Guidance on starting with passengers in 1750

[TransportFanMar]

Here is my save file. I have found out that not only do trains not carry passengers so early (only freight), the maximum journey time tolerance for horses on roads is just too low (45 minutes). Is there no way to build a passenger network this early, and should I focus on freight? If so, which year do passengers become worthwhile?

P.S. I was going to attach my save, but it is too big! Any way to upload large files on the forum (i.e. non-external)?

[Person0123452]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the maximum journey time tolerance for horses on roads" but I've set up a new game and people are quite willing to ride my horse and carriage service to the next town for 4 ingame hours (one way)

[TransportFanMar]

Yeah, it seems to accept longer than the shown tolerance time for the class of service.

Edit: What is optimal coach station spacing?

Edit 2: Should I connect all cities right off the bat? Also, I still get several customers saying journey time is too long.

[prissi]

I am sorry, the forum does not accecpt large files, not even for admins. So you have to use external hoster.

If the challenges (like travel time limit and classes) of extended are too much, you could try the standard, which is a little easier to start with. There is a pak128.britain for it as well.

[TransportFanMar]

But I like extended and want to try the challenge.

[prissi]

Then go for it. There are many flavours of Simutrans nowadays, like also OTRP one (https://osdn.net/projects/otrp/) and I think there was at least another one including shunting.

[Person0123452]

Yeah, it seems to accept longer than the shown tolerance time for the class of service.

Edit: What is optimal coach station spacing?

Edit 2: Should I connect all cities right off the bat? Also, I still get several customers saying journey time is too long.

As I understand it:
Comfortable journey time is not relevant. This merely affects how much a passenger will pay (they pay less the more over the comfortable time a journey takes). So it may affect profitability but it won't affect ridership.

Each individual potential passenger has a time they are willing to travel for that is determined when they begin pathfinding. This is what determines if travel time is too long for them. You will always have some deciding against your service because it takes too long for them, but you can only go as fast as you can go. I believe this number also takes into account waiting times, so to minimise this you want decent frequency.

I'm not really certain on optimal spacing myself yet. It depends on what services you're running I guess. People will choose your service if the time to walk to the station, wait, make the journey and walk to their destination is the fastest way available to them the competition is with walking or private transport), is within their accepted travel time and is within walking range (the range denoted by the station). Closer stops means people spend less time walking to and from your transport, but may not be necessary this early in the game.

The more overall transport coverage you have, the fewer people will reject your service due to no route. Whether you should "connect all cities" is really a question of what demand this produces in your particular game and your ability to supply that demand, which is heavily dependent on things like journey times and whatnot.

Take this all with a pinch of salt because I am no expert, this is just what I have read.

[TransportFanMar]

Thanks, this is very helpful.

Edit: how to see the acceptable journey time? What factors are taken into account (e.g. class) Can you just not see it?

[Person0123452]

Thanks, this is very helpful.

Edit: how to see the acceptable journey time? What factors are taken into account (e.g. class) Can you just not see it?

Check this thread for the differences with standard:
https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,1959.0.html

"In Simutrans-Extended, passengers will only travel if the estimated journey time to their destination is less than those passengers' journey time tolerance.

The journey time tolerance is a semi-randomised figure, based on: (1) how far that the passengers are planning to go; (2) whether the passenger is a visiting or commuting passenger; and (3) a range of values set in simuconf.tab. If a proposed journey is longer than the passengers' journey time tolerance, the passengers will not travel, and will display "too slow" (similar to "no route") in the graphs of the stop that they would have used. The destinations of passengers whose journey would be outside their tolerance level is shown as pink on the passenger destinations map."

[TransportFanMar]

I see.

[TransportFanMar]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the maximum journey time tolerance for horses on roads" but I've set up a new game and people are quite willing to ride my horse and carriage service to the next town for 4 ingame hours (one way)

In my games this regularly causes "too slow" passengers.

[Ranran(retired)]

too slow is an indicator of the quality of your passenger transport network. It rarely goes to zero. This is because it is difficult to meet the demands of someone who wants to go from Paris to London in 10 minutes. He assesses that your transport network is too slow.
Those requests are randomly generated in a range based on your configuration. But the higher the quality of your transport network, the less likely it is to be rated too slow.
I think James wrote somewhere about this system.