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Not getting any city growth

Started by MirceaKitsune, October 02, 2017, 06:29:28 PM

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MirceaKitsune

I am aware from previous discussion that in Simutrans, cities are supposed to grow. The more a player transports passengers and mail and goods, the more a city should gain citizens and cars and new buildings.

However I am not getting this with the default settings in pak128. My game has been going on for 15 years, and during this time I've set up systems of mass transportation in nearly every city. Yet if I look at the City Growth entry under the chart of a city hall, there is never any change. There's only a very small increase in citizens, roughly 1 citizen per month in every city... this is enormously small and something must be wrong!

Here is the latest version of my current save. If anyone wishes to take a look, I'd like to know what I am doing wrong. Is there something else I can or should be doing to get more city growth?

Note that I had to pack the save as a multi-archive file, due to the forum imposing really low limits on file size. Download Easy.001.7z + Easy.002.7z + Easy.003.7z, extract Easy.7z.001 / Easy.7z.002 / Easy.7z.003 from them in the same folder, then open those three files as a common archive and extract Easy.sve from them. If this doesn't work or you can't install 7zip, let me know and I'll see if I can post it directly on another file host.

TurfIt

You're only transporting ~15% of the available. Hence growth is ~15% of the max rate. Transport all passengers, all mail, and all freight on the entire map to achieve full growth.

MirceaKitsune

Quote from: TurfIt on October 02, 2017, 08:33:44 PM
You're only transporting ~15% of the available. Hence growth is ~15% of the max rate. Transport all passengers, all mail, and all freight on the entire map to achieve full growth.

Wow, didn't know the game expected you to transport that much for noticeable growth. That would require covering whole cities in stations... can it even be done without losing more on maintenance than earning from the transports?

Leartin

Quote from: MirceaKitsune on October 02, 2017, 08:39:40 PM
That would require covering whole cities in stations... can it even be done without losing more on maintenance than earning from the transports?
Each pax wants to go from one point on the map to another. Let's say pax are equally spread out on a map big enough for 11 stations, and only count connections from one station to another. That means there are 55 possible connections.
1 Station alone does not get anything done.
2 Stations cover only one connection
3 Stations cover three connections
4 Stations cover six connections
5 Stations cover ten connections
6 Stations cover fifteen connections - now hold on a minute and look at that: Six stations already cover more than half the map, but only slightly more than a fourth of possible connection. This is because pax have a destination - for each pax spawning while the map is half-covered, there is a 50%chance they start at a covered place and a 50% chance they want to a covered place - 25% chance in total.
10 Stations cover 45 connections - there is less than 10% of the map left to cover, but almost 20% of connections are not established.
(There is more to this in the game - but this is the basic idea)

Now, pak128 has pretty high costs for stations. You don't gain money from stations, you gain money from connections. So, you want to have the highest ratio of connections to stations - and that rises with each station in a network. Again, there is a bit more to it, but generally speaking, if you cover everything with (useful) stations, the maintenance of those stations in comparison to your gains from transport are negligable - well... of course, the bigger the network, the more pax at each station, so you might need to build larger ones, which cost more to maintain. Usually at some point, both in a playthrough and the players mind, it switches from "How do I not get bankrupt" to "How can I deal with those masses of pax?" - remember, once you are "done" with what was on the map initially, the cities will grow, new factories spawn and you have to constantly adapt your network. You did not scratch the surface yet ;)

MirceaKitsune

Fair enough. One problem I've always had by the way is that stations only seem to do anything in a few cities or parts of cities: If you place even a lot of them in a small city with simple houses, you barely get any passengers and just lose all your money... however if you place them where there are tall buildings, you gain a lot more. This makes it nearly impossible to even setup transportation systems in small cities!

This is confusing because I'm indicated that I should be getting more: I analyze the houses in those cities, and for example I'm told that one's passenger level is 7 and another one's is 3 and another is 10, so I place a station that covers all of them then repeat the process in another area... yet when I have a bus traveling between the two stations, I never get anywhere near 7 + 3 + 10 (20) passengers, and am lucky if I even have 3 in several months! Why is that?

Leartin

TurfIt mentioned 15% coverage. So 15% of the pax in that catchment area can actually go where they want to - 15% of 20 would be 3 ;D

What about the other 85%? They probably want to go to a location they can't go with the service you provide. In game terms, they disappear. As the lore goes, they walk, or use their car, or call a taxi, or stay at home.

jameskuyper

Quote from: MirceaKitsune on October 03, 2017, 12:38:22 PM
Fair enough. One problem I've always had by the way is that stations only seem to do anything in a few cities or parts of cities: If you place even a lot of them in a small city with simple houses, you barely get any passengers and just lose all your money... however if you place them where there are tall buildings, you gain a lot more. This makes it nearly impossible to even setup transportation systems in small cities!

This is confusing because I'm indicated that I should be getting more: I analyze the houses in those cities, and for example I'm told that one's passenger level is 7 and another one's is 3 and another is 10, so I place a station that covers all of them then repeat the process in another area... yet when I have a bus traveling between the two stations, I never get anywhere near 7 + 3 + 10 (20) passengers, and am lucky if I even have 3 in several months! Why is that?

Do you know where those 20 passengers want to go? Does your transportation network allow them to get there?
A small-town transportation network can be profitable if you can connect to all the places the people in that town want to go, and if you connect to all the places where there's someone who wants to visit the small town. In both cases, those places might be anywhere on the map.
That's the reason why a large pax/mail network can be much more profitable than a small one. As a rule, you should serve all of your opportunities to ship cargo before starting to build your pax/mail network, so you can use the profits from your cargo runs to finance the construction of your pax/mail network, until it's large enough to be profitable on its own.

MirceaKitsune

Okay... now I got it. I was expecting a building with 15 people to yield me 15 passengers, I actually didn't ask myself where they want to go :P That makes everything a lot clearer.

DrSuperGood

Since all components of a stop generate pickup, one can plaster an entire city with a single stop. This is generally considered bad practice/exploit on servers so instead I suggest massive subway loops with 12 tile (or longer if supported) engines and stations. Yes I have done this on pak128 and pak64 and made a boat load of cash from it as long as payment model is distance between stops.

MirceaKitsune

Quote from: DrSuperGood on October 03, 2017, 05:22:40 PM
Since all components of a stop generate pickup, one can plaster an entire city with a single stop. This is generally considered bad practice/exploit on servers so instead I suggest massive subway loops with 12 tile (or longer if supported) engines and stations. Yes I have done this on pak128 and pak64 and made a boat load of cash from it as long as payment model is distance between stops.

Wait... there are subways in pak128? I have not seen any in the building tools, and was actually going to ask if they'll ever be implemented... how do you get them?! Otherwise this is good advice to keep in mind, thanks for the info!

jameskuyper

Subways are not shown as a separate item. What you do is build rail tunnels, or road tunnels with tram track on them, and then place passenger train stations on the underground track.

MirceaKitsune

Quote from: jameskuyper on October 03, 2017, 09:27:12 PM
Subways are not shown as a separate item. What you do is build rail tunnels, or road tunnels with tram track on them, and then place passenger train stations on the underground track.

Got it... thanks! I wonder if it's possible to build rail tunnels without starting from a slope, as this sounds very hard to do in a city.

Fifty

Quote from: MirceaKitsune on October 03, 2017, 10:23:45 PM
Got it... thanks! I wonder if it's possible to build rail tunnels without starting from a slope, as this sounds very hard to do in a city.

You can build the entrance to a tunnel only by clicking CTRL and then building, easily accomplished from an artificial slope you make just outside of a city.. Then pressing Shift-U or CTRL-U brings you underground (the first being regular underground mode and the second being "Sliced" underground mode. Then you can build tunnels however you like. Using the raise and lower blocks tools on a piece of rail or road undergound will allow you to go up and down as well.

Quote from: MirceaKitsune on October 02, 2017, 06:29:28 PM
Note that I had to pack the save as a multi-archive file, due to the forum imposing really low limits on file size. Download Easy.001.7z + Easy.002.7z + Easy.003.7z, extract Easy.7z.001 / Easy.7z.002 / Easy.7z.003 from them in the same folder, then open those three files as a common archive and extract Easy.sve from them. If this doesn't work or you can't install 7zip, let me know and I'll see if I can post it directly on another file host.

We have a community file upload at files.simutrans-germany.com, you can upload there with your forum username/password. It's annoying to extract archives :).

You for sure have a lot more passengers you can transport; you have 11% of passengers an 1% of mail right now per the in game stats. Add some cheap bus routes to bring passengers to your tram line and airports. Also industries -- the numbers you see there are actual numbers of pax per month. Adding Pax to industry can also raise production. Of course, it's going to be hard as the map is pretty small to expand a lot. You already have incomplete chains on your map which means industry related growth will be low.

P.S. Traffic lights do nothing but create traffic jams. Get rid of 'em and increase your service to get rid of those pesky city cars.
Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?