Hello! When I played today, I noticed that there's no "BUS ONLY" sign... (.pak128 Simutrans Standard)
Do you mind creating one? Because when it's high traffic it's nice to have an empty road for the buses/trams/taxies.
That's the Private Sign as we call it on Simutrans. On pak128 it's called "Private Gate". You can control which player can pass, so you can choose one road that only allows your vehicles and another that only allows public vehicles.
There also might be a sign with minimum speed, which might have similar effect.
Quote from: Vladki on June 12, 2018, 06:14:38 PM
There also might be a sign with minimum speed, which might have similar effect.
Can you rely upon buses to be the fastest vehicles on the road? I'll believe that the fastest available buses are likely to be faster than trucks. But a 30kph city car (green_car_0) becomes available in pak128 in 1905, the first bus (Praga_Bus) doesn't become available until 1919. The first bus capable of going faster than green_car_0 (RVg-B_101) doesn't become available until 1920, by which time a 130kph city car (MOTO_RIDER_0) has also become available. No bus ever has a speed higher than that.
(the *.dat files I'm reviewing are dated 2011 - looking at the last version might give different results).
Of course it is not perfect, but if the private cars are faster than buses, then they do not cause much problems. It is the slower trucks and old-timey private cars that slow you down. It depends on the situation if minimum speed sign is useful or not. I'm just informing about possible options.
Quote from: Vladki on June 12, 2018, 08:44:45 PM
Of course it is not perfect, but if the private cars are faster than buses, then they do not cause much problems.
They take up space, which in areas where I have buses, is more an issue than speed. Acceleration is also a bigger concern than top speed here. On the other hand, I don't have room for dedicated bus roads either, and city cars would likely be spawning behind the sign anyway.
I've also had problems in the past with cars entering terminals and jamming them up (these terminals are mostly for trucks, not buses, but still).
@An_dz
So you mean that I must switch player to make the gate work or am I understanding this wrong? The "Rising Bollards"?
Yes, rising bollards are the same as private gate. The player who builds it can control who can pass through.
You don't need to change player. Open the game, place the sign and click on it with the inspection tool and you'll get it. The UI should be quite self explanatory.
Quote from: An_dz on June 12, 2018, 05:30:16 PM
That's the Private Sign as we call it on Simutrans. On pak128 it's called "Private Gate". You can control which player can pass, so you can choose one road that only allows your vehicles and another that only allows public vehicles.
Some time ago I thought about it, it would be interesting a road sign that would restrict the type of vehicle that can travel.
If you are playing with a player, however, you use several types of vehicles, such as buses, trucks, trams, so Private Sign is irrelevant in a situation where you want only buses, for example, to pass there.
Quote from: sheldon_cooper on June 15, 2018, 01:08:45 AM
Some time ago I thought about it, it would be interesting a road sign that would restrict the type of vehicle that can travel.
If you are playing with a player, however, you use several types of vehicles, such as buses, trucks, trams, so Private Sign is irrelevant in a situation where you want only buses, for example, to pass there.
Trams are easy to separate, as they run on a different type of road. Buses and trucks on the other hand is the same type of vehicle as far as Simutrans is concerned. One might make a sign that filters based on cargo, but how should it treat a bus with a mail (or whatever) trailer? Bus, truck, both or neither? And should it be cargo type or cargo group? The former means that the same truck could pass carrying sand, but not gravel, but causes uncertainty if it's empty. Lastly, there is the question of vehicles that can't carry anything themselves, but which optionally can pull different kinds of trailers. This is most common in rail, where they are called locomotives, but nothing stops you from having similar vehicles on other waytypes. I don't remember or have time to check if semi-trailer trucks can be used without their trailers. Should they pass or not?
Quote from: sheldon_cooper on June 15, 2018, 01:08:45 AM
Some time ago I thought about it, it would be interesting a road sign that would restrict the type of vehicle that can travel.
If you are playing with a player, however, you use several types of vehicles, such as buses, trucks, trams, so Private Sign is irrelevant in a situation where you want only buses, for example, to pass there.
I believe that the road sign for the separation of vehicles should be as simple as possible and objective, as it is when we click on a garage: '' bus / trucks / trailers. ''
However, one should discard the trailers, and add the Citycar (public vehicles), example:
-------- Sign of Vehicle Separation ----------
- buses (and postal vehicles)
- trucks (all types)
- public power (citycar)
--------------------------------------------------------
- = blocked
- = allowed
At the road sign. You can choose whether on that road you will only go by bus, truck, or Citycar (public vehicles)
So this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_bus) should not count as a bus then?
Being able to filter by cargo type sounds interesting and useful to me.
However, ultimately, if vehicles are under a player's control, they can technically set a waypoint for each line now, and that's probably surely sufficient for most situations.
The problem of filtering by cargo, as Ters noted, is that in the return travel you don't have any; and in some cases you can have vehicles carrying multiple cargo types. A 'smart' algorithm is only smart considering the designer view of smart in this situation as someone else might think that the 'smart' behaviour is wrong.
Quote from: sheldon_cooper on June 15, 2018, 07:01:02 PM
I believe that the road sign for the separation of vehicles should be as simple as possible and objective, as it is when we click on a garage: '' bus / trucks / trailers. ''
And what happens when you mix those? A bus with a truck? A bus with a giant gravel trailer? The engine allows that. Should it pass bus, truck, both, neither?
I know that in some cities they have bus lanes but the game and reality are nearly alike when you consider truck traffic inside a city. The best alternative is to have an autobahn that is outside the city so trucks don't lose their time on the traffic and slow street speeds. The amount of trucks passing inside my cities are generally null or very low, and if I do need to pass inside a city I try to micro-manage the route to make it take a specific route that should have less traffic, especially from my busses.
And this can be somewhat achieved with minimum speed sign, add one private sign to only allow your vehicles followed by a minimum speed, in most situations a bus is faster than a truck. Busses are also balanced to not reduce their max speed when loaded, and if they do that's a bug on the pak and you should tell the author or the pakset team. Also the idea of the minimum sign is not about restricting vehicle types, but to only allow fast vehicles as you don't really need to care their types, you just want that the heavy, super slow ones go somewhere else so that lane can have more free traffic.
We made up a real discussion here!
I get it now... Simutrans doesn't need one! The conversation you made explained it to me. Thanks!
Quote from: An_dz on June 15, 2018, 11:10:21 PM
I know that in some cities they have bus lanes but the game and reality are nearly alike when you consider truck traffic inside a city. The best alternative is to have an autobahn that is outside the city so trucks don't lose their time on the traffic and slow street speeds. The amount of trucks passing inside my cities are generally null or very low, and if I do need to pass inside a city I try to micro-manage the route to make it take a specific route that should have less traffic, especially from my busses.
Depending on the pak set, running trucks around the city might make them unprofitable. Although running them through the city might be unprofitable as well, if the vehicle has to turn left and right all the time along randomly generated street. I don't remember if speed bonus is affected by speed limits, but if it is, that would hurt too.
The main reason I use trucks at all, is to deliver goods to shops, and also pick up from the odd factory, appearing inside or becoming engulfed by cities, without having to tear down dozens of buildings to make room for a railroad siding (which is also somewhat unrealistic in modern times). In at least one case, I simply built a tunnel for the trucks, from the edge of town and into somewhere near their destination. It is almost impossible not to cross bus traffic in my cities. Pretty much the only exception is when I'm using trams. (In earlier times in my current games, passenger traffic was as much a hindrance to goods as vice versa, as the streets where packed with horse drawn carriages to cope with passenger demand. In addition came ox drawn carts with beer from the local brewery to the local marketplace. I had to clear deadlocks about once an hour.)