Topic: Private horse carriages

[zook2]

As to the 7km/h private carriages, I wonder whether those are too slow if they are much slower than the stage carriages, or whether, alternatively, the overtaking settings are too conservative. How many of these do appear on the roads in the 18th and early 19th century?

Correction: they move at 6 km/h. And there are oodles. A superabundance. Well, not that many, actually, but a single one on a country road is enough to cause a major traffic jam. And you can pretty much rely on having at least one on each country road after a few months. They slow down average coach line speed to 8-9 km/h, i.e. by about 50%. I tried to build lots of cheap road "labyrinths" branching off the main roads to drain them off. Didn't work, either. The problem is that a vehicle can overtake one other vehicle, but not if there's yet another in front of that one.

[jamespetts]

I have split this topic from A path to balance because this covers a distinct issue.

When you write that there are oodles, can you give any more information? Perhaps a screenshot would help. Have you adjusted any settings or is everything at default values?

As to the speeds, I wonder whether 6km/h is a bit slow. I am not sure how fast that these things went in real life. 6km/h is barely faster than walking speed; it is the speed that one would go if one were walking deliberately quickly.

On overtaking, I shall post a topic in one of the forums relating to Standard, since the code is largely unchanged from there.

[zook2]

Everything at default. I just counted seven carts and 18 other carriages on a ~15 long road, excluding the town areas themselves. The more interconnected towns there are in a region, the worse it seems to get. Car Ownership is 1 in all towns in the region, but I have seen values of 2 in other games (in earlier time settings).

[jamespetts]

Hmm, interesting. 1 or 2 is correct for earlier eras, and it is correct that you should be getting more traffic with more interconnected towns. How large are your towns?

I do rather wish that it was easier to design a system whereby each private car's route in the game was actually based on its occupants' origin and destination, but this is beyond what can be achieved within reasonable limits of performance on larger maps.

Edit: I should also be interested to see what effect that the passenger generation code has on this, as the current distance ranges have the effect of somewhat uneven passenger generation (great in some places, much less in others) which might produce an excess of private vehicles in some areas.

[wlindley]

A bit of Google research suggests that a horse drawing a light buggy could trot for long periods at 10 to 15mph (16 to 24 km/h).  The heavier the load, of course, the slower the sustained speed.  It should certainly be realistic that a personal buggy would go faster than our company stagecoach.  This is not now the case.

There are six horse-drawn "citycars." Some variety might be appropriate, perhaps a range from 14 to 22.  We have white and yellow HorseCarriageOpen models, blue and green and cream HorseCarriageClosed (horse-carriage.dat) all currently with speed 12, and a brown and grey HorseCart (horse-cart-citycar.dat).  Leaving only the grey horse-cart at 6km/h, I recompiled my local copy with the following changes (diff attached)

Code: [Select]

diff --git a/citycars/horse-carriage.dat b/citycars/horse-carriage.dat
index fc8a2fb..980bdf0 100644
--- a/citycars/horse-carriage.dat
+++ b/citycars/horse-carriage.dat
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ copyright=James
 DistributionWeight=3
 intro_year=1750
 retire_year=1910
-speed=12
+speed=22
 length=3
 
 Image[W]=horse-carriage.0.0
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ copyright=James
 DistributionWeight=3
 intro_year=1750
 retire_year=1910
-speed=12
+speed=20
 length=3
 
 Image[W]=horse-carriage.1.0
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ copyright=James
 DistributionWeight=3
 intro_year=1750
 retire_year=1910
-speed=12
+speed=18
 length=3
 
 Image[W]=horse-carriage.2.0
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ copyright=James
 DistributionWeight=3
 intro_year=1750
 retire_year=1910
-speed=12
+speed=16
 length=3
 
 Image[W]=horse-carriage.3.0
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ copyright=James
 DistributionWeight=3
 intro_year=1750
 retire_year=1910
-speed=12
+speed=14
 length=3
 
 Image[W]=horse-carriage.4.0
diff --git a/citycars/horse-cart-citycar.dat b/citycars/horse-cart-citycar.dat
index 7484cc0..1ce2fc5 100644
--- a/citycars/horse-cart-citycar.dat
+++ b/citycars/horse-cart-citycar.dat
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ copyright=James
 DistributionWeight=4
 intro_year=1750
 retire_year=1930
-speed=6
+speed=10
 length=3
 
 Image[W]=horse-cart-citycar.0.0

[zook2]

How large are your towns?

Ordinary, ~1500 pixel-Brits each.

The 6 km/h-carriages might have been intended to represent ox-carts or other freight vehicles, like those the player can use himself.

[jamespetts]

Thank you - very helpful research! I wonder whether we could reduce the distributionweight of the slower carts to make them less frequent (as there is no way to control where they appear)?

[jamespetts]

I have now made the amendments suggested by W. Lindley as above on Github. Thank you very much for your input!

[asaphxiix]

also, many people must have simply ridden horses, no? who could canter and gallop at up to 50 km/h, for limited distances of course.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - we do not have any saddle horses in Simutrans as yet. I wonder what proportion of 18th and 19th century travellers would have ridden horses as opposed to using a landau or cart? They could in principle be added as citycars, I suppose, based on the 'bus horse graphics, perhaps with a different colour to distinguish them.

[zook2]

Leaving only the grey horse-cart at 6km/h...

That wouldn't solve the traffic-jam problem. If you look at in-game country roads, there is practically always a 6km/h cart, with half a dozen carriages trailing behind. What you could do would be to check every time a player vehicle bumps into a private car and fails to overtake it: if the private car is more then 50% slower than the player vehicle, there is a chance for it to either vanish or, if you don't like that, simply change direction. That would still leave them as a slight annoyance, but actually allow using coaches between towns.

[jamespetts]

I have changed all the private horse carriages to be no slower than 14km/h, which should deal with that.

[AvG]

James,
IMHO it is a pity to give those slow 6 and 12 km/h vehicles an unrealistic speed of 14 km/h. They belong to the scene. But I also agree that they are sometimes a nuisance.


There are however methods to solve the problem in a more realistic way.


The problem mostly occurs in the first half of the 1900's, on cobblestone roads, connecting towns.
These roads were not only connecting towns, but also served as the possibility for farmers to reach their fields. In reality you had (and still have) numerous sideways in the form
of pathes, cartroads, etc.. Mostly they lead to nowhere and often end somewhere in the fields.
For that matter I use in DRC a cart-road. Cost allmost nothing ( 1 HCr) and has no maintenance. Speed 5 km/h.
You can use these sideroads as much as you want. Every 4-6 tiles is quite realistic. The longer they are the more vehicles they can "store".
The slow problem vehicles have no destination, so at every sideway crossing you have 66% chance that they take the side-way. And off you go.
Of course there will be left a little bit of hindrance, but we try to simulate reality.


The second way is to erect a cheap parallel road to the road you wish to free of slow traffic.
Via the public player you can delete on both ends of the "fast" road one road-tile and replace then with roadtiles of yourself. On these tiles you are now allowed to place
barriers. This way the problem is solved for allmost 100% (sometimes a new slow vehicle is erected between the barriers)
IMHO this method is less realistic.

[zook2]

The second method is not possible before the advent of private-road signs (none in 1895 yet).

I tried the first for a while, but every vehicle that leaves the main road will re-emerge some time later. This does not reduce the number of carts on the road.

[jamespetts]

I increased the speed of the private carriages because it was more realistic to do so, not in spite of it being less realistic.