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Community => Simutrans Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Isaac Eiland-Hall on January 24, 2016, 06:44:17 PM

Title: Local/Regional lines (for mail in this case, but...?)
Post by: Isaac Eiland-Hall on January 24, 2016, 06:44:17 PM
I don't normally deal with mail if only because not all paks make it easy. But I'm playing again with pak128, and the combined mail/bus stop always makes me think "Why not?" :)

So I had an idea that I'm trying, but I'm curious to know if anyone else has done this — and if you think it works well or poorly.

This map has cities that have been growing from tiny to requiring 2-3 stops for coverage. I don't want to lose money having a mail van per city; but I don't want a mail line that has to stop at every bus stop for multiple cities, either. So I decided to try having a local van that covers 2-4 cities (I'll explain below) plus a regional truck that picks up from each city hall and takes to a regional mail hub (outside cities - in this case I have three around the map)

Say I have three cities - A, B, C. And each has three bus/mail stops: City hall + two others, each numbered, so:




CityStops
AA-CityHall ("A"), A2, A3

So my mail van stops at: A → A2 → A3 → A → B → B2 → B3 → B → C → C2 → C3 → C
And my mail truck stops at: Regional → A → B → C → B → A

I figure some mail will travel between cities, but not a whole lot; mostly it should end up sort of splitting the cost of the mail van across the three cities. And the truck can get the mail going to the rest of the map.

Does that make sense? Is it something you do? Curious for feedback/discussion/ideas. :)

I can post map/savegame if desired, although full disclosure: Instead of playing -freeplay, in this game I've set the beginning bonus to 5000 instead of 1500. :)

Actually, I'll post maps now...

(http://i.imgur.com/Ikh4FpK.png)http://i.imgur.com/Ikh4FpK.png

Mail:

(http://i.imgur.com/1kq30Hz.png)http://i.imgur.com/1kq30Hz.png

Three regional mail stops: North is northwest of Coventry, South is west of Cantebury/Oxford, and Central is at the yellow dot that's also my garage

So, for example, at the bottom left are cities from left-to-right: St Albans, Carlisle, Salford. One van circulates these three; and a mail truck goes from Mail South to each of these three's city hall stops, and reverses the route to Mail South.

It's a simple map, but I've been playing it in preparation for trying to set up a much larger map. :)

Hopefully this is entertaining, at least.
Title: Re: Local/Regional lines (for mail in this case, but...?)
Post by: gauthier on January 25, 2016, 08:25:30 PM
I haven't played mail in a while. As far as I know, the usual scheme in pak128 is a combination of hardly profitable (or even unprofitable) local lines and highly profitable regional lines. Local lines are a little profitable in early games and become unprofitable in modern times. At least, this is what I often experience for passengers, I guess it's almost the same with mail.
Title: Re: Local/Regional lines (for mail in this case, but...?)
Post by: Vladki on January 25, 2016, 09:22:25 PM
I prefer to have the same lines for buses and mail. Ideally adding a mail trailer to one or more buses on each line
Title: Re: Local/Regional lines (for mail in this case, but...?)
Post by: Zeno on January 26, 2016, 12:00:54 PM
Never used such an schema Isaac, but seems to be a good approach when you have several small towns which are relatively close; that way you can make the same van collect/deliver all of the mail for a couple or three of those towns and leave it in a hub station. Will check it out in one of my games...

Btw, I completely agree with Gauthier's affirmation; local lines are barely profitable, while intercity routes are usually very profitable. I always used a combination of them.
Title: Re: Local/Regional lines (for mail in this case, but...?)
Post by: Isaac Eiland-Hall on January 26, 2016, 06:09:06 PM
I figure it should help spread the running cost around. I don't find much success in trying to set up terminal stops in cities where vehicles can wait for a load; so the alternative is to wait until a city is large enough to be able to support the running costs of a small mail vehicle, or try and spread that running cost among cities.

I figure even if the cities aren't extremely close, as long as the mail truck can keep up with demand, the running cost of one truck is more quickly justified than that of multiple trucks, although I suppose technically it's two trucks - one 'local" and one "regional". Maybe it'd be better with 4-5 cities. :)