Topic: Intracity Mode

[FS1819]

Simutrans seems to be more biased towards intercity transport. However, I am sure there are a number of players who play with maps that resemble one single city.

The current Simutrans engine has quite a few annoying things that make this kind of games hard:

• Fixed prices
  
• Limited airport use
• Way too high buses running cost
• Way too low trams running cost

Therefore, I have a set of ideas to change this. Some of the requests might have been raised before, but I think my take would be better.

Intracity Mode
There can be a switch in Simutrans config at the creation of the game. Once choosing this mode, the game will implement the following changes to optimise for intracity transport simulation.

User-controlled ticket prices
The user should be able to control the ticket prices. Ideally, he/she can set each individual route's price. Currently, running bus routes that make a stop every 8 tiles or so is prone to losing lots of money, while running commuter express routes will yield an unrealistically high profit. This is not fun at all.

I remember last time someone talked about this, it was viewed as "too complicated." Honestly, I don't think it is that complicated to the user. The following is a good format to follow.
http://www.gld.gov.hk/egazette/pdf/20081221/egn200812213396.pdf

The user can set a fare class for a type of routes operating on a type of roads. Then, Simutrans will calculate the one-way distance (total dist / 2) of the route.
There should also be discount points, where the player can specify on the route schedule at which stop the fares are at 0-100% (at 10% increments) of the whole route fare.
This will allow players to run local bus routes at a profit, and express bus routes at a relatively higher (but not stratospheric) profit.
More importantly, this will allow a better division between local and express routes running between the same set of destinations.

In essence, I am trying to raise the short fare prices, while lowering long-distance fare prices.

International Airport
The public player will be the only player with the ability to build an airport, and set the yearly pax levels. Planes will be generated automatically by Simutrans (as if it were operated by the computer players). Regular players will not be able to start airline services. However, they can start bus, freight, boat, and train services to the airport to transport the airline passengers.

The yearly pax levels will automatically drop by 10% a year if insufficient connecting transport modes are provided, beginning from the second year of airport operations. Vice versa for excellent connections.

Variable convoy running cost
Convoys making regular stops consume much more fuel than convoys running at constant speeds. Starting from the 4th tile at a constant speed, the running cost should drop by 5% until the cost is at 65% of the full cost.

Worker's wage
Ideally, the wage of workers should be about 40-60% of the operating costs. I think a more simple way to implement this is to make the wage levels proportional to the convoy running cost.
The player can set the wage levels at 0-100% of the vehicle running cost. For every 1% below 40% (exclusive), the vehicle would ignore 2% of pax at the stops. For every 1 % above 45%, the vehicle would allow a 1% overload on board, until the vehicle is at 120% of its normal capacity.

[prissi]

You can make easily large airports, that is trivial. Just do a large map with two huge cities. The real trouble with innercity transport is the to general scale of simutrans. In order to have some distance to cover, the city must be much smaller than in reality.

[Ters]

These are interesting suggestions, but sounds very much like another game. (Not a specific game, just something different from Simutrans.) There is a limit to how many settings and different behaviours one can roll into one product before it falls apart.

[An_dz]

I think the pak balancing takes a major here. On pak96.comic I have a map with lot of lines with very close stops that gives me a lot of money, the vehicles doing the transport between cities also give money. The airports are not yet balanced but soon it can be very profitable too.

[FS1819]

At least, could the fare system be changed to make short-haul fares more expensive per km than long-haul fares for the same mode of transport?

I do understand it is quite different to what Simutrans is now. I have tried CIM2. However, I still find Simutrans more fun to play with.
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I just thought of another idea. Since Simutrans is heavily based on Manhattan distance, shouldn't the station coverage also be of Manhattan distance as well? i.e. Diamond coverage area

[Vladki]

As to your idea of international airport. You can easilly fake it by creating an attraction (like castles, churches, and such), that has very high pax level, occupies large area, and has an appropriate picture. However there will be no planes flying around.

[FS1819]

I think the pak balancing takes a major here. On pak96.comic I have a map with lot of lines with very close stops that gives me a lot of money, the vehicles doing the transport between cities also give money. The airports are not yet balanced but soon it can be very profitable too.

You posted this just as I was typing my reply. I usually play pak128.Britain. If I use the stock vehicles, I would suffer catastrophic losses from local bus routes sooner or later. If I use my own vehicles, e.g. a 120-seater double-decker with cost per tile at ~1.8c, only then can I break even. I have never been able to build a profitable railway system with stock trains.

I also play pak192.Comic sometimes. The running costs are so high, I can never make a profit.

[FS1819]

As to your idea of international airport. You can easilly fake it by creating an attraction (like castles, churches, and such), that has very high pax level, occupies large area, and has an appropriate picture. However there will be no planes flying around.

The passenger levels do not change though. With an airport, you would want the best connections if you want to attract usage. If poor connections are provided, less and less people will go to the airport, without overloading the entire system.

[isidoro]

I guess if some of those rules can already be implemented with scenario scripts...

[Junna]

If you compile the pak yourself from source with makeobj, you can change the running costs in the .dat files (I do this with pak.britain.experimental to modify things). Some paks, like pak64 and others, have extremely high running costs; pak128.britain is roughly in the middle compared to those. I always play with free-play on, but negative incomes just nag me to no end, so I like to avoid them.