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Refunds.

Started by AvG, December 19, 2013, 09:17:52 PM

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AvG

James,
Running 11.13 and 0.9.0 + DRC-stuff like very expensive rail.
When you introduced your refund-system I made it clear that I did not like it and I still don't.
As long as there are no time-tables you may NOT be fined for being late.
At the moment I have in 1900 one main rail-track where the trains in a good month make a profit of 7500, together with refunds of 2500. Seems quite silly and makes it to difficult to play.


The line is mostly single track, with a couple of pieces double track to make it possible to run 3 trains. Making the whole line double would improve the situation, but costs a lot of money I do not have.
For passengers it is predictable that a journey will take a lot of time. As a result you do not have lots of pax (too slow indications), but if you are also fined regularly it is not a lot of fun.


I do not see a possibility to switch off the fining-system. Is there one?

Ad van Gerwen

jamespetts

Refunds are not intended to be fines, penalties or punishments: the idea of refunds is that, if one does not succeed in transporting passengers/goods/mail to their ultimate destination because they had to wait so long at some intermediate point that they gave up/perished and never reached their destination, one should not be able to keep the money that was spent on the abortive journey, and would have to refund an amount approximating the sums made. To reduce the frequency of refunds, you could increase the maximum waiting time of passengers, mail and goods in simuconf.tab, or increase the frequency of your services.

One thing that might be considered: for passengers (and only passengers), the maximum waiting time is thrice the total estimated journey time. Perhaps there might be something to be said for having only the hard limit for maximum waiting times even for passengers (which can then, optionally, be set very high)?
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AvG

James,
Thanks for your answer.
I started my scenario (for the 5th time) with 2,5 million HCr. Thought it would be enough. I think I expanded to quickly and have now money-problems, causing the impossibility to correct my problems.
I will make a restart with 10 million starting capital and a start in the middle of the country. (Holland)
This is important due to the increased prices of roads, tracks and bridges.
For example: A track 60 km and 13 tons cap costs 7800 HCr/km. A bridge of the same catagory 780000 HCr/km.
A horse-depot 22000 HCr, Steam-depot 120000HCr and a Diesel-depot 110000HCr.
All this makes it a lot more interesting to play Simu-Exp.
Making the maps and filling the towns is the biggest problem (boring)
Towns in 1900 of 5000 inhabitants are connected via cobble-roads by the public-player. Smaller ones by cart-roads (sand 10t/5km/h)


In the restart I will NOT change the max waiting-times.


In 1900 a road-speed of 65 km/h. Is that realistic? Done on purpose?
Ad van Gerwen

jamespetts

The 65km/h roads from 1900 in Pak128.Britain-Ex are the tarmac roads; this is intended to be realistic, as they are the same type of road that is built right into the middle of the 20th century as a lower grade road for motor vehicles. There is no reason why later vehicles cannot use roads built in 1900 at higher speeds than would have been possible in 1900.

Do you have any thoughts on the removal of the relationship between passengers' maximum waiting times at each individual stop and their overall journey times?
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ӔO

I don't think the UK had any motorway speed limits until the 1960's, due to rising motor vehicle related deaths.
AC Cobra did an estimated 186mph on the M1 just prior to speed limits being implemented.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

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AP

There were early speed limits on motorised vehicles involving men walking in front with flags. But thereafter, I also recall reading there were no legal speed limits until the press furore after that high speed run on the M1.

kierongreen

It's worth keeping in mind that speed limits (or lack of) for cars didn't always apply to other road vehicles. Early road vehicles were limited to speed of man walking in front - a general limit of 2mph applied in towns, 4mph in the country. Then various speed limits came in gradually - 14mph in 1896, 20mph in 1903, 30mph in 1930 (some lorries were limited to 20mph). By the 1960s buses could travel at 40mph and this was raised to 50mph in 1967.

From Wikipedia current speeds are:

Built-up areaSingle carriagewayDual carriagewayMotorway
Cars and motorcycles (including car-derived vans up to 2 tonnes max laden weight)30 mph (48 km/h)60 mph (97 km/h)70 mph (113 km/h)70 mph (113 km/h)
Vehicles towing caravans or trailers
inc cars, motorcycles, goods vehicles up to 7.5 tonnes MLW
30 mph (48 km/h)50 mph (80 km/h)60 mph (97 km/h)60 mph (97 km/h)
Buses, coaches, minibuses up to 12 metres (39 ft)
Goods vehicles up to 7.5 tonnes MLW
30 mph (48 km/h)50 mph (80 km/h)60 mph (97 km/h)70 mph (113 km/h)
Goods vehicles over 7.5 tonnes MLW30 mph (48 km/h)40 mph (64 km/h)50 mph (80 km/h)60 mph (97 km/h)

The distinction between single carriageway, dual carriageway and motorway is difficult to make in simutrans though...

jamespetts

Vehicle specific road speed limits are best set as vehicle speed limits rather than road speed limits, I think. I have already done this for 'buses.
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jamespetts

I have now removed the behaviour of passengers of only waiting for thrice their journey time in 11.14. AvG - can you test whether this makes the game more playable for you?
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AvG

James,
In my scenario with the high prices for roads, track, etc, I have installed now your 11.14 exe and I will try to survive this scenario. It will however be quite difficult because I have now hardly passengers to transport. To save money I have send already 2 out of three trains back to the depot. Main problem: Connections are to slow.
It gives the impreesion that I get a reaction now on my bad actions in the past. It can however also be a coincedence.
I think I need some time now because I have this scenario based on 11.14, but also a new one based on 11.13 with an adapted approach of investments and handling of system-warnings (overcrowded)
I f you are convinced that your idea of "thrice waiting times" is OK I want to give that extra attention.
Ad van Gerwen

jamespetts

QuoteI f you are convinced that your idea of "thrice waiting times" is OK I want to give that extra attention.

What do you mean by this? I ask because, as you will have noted, the maximum waiting time for passengers being thrice their estimated journey time was abolished in 11.14.
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AvG

James,
What I was trying to say is that in my experiences your ideas are well considered. Therefore I would be carefull to throw one away, because someone is complaining.


I did some investigations while running 11.14 Startyear 1900.
My scenario consists at the moment of two capitals of 80K and 33K connected by train. Between them are also 2 villages of ~1K.
It is clear that there is not much room for longer voyages, so I pay most of my attention to local passengers.
In the biggest capital (Amsterdam) I have erected a busline which is covering the southern part of the city.
I started with one horse-coach capable of 12 pax and 50 post. Speed 13km/hour. (this is the "official" speed of a horse that has to last all day)
OK, let it run a while and checked.
Triptime 1h.30. and hardly pax. Run a while and recheck. Same results but also waiting times of 1h.30. Also a waiting time of >2h. Seems impossible in combination with the triptime.
This all with hundreds of to slow passengers at each stop.
Replaced the horse drivem coach by a steam-bus.(Brand House, cap 12(3), speed 18 km/h in combination with a post-bike.
Same results.
Checked the config.tab.
84% have average trip of ~8 km and max triptime of ~77 min.
The estimated journey time is the total of travelling-times and waiting times.
No wonder I have few pax. The waiting time of the first stop is already well over the max-journey-time.
First conclusion: Waiting times SEEM to be to pessimistic. Average waiting time is IMHO half the triptime.


Waiting times also give the impression of sort of an ongoing average. This results in a quite long waiting time before you see a reaction. Is this right??


We have no timetables so pax do not know theoreticaly at what time to start a journey. I could however live with the assumption that, even in those days they had some idea when the transport was due to arrive. The result of that could be a time of 10-15 minutes for the FIRST stop they attend.
I also think that max journey times should be related to the era the scenario is in. (Changing factor every 25 years)
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[/size]All this means I am not making money and if you have on top of that a refund system it is to difficult. 
Ad van Gerwen

jamespetts

QuoteWaiting times also give the impression of sort of an ongoing average. This results in a quite long waiting time before you see a reaction. Is this right??

This is indeed correct - waiting times are average waiting times over a period of time. Eventually, old waiting times become stale and are discarded from making up the average.

QuoteWe have no timetables so pax do not know theoreticaly at what time to start a journey. I could however live with the assumption that, even in those days they had some idea when the transport was due to arrive. The result of that could be a time of 10-15 minutes for the FIRST stop they attend.

I considered this, but, sadly, there is no way of making this work. Imagine the following: a town with a port. In the town, there is a regular local 'bus or tram that runs, say, every 5 minutes and stops at the port. The port, meanwhile, has a service by sea to a distant town that runs once every 4 hours. Except for the passengers living right next to the port, the first stop that the passengers attend is the 'bus or tram stop. The waiting times there, of course, are on average 2:30 minutes. It is the waiting time at their second stop that is very great (on average 2 hours, assuming that the line has sufficient capacity to keep up with demand). In reality, passengers would know not to start their first journey until the right time to connect with the second, but there is no reasonable way of doing this in Simutrans.

QuoteI also think that max journey times should be related to the era the scenario is in. (Changing factor every 25 years)

This has been discussed before, and the conclusion was that the better thing to do was what I have already done on the passenger-generation branch instead. As written before, when that is released (it is waiting mainly for further work on town growth/generation, which is currently broken on that branch), I suspect that you will find that the problems that you describe in this thread will be substantially mitigated.
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