I have only just noticed some of the recent discussion here. I note with interest Prissi's work on making things work better with 4k monitors, which is a very worthwhile thing, as Simutrans (especially Experimental, with its higher computational load) works well in the desktop arena, and desktops are very much heading towards 4k (and possibly even 8k) as being quite common.
The graphics are indeed old-fashioned, but the relatively low-fi graphics allows for much greater quantity of output (and therefore simulation depth) than beautiful, detailed 3d graphics; Cities: Skylines looks beautiful, but there is only one type of 'bus. Train Fever is more interesting: it is totally modern in graphics, but much more limited, from what I understand (I do not have a copy) than Simutrans in terms of scale, I think in part because of its modernity. There is a great advantage in working with older code in Simutrans in that it was optimised for much slower computers: we can therefore have games on a huge scale with lots more simulation depth than is possible with more modern code and graphics. (The UI could possibly be updated somewhat, but this is likely to be a major job and one that it would be tricky to port to Experimental, although, as noted, the improvements to allow Simutrans to work better in 4k would be important to port).
On gameplay: I agree with Isidoro that the gameplay in Simutrans is deeper than Cities:Skylines (although I have a copy of the latter and enjoy playing it). Skylines does not have any sense of progressing through time, for example, and simulates a wider range of things in a smaller geographical area in a more limited way. One thing that Skylines does particularly well, however (at least by comparison to other games), is road traffic simulation, which is one thing that I find particularly enjoyable about the game. Rail transport simulation is very greatly lacking, and air and water transport simulation are extremely rudimentary (airports and docks being treated as utilities rather than transport nodes).
As to Experimental features, it is a conscious decision not to have released a stable version for a while because I wish to get the core balance features implemented first. Releases take a huge amount of time and effort, which time and effort would better be spent on improving the balance critical features first. Given that, without the pakset being fully cost balanced, Simutrans-Experimental is really only half a game, given that balancing is a gargantuan task, given that balancing before implementing major balance-critical features is futile and given that my time is extremely limited by comparison to the amount of time needed to achieve what needs to be achieved, this course of action rather recommends itself quite strongly. What is needed more than anything else to get Experimental into a state where it is reasonably stable and playable is people to work on the core balance features in the code. With just me working on it, I am afraid that it is likely to be years. (The fact that I spent most of last year not working on Simutrans owing to moving house has not helped much either).
I at least have the great advantage now that there are several people who are compiling from source and playing the development version, reporting bugs as they go, which makes tracking down problems much easier and more efficient than waiting until after a release.
