Hi all,
I have just started using the maps from maps.simutrans.com (http://maps.simutrans.com), but need some help tackling the game I've created. I'm using the Britain 768x768 map and pak128.Britain, with 50 cities on the map (median population 200,000). The game has given me a huge city with a population of over 4 million, which occupies 238x217 map tiles, and is located in London, East Anglia, and the whole eastern side of the country from Hull/Scarborough in the north, to London in the south, and as far west as Birmingham. I would appreciate answers to the following two questions:
1. How would you go about moving passengers around this city?
2. How would you go about moving passengers into/out of this city? (The rest of the map has a population of ~3.9 million)
These are precisely the challenges of real life transport planners! What era are you in? Such a large city would suggest the use of underground railways if they are available.
I like to play with timeline mode off, so that a wider variety of vehicles is available.
Your suggestion of using underground railway is not one that I have considered before...
One question though: if an underground station is built, are any surface stops subsequently built above included as part of the same station (so passengers can interchange to buses/trams/trains as appropriate)?
If you are using Simutrans-Standard, you can build a surface stop directly over an underground stop, and they should merge into one stop to allow interchanges. If you are using Simutrans-Experimental, stops will not merge vertically in this way, but passengers can transfer to nearby stops by walking.
I use Standard, so the stops should merge, although I haven't tried it out yet...
By the way, is there a scale used in Simutrans where 1 person in game represents x people in real life (e.g. city populations), and if so, what is the value of x?
When I asked for a good subway system, I got told it was not really possible in the current paks.
If you really want a subway game, you can try my pak http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=14891.msg146957#msg146957 (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=14891.msg146957#msg146957) where I guaranty that ever single passenger trains and trams from pak128 and pak128.britain are viable given the right circumstance. (quite a bold statement)
to answer the question.
Since it's a huge city, I'd first design 2 east-west road named H and Q which would roughly go at 1/3 and 2/3 of the city. I'd try to hit as much attraction and high density building as possible without making any hard turns. If I can go in the subway and i'm stuck in the roads, I'd also pay attention that those roads are as straight as possible. I'd favor trams to get a better speed bonus. High speed roads tend to be replaced by the city so it's not possible...
Next I make 2 north-south lines the same way named 8 and 17 to keep the pattern.
Once this is done, I'd start to draw my secondary line, let's start with G parrallel to H and right on the north of it. I try to draw it as straight as possible and to cover as much city area as i can, but of course, the straightest line is H... i do my best. Except that instead instead of making one big G line, I'd make 3 line separated by the line 8 and 17. I get G east, G west and G central. This way I sneakily encourage the passengers at taking one of my main lines for longer trip as their will be likely less transfer to do this way. But not to a point were they will start to travel sideway or something that would make me lose money in payfortotaldistance=2.
I repeat for all horizontal road identified with a letter and all vertical lines identified with a number until the whole city is covered by this pattern.
Quote from: percy4u on January 08, 2016, 01:00:41 AM
I use Standard, so the stops should merge, although I haven't tried it out yet...
By the way, is there a scale used in Simutrans where 1 person in game represents x people in real life (e.g. city populations), and if so, what is the value of x?
I don't think that there is. I have been working on calibrating this more accurately in Experimental (so that the value of x is 1), but there is no scaling of this sort. Do have a go at merging stops and using underground railways and see how you get on.