Passenger-only game, 6M+ passengers from 256x256, large cities (pak128, nightly)

[onre]

Link to savegame:

This game uses release 888 of pak128. It has been played with nightly version r3147 without any external add-ons. I suspect it would work with newer nightlies, too.

http://stc.cx/~esp/simutrans/interesting.sve


About this savegame:

The game was started in 1960 with three times normal amount of starting money. It is not freeplay. I tripled the starting money to avoid the "build something small and profitable and wait" phase and go directly to larger-scale transport. Map generator was used to generate a small map with large towns and cities. Initially there were no industries at all, they've only appeared later thanks to economy growth. City names have been adjusted to avoid duplicates in connected cities. There might well be unconnected cities with duplicate names.

So, now it is year 1972. Many of the larger towns are connected to the main network in some way. There are lots of slow local train routes using either diesel or electric multiple units and one express line using Deltics in a two-head configuration for pulling long passenger trains at high speeds. Most buses on the network are of the same type (RVg-KS 9020-92) and only serve city transport. Additionally some larger cities have double-deckers on busy lines. Bus lines in cities are not very efficiently designed, and some of them are running at full capacity, some others making loss because of too many convoys serving them - this has been result of having 1000+ passengers waiting for a certain stop and then putting many convoys to the line, and then forgetting which line had the extra convoys. But this is small money - point is to get passengers to train stations and jump into a railcar or express train and pay nice sums of money for that.

With some optimization, I believe this savegame could be much more profitable. Currently I'm waiting for Ikarus articulated buses to become available - their larger capacity, better acceleration and low operating cost could make many lines currently served with 9020-92 more efficient. Also some cities could benefit a lot from an efficient tramway system. One other thing would be enlarging the map and connecting the new cities to the existing network.


Some screenshots: (WARNING, large png files!)

Worcester South station, which is terminal for four local and one long-distance train route. Some platforms are underground.

http://stc.cx/~esp/simutrans/simscr02.png

City of Brighton and St Davids West station. Tram and underground lines serve the busy main street, bus lines go across it and stop at connecting stops. The tram line is very busy. Not many trams can be added without a gridlock situation, therefore the underground line exists. It goes roughly the same route but in another direction.

http://stc.cx/~esp/simutrans/simscr03.png

Underground bus terminal at Stoke-on-Trent station. The bus lines departing from this station serve long lines all the way to outskirts of Brighton. There's train connection from here to Worcester South and in other direction Leeds, from where you can get to a local north line connecting many smaller towns. This is just an experiment in building bus terminals, I'm not very good at it yet. This can be seen in many other cities, too.

Ground level:
http://stc.cx/~esp/simutrans/simscr04.png

Underground:
http://stc.cx/~esp/simutrans/simscr05.png

Here's the town of Cullompton, some local-line trains and a couple of buses shadowed by windows showing the route map and financial data.

http://stc.cx/~esp/simutrans/simscr06.png


Have fun, and post your thoughts!