Private Car-Public Transport Combination Trips; Or We Need Park And Rides

[cascadia]

One of the things that sightly annoys me in Simutrans is that people either ONLY take public transport all the way, or take private cars all the way.  In real life, people drive to the airport to get on planes, to the train station to get on long-distance trains, etc (they often leave their cars in long-stay car parking lots, if you didn't know).  This gives me an idea- what if we could build parking lots for sim-people to drive to our stations?  There is a parking lot building in the game now, but that serves only as a means of storage.  If we had this, we could also build park and rides- basically (for non-Americans on here) they are mass transit stations designed to serve commuters in rural and suburban areas that can't afford bus routes through every neighborhood- people drive to the park and ride instead and catch the bus there.  This would also allow players who like air transport to set up more realistic airlines.  What do you all think of this?

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Although I like the idea by itself, I think the problem is that cities in Simutrans are already small/dense. And I believe that to implement your idea, basically it would involve increasing the catchment area for a particular station - and the problem there is that if you make the catchment area too big, it means you're really just transporting from city to city... In fact, in times past, the area used to be 3 tiles (covering 49 tiles); a year or two ago, it was change to 2 tiles (covering 25 tiles), and this did seem to improve gameplay.

Unless something has changed, it was advised that it is not possible to have station tiles increase the base coverage amount -- that is, to make the existing parking lot station tile (pak128, I think? Forget which pak has it) expand the catchment or coverage of the station by an amount different than the amount *any* station tile covers, would not be possible.

If you want to concentrate on city-to-city (i.e. airlines), I recommend increasing the size of the catchment in simuconf.tab, or messing with the passenger level (I think that's also in simuconf.tab, but... I might be wrong on that). However, bear in mind that if you have, for example, a single station that covers an entire city, the passenger traffic will be reduced, as you will only see passengers that want to travel to different cities. On the other hand, this may be what you want. I once played a game where I set the catchment area to ten tiles, and... it was actually kinda fun. Definitely a completely different playing style.

[jamespetts]

This would be very difficult (and computationally expensive) to implement, as it would require an entire additional layer of simulation, tracking the exact journeys that people make by private car. However, something like this is possible in Sim City 4.

[cascadia]

Perhaps we could just do this for ONLY long-distance travel, then (intra-city travel would stay the same)?

[jamespetts]

It would still be very difficult, for the same reasons.

[cascadia]

If you want to concentrate on city-to-city (i.e. airlines), I recommend increasing the size of the catchment in simuconf.tab, or messing with the passenger level (I think that's also in simuconf.tab, but... I might be wrong on that). However, bear in mind that if you have, for example, a single station that covers an entire city, the passenger traffic will be reduced, as you will only see passengers that want to travel to different cities. On the other hand, this may be what you want. I once played a game where I set the catchment area to ten tiles, and... it was actually kinda fun. Definitely a completely different playing style.

Thanks for the suggestion- I'll try it out. 

[whoami]

This would be very difficult (and computationally expensive) to implement, as it would require an entire additional layer of simulation, tracking the exact journeys that people make by private car.

IIRC, there exist provisions for private cars with destinations. One method would be to allow them to hold a single ware_t packet (one group of people with a destination), but how about this: the private car are only used to create traffic around the station (usually a hub) in question. The actual people (same for goods) are put into a queue of the same station, so they become available after the estimated travelling time of the private car. Connected idea: taxi service.

Regarding space requirements for those cars: how about parking lots (which enable a different type of capacity - measured in cars instead of passengers). These buildings could be quite high. If station extension buildings would be allowed in underground mode, they could even be stacked below the surface. (<- different extension request). EDIT: The capacity for cars limits the number of queued passenger groups at the station, and/or of private cars generated by the station itself (changes to routing are still required, of course).

Regarding parameter for catchment area size: this parameter may have some influence on performance: it defines the number of tiles that have to be checked for every generated passenger/goods group, in order to find a serving station. This number is proportional to the square of the parameter.