James, you mentioned somewhere else that the program assumes a waiting time of zero for new lines, as it has no means to estimate the actual times incurred with new lines. That leads to massive passenger appeal in the first month(s), until a realistic average has been recorded. Traffic then drops to a fraction of what it initially was.
Wouldn't it be better to first assume a "modest" or "average" waiting time, based on distance, than to assume no waiting at all? That number would quickly be corrected, as it is now, but newcomers would be less tempted to overextend themselves by purchasing capacity far beyond of what is actually needed.
For the record, the waiting time initially is assumed at 1.9 minutes, not zero - there is a set minimum waiting time of 2 minutes for all stops (the 1.9 is used to let the GUI know that it should say "waiting time unknown" rather than display a number).
This suggestion has been considered a long time ago when the initial minimum was first introduced, but the trouble is that, in some cases, passengers will not travel if the waiting time is high. If the player is establishing a new high frequency line, and the waiting time is actually 2 minutes or so, having a higher waiting time initially can deter passengers from using it. At least with this system, after an initial rush, equilibrium is quickly established.
And it is not very unrealistic either. People tend to try new things until they know how good or bad they are...
Quote from: isidoro on January 05, 2014, 01:40:48 AM
And it is not very unrealistic either. People tend to try new things until they know how good or bad they are...
People - yes. 50.000 tons of bulk goods? Rather not so. :)
Apart from the scale, which can be a problem, you can think that there are people behind those goods taking decisions and that people like to try new things too... ;)
Quote from: isidoro on January 06, 2014, 12:40:02 AM
Apart from the scale, which can be a problem, you can think that there are people behind those goods taking decisions and that people like to try new things too... ;)
Good point. :)
Can I fire those people? Especially when they think it's a good idea to route 20.000 tons of coal via a grain farm? :)
Probably not, since they are employees of the coal mine rather than your employees. However, this (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=13036.0) suggestion, which I should like to implement one day (sadly, there is a very long queue of things to go before it) might well assist.