but during the later years, with faster transport, people will get farther. I’m personally quite charmed by the 20-minute system for passengers (for cargo it should have slight modifications to the rule). I just hope they will implement a near-fix work location. Now all destinations are chosen randomly every time a person is leaving it’s front door.

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 179 total)