The International Simutrans Forum

In the Simutrans-Experimental 3.x series, the supply of electricity to towns, as well as the supply of mail, passengers, goods, contribute to town growth. In each case, the proportion of the service supplied by players (including AI players) relative to the demand is taken into account in the city growth calculations. Furthermore, the demand for electricity in towns varies over time, and, proportionate to that variation, so does the importance of fulfilling that demand in respect of the overall growth. Currently, passenger demand is fixed at 40% of the growth factor. Electricity's proportion is pegged to the electricity demand figures given in electricity.tab, such that, if the setting is 100 (which is the default in the absence of electricty.tab or if the timeline is turned off), it is 20%. At the default, mail has 16% and goods 24%, but those vary in proportion to the importance of electricity, such that, if, for example, electricity was 10% rather than 20%, an additional 10% would be shared between goods and mail (so that mail would be 21% and goods 29%).

However, some have questioned whether goods and/or mail ought to vary in this way, or whether passengers ought also vary. The effect of the above calculation is to make the importance of delivering goods and mail diminish over time, while making the proportion of electricity delivered increase over time: it has been suggested that the importance of goods and/or mail does not greatly diminish over time. On the other hand, the importance of electricity does increase with time, and it cannot help but be offset against something.

I should be very interested in any feedback on this particular topic. Please vote in the poll to give your preferred solution, and post below to give some information as to the reasons that you have chosen the option that you have.

Thank you everyone for voting in this poll: the most popular option currently appears to be diminishing the importance only of mail, but not of goods. Unless there is a large rush of voting in a different direction before 3.9 comes out, I shall change the code (a simple matter) to reflect option 4. Thank you everyone for the input!

Voted only passenger importance diminish.

Reason:
1.More electricity means reduction of production cost of all kinds of good and rise in quality of life
2.Thus there will be more product consumption, transfer of mail(aka posted good) and passenger traffic*.
   EDIT:*movement of people in general
3.It is natural to think ST world politicians to favor automobile industry given the unlimited resource in ST
   and creation of industry create more job(social stability). Thus automobile usage increase taking some portion of
   share from public transportation. Also abundance of electricity decreases auto price for more affordability.
4.Only demand for mail and good unchanged. Consumers can transport themselves but wont transport bag of
   flour from factory and send gift for grand mother or uncle by themselves(unless visiting her directly ofcours). 

I know that passenger traffic is the biggest element of game but from what I wrote above, diminishing the importance
of passenger seems most appropriate. Or as the 2nd choice all proportion diminish proportionally.

EDIT2: some grammer

Colonyan,

thank you very much for your input :-) It is much appreciated. However, there is a problem with reducing passenger weighting because of the automobile industry, which is that competition with private cars is already simulated in Simutrans-Experimental, resulting in reduced passenger numbers, so a further reduction in the importance of passenger transportation would be double counting. Indeed, what happens is that those passengers who are transported by car count towards city growth as surely as if the player had transported them, but, they create congestion, which retards city growth, and can even stop it all together if it gets too high.