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People not riding on train

Started by AlphA, September 11, 2018, 03:38:43 AM

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AlphA

1.Empty train comes.
2.Station is totally full.
3.Nobody rides.
4.Train moves out.


it happenes in all situation(train)

DrSuperGood

Do the people want to ride on the train? Unlike games such as OpenTTD, Simutrans assigns passengers destinations they want to go to. They will only take transport if that transport moves them towards their desired destination. If your train station is a transfer for a bus route then the passengers may be waiting to take the bus rather than board the train.

If you think this is a bug, you will need to provide a test map (and any non-standard pakset it requires). This test map will be used to debug the problem.

Leartin

Since you mention totally full: Do those people want to reach a place that requires them to switch at another overcrowded station? There is a setting "No_routing_over_overcrowded" which prevents pax from starting their journey if that would cause them to switch at an overcrowded station. If your network is insufficient and your stations too small, eventually every station will overcrowd, and at that point additional vehicles won't help anymore.

Ters

Quote from: Leartin on September 11, 2018, 04:44:32 AMat that point additional vehicles won't help anymore
Really? Will passengers also refuse to end their journey on an overcrowded station, not just start or transfer?

Leartin

Quote from: Ters on September 11, 2018, 05:41:24 AM
Really? Will passengers also refuse to end their journey on an overcrowded station, not just start or transfer?
They both start and end their journeys at overcrowded stations as far as I can tell, and yes - those pax with direct route will still take the train you offer. But the typical situation would be two cities with overcrowded train stations, each with city busses. Pax at both train stations would want to go to bus stops in the other city, but won't as long as the train station of the other city is overcrowded. Hence the train will only transport those pax which happen to spawn at the train station and want to reach the other train station, which wont be many.
In order to deal with the deadlock, you need to expand at least one of the stations, or need to delete a station or route, so the pax on it will disappear. After that, more vehicles are of course a great idea to prevent the situation from happening again.

Ters

Passenger do not start at overcrowded stations. Simutrans has punished you for overcrowding that way for as long as I have played it. I'm not even sure that is configurable.

However, if passenger can always end their journey at overcrowded stations, then adding new vehicles will help. You just have to add them to new routes bypassing one or more overcrowded stations.

It should take a good while before all overcrowded stations only contain passengers heading for a transfer at another overcrowded station, though. Alarms should have been ringing for a while.

Leartin

Quote from: Ters on September 11, 2018, 04:13:51 PM
Passenger do not start at overcrowded stations. Simutrans has punished you for overcrowding that way for as long as I have played it. I'm not even sure that is configurable.
That makes sense, I guess when I checked a map where everything was overcrowded in that kind of deadlock, those spawned in before the overcrowding happened, and just were never picked up due to super inefficient ring lines.

Quote from: Ters on September 11, 2018, 04:13:51 PMHowever, if passenger can always end their journey at overcrowded stations, then adding new vehicles will help. You just have to add them to new routes bypassing one or more overcrowded stations.
Absolutely, yes. I kind of assumed that "new vehicles" would be added to existing lines, and that a "new line" would come with vehicles. But technically, neither new line nor new vehicles would help, only new vehicles on new lines. (I definitelly don't recommend it though).

Quote from: Ters on September 11, 2018, 04:13:51 PMIt should take a good while before all overcrowded stations only contain passengers heading for a transfer at another overcrowded station, though. Alarms should have been ringing for a while.
Pity that any producer dumps all it's products in it's station, which means that if the producer produces more than the consumer wants to consume, you either get spammed with the game-alarm for overcrowding, or you have to deal with lines that suddenly stop while the consumer is oversaturated. At least that's how it was for me before I was too annoyed and turned them off. (JIT2 might fix that one)
And really, why would the player care? Not adding even more pax on overcrowded stations is not a punishment, since clearly there wouldn't be enough vehicles to transport them anyways. It has literally zero negative consequences with default settings, at least no more than not having every single city tile covered in a stations radius. So if the player is not aware that they are playing with no_routing_over_overcrowded, there is no reason for them to care in the slightest.

TurfIt

Don't confuse no_routing_over_overcrowded with avoid_overcrowding settings. The former prevents generation of the passengers in the first place if any of the stops they must transfer through are overcrowded. The latter prevents already existing pax from boarding a vehicle to an overcrowded station. It's that function that is deadlock prone, although much less so now that they can still board to the final destination even when it's overcrowded (since a couple years when the logic was relaxed IIRC).


Quote from: Leartin on September 11, 2018, 06:33:45 PM
And really, why would the player care? Not adding even more pax on overcrowded stations is not a punishment, since clearly there wouldn't be enough vehicles to transport them anyways. It has literally zero negative consequences with default settings, at least no more than not having every single city tile covered in a stations radius. So if the player is not aware that they are playing with no_routing_over_overcrowded, there is no reason for them to care in the slightest.
The overcrowding at a transfer station might be due to a surplus of pax waiting for Line 1, while Line 2 still has capacity. Hence pax that would use Line 2 wouldn't be generated with no_routing_over_overcrowded set, but would without. i.e. Less passenger will be transported.

Ters

Also, there might be free capacity on the vehicles. It is just that there aren't enough capacity at the stops to handle sudden random bursts of passengers (or mail). I have often gotten unhappy passengers unable to travel (and I don't like disappointing my passengers) even though there free capacity for them on the vehicles, because the bus stop was too small. This is both caused by and causing the infamous bunching of vehicles (it's a feedback loop). The first vehicle picks up the waiting passengers, the next pick up none, because the remaining potential passengers found the stop overcrowded and went home.

Leartin

Quote from: TurfIt on September 11, 2018, 07:26:51 PM
The overcrowding at a transfer station might be due to a surplus of pax waiting for Line 1, while Line 2 still has capacity. Hence pax that would use Line 2 wouldn't be generated with no_routing_over_overcrowded set, but would without. i.e. Less passenger will be transported.
I specified "default settings" though, where the only "punishment" is no pax generating at that transfer station.

Quote from: Ters on September 11, 2018, 07:50:52 PM
Also, there might be free capacity on the vehicles. It is just that there aren't enough capacity at the stops to handle sudden random bursts of passengers (or mail).
True, the stations capacity must fit the vehicles capacity. If busses bunch up, their capacity adds up, therefore stations need a higher capacity as well. You would normally think of this situation as one where the station has to be expanded, but that might not be the most profitable course of action. It might be better to remove vehicles such that their combined capacity is less then that of existing stations in order to let them run at 100%, rather then expand the stations to avoid overcrowding.
Quote from: Ters on September 11, 2018, 07:50:52 PMI don't like disappointing my passengers
I think most players share the sentiment, which is why having everything overcrowded and only look for profit seems wrong. It's just strange that there is no reward for actually making your pax happy, or punishment for failing to do so, except when you use overcrowd-rules which are a bit harsh.

DrSuperGood

At some stage I was considering a punishment mode where by every few in game minutes (at normal speed, not tied to months) if a stop is significantly overcrowded (2+ times capacity) then random packages (passenger, mail, freight etc work internally as sort of packages) from it are transported on to their next intended destination at a stupidly large cost. This represents having to pay for alternative transport for the packages as well as government fines. It would very quickly become uneconomical to run stops past their capacity. This approach also does not have any of the risks of deadlock that some of the no routing solutions have.

Leartin

Yeah, that's pretty much the right direction. Although if it's supposed to be a fiscal disadvantage, one could consider to have each pax that leaves at an overcrowded station pay only part of the fare. There might be a timer in each station to count how long it has been overcrowded, and cut more the longer it stayed overcrowded - or perhaps just a fixed percentage. Either way, if it's a significant cut, it would be a powerful deterrent while at the same time, it could never ever cause deadlocks. (Of course, you would definitelly not want to combine that with pay_for_total_distance=2, since that would be... weird)

Another, more complex option: Have a reputation rating for each city, which only slowly increases or decreases based on the happiness at stations within the city borders - so slow that it takes several years or even decades to build a spotless reputation.
Reputation could then decide on how many people actually use public transport in that city - it's a multiplier for the spawning likelyhood at any station, usually 100%, but with a really bad reputation you'd only get 50% of the pax to actually spawn, and with a spotless reputation you'd get 200%. (I guess it is kinda similar to normal city growth, but still different, and seeing a spotless reputation rating at the townhall must be a really nice feeling.

Even different: No punishment, but rewards. What if you could unlock special monuments only if you keep your map mostly free of overcrowding over a long time period? If they are essentially large curiosities you could place wherever you want, there gameplay impact might not be too big, but having them on the map will always remind you of your achievement. Perhaps tied to city reputation, and the resulting building would only be placeable within city borders - something like that.

prissi

You can play experimental, if you want that. It is all in there.

Since as transport manager, it is my task to avoid overcrowding, I feel that removing this is what removes the incentive to do something at all on my network. (I would rather remove the deadlock prone "not getting on concoivs to overcroded stops" option totally, since almost any player get stuck there quickly..)

Leartin

Quote from: prissi on September 13, 2018, 01:25:53 AM
Since as transport manager, it is my task to avoid overcrowding, I feel that removing this is what removes the incentive to do something at all on my network. (I would rather remove the deadlock prone "not getting on concoivs to overcroded stops" option totally, since almost any player get stuck there quickly..)
But that's the point: Yes, it should be your task to avoid overcrowding. But according to current game mechanics, it isn't, except for a deadlock prone mechanic. Hence a different mechanic which also discourages overcrowding, but does not cause deadlocks, should be found.

Ters

In real life, your punishment for letting goods overflow, is that you no longer get any goods at all, and therefore don't get paid either. The customer might require compensation for the failure to timely deliver something that is greater than what you would have gotten for actually delivering it. Whether the goods has to be rushed by alternative delivery, or if you can just deliver it later, depends on the goods. I'm not sure what difference it makes whether you have actually loaded the goods onto one of your vehicles, only for the goods to get stuck underway, or only have promised to ship the goods.

With passengers, it is not that simple. Most of the travel by bus, train and boat (ferries) are not pre-booked. There seems to be no obligation to actually transport everyone that wants to. The punishment for failure to do so is bad reputation and failure to make money transporting them. Bad reputation in turn causes a (possibly relatively slight) reduction in the number of potential passengers. Once passengers have boarded and paid, the company seems responsible for getting them towards their goal, unless emergency services become responsible. Air travel is mostly, or even exclusively, pre-booked, which seems to mean that the company has to make a greater effort getting passengers to where they want to go even if they don't even board the vehicle. Simutrans' unhappy passengers do represent the missed opportunity of more paying passengers, and it is a pretty decent reputation meter for that stop. And in my opinion, reputation affecting passenger "generation" in real life is localized closer to that level than being city wide, like Transport Tycoon. A city wide reputation would rather reflect the local governments willingness to let a sloppy company have their way with the shaping of the infrastructure and the city itself (which is also what Transport Tycoon does).

DrSuperGood

In real life the only reason you transport anyone on time or in comfort is not to be fined (financial penalty)... That is why in the UK it makes more sense for transport companies to cancel trains/busses than it does for them to run many trains late since each stop late is a fine but a cancelled is only a single lump fine. Trains get cancelled here all the time, or are overcrowded you literally have to shove people to get through the doors, or are cancelled without telling you about them while you are stuck at a station for several hours waiting for anyone to say anything before they shove you on alternative transport that might eventually get you where you wanted to go.

Hence overcrowding causing a fine and some "alternative transport" cost penalty seems pretty realistic to me.

Ters

Quote from: DrSuperGood on September 13, 2018, 08:48:42 PMTrains get cancelled here all the time
That is true around here as well, but I have never heard of anyone being fined for it. They just get a lot of bad press for it. The train company does try to set up alternative transport, but it isn't always possible on short notice. And it seems mostly to be an effort not to get a bad reputation and/or to actually be able to make some money on these passengers even if the original "plan" failed.

Now there might be some bias in my perception here since I mostly hear of this when it is not the train company's fault that the trains don't run, but the government agency owning the infrastructure. Although the passenger train services are partially paid for by the government, the government might actually not be crazy enough to fine someone for failing to do something because the government didn't make it possible for them to do it. The national train company gets all the blame by the general public, though, since most people haven't realized that the national train company no longer owns the infrastructure, even though it has been that way for around twenty years. (Unfortunate naming doesn't help.)

If the train, or bus or otherwise, company fails to provide alternative transportation (in time?), you are apparently entitled to compensation if this means you get to your destination later than some limit based on how long the journey originally took. So if your bus doesn't show up and you jump straight into your car, reaching your destination at the same time the bus normally would (because you could go straight there without stopping at all stops along the way, or because you were speeding) or just slightly later, you apparently get nothing. Even if you have to pay for expensive parking. However, since you have to explicitly demand compensation, I doubt many people do it for short distances. You get so little money that it isn't really worth it if you have a healthy economy.

DrSuperGood

QuoteThat is true around here as well, but I have never heard of anyone being fined for it. They just get a lot of bad press for it. The train company does try to set up alternative transport, but it isn't always possible on short notice. And it seems mostly to be an effort not to get a bad reputation and/or to actually be able to make some money on these passengers even if the original "plan" failed.
Maybe in other countries, but certainly not the UK...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40591938

QuoteThe owners of Southern rail have been fined £13.4m for poor performance, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.
The government said the fine on Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) would have been higher, but most of the delays had not been Southern's fault.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-44028975

QuoteScotRail previously claimed it had signed up to what it called the "toughest service quality regime in the UK" and that they were "not fines", as "the money gets put back into Scotland's railways".
The Scottish government confirmed that the firm had accumulated a record £1.6m in financial penalties over the last three months - nearly £400,000 more than in the previous three months.

Reputation has very little to do with it. You can either travel or not travel and ultimately most people need to travel. Sure you could get a car, but that is not cheap especially for under 24 year olds who can easily have an annual insurance cost of over £2,000. You could also take a bus, but they are worse than the trains. In the end reputation has no effect since people have to use the companies to go places whether they like them or not...

Now I do understand that technically the fines force money to be spent on upgrading railway infrastructure. However judging by the "50 on-board supervisors" that were mentioned I have doubts that will actually improve anything other than creating jobs, hence a fine. In the case of Simutrans that money would be spent on invisible transport routes to get the passengers to where they wanted to go, so again is not technically a fine.

Leartin

Quote from: Ters on September 13, 2018, 07:11:25 PM
In real life, your punishment for letting goods overflow, is that you no longer get any goods at all, and therefore don't get paid either. The customer might require compensation for the failure to timely deliver something that is greater than what you would have gotten for actually delivering it. Whether the goods has to be rushed by alternative delivery, or if you can just deliver it later, depends on the goods. I'm not sure what difference it makes whether you have actually loaded the goods onto one of your vehicles, only for the goods to get stuck underway, or only have promised to ship the goods.
Pretty sure the details heavily depend on legislature and contract; if you want to make sure something gets delivered, you'd try to get a different contract where the delivery has to arrive no matter what or the transportation company would have to pay a heavy fee, but in order to get that you'd have to pay more in the first place. I mention legislature, since thats what it comes down to if nothing is agreed on in the contract. In Austria, if someone does not deliver in time, they would first have to get a warning with a new deadline, and only after that passes there are consequences - if the contract does not say otherwise or the delivered item becomes 'useless', like a wedding cake after the wedding is over.

Quote from: Ters on September 13, 2018, 07:11:25 PMWith passengers, it is not that simple. Most of the travel by bus, train and boat (ferries) are not pre-booked. There seems to be no obligation to actually transport everyone that wants to. The punishment for failure to do so is bad reputation and failure to make money transporting them. Bad reputation in turn causes a (possibly relatively slight) reduction in the number of potential passengers. Once passengers have boarded and paid, the company seems responsible for getting them towards their goal, unless emergency services become responsible. Air travel is mostly, or even exclusively, pre-booked, which seems to mean that the company has to make a greater effort getting passengers to where they want to go even if they don't even board the vehicle.
It's actually quite as simple as for goods, since the same still holds true: The contract matters. A plane ticket is very specific - it's a contract for a specific plane, going from one location to another at specific times. City busses are completely different, usually tickets neither specify a route nor a time. If the plane does not fly, it's a breach of contract, so it can be punished. If one of the city busses doesn't go one day, there is no breach of contract, so you probably don't even get a refund. Perhaps I should mention promissory estoppel here, since even without a ticket, the timetable could be seen as a promise the pax depend on, and breaking it causes them loss. But that becomes really complicated, and the point is pretty much that reality is too complicated to be accurately represented in Simutrans. Hence gameplay elements that catch the general idea must suffice.


Quote from: Ters on September 13, 2018, 07:11:25 PMSimutrans' unhappy passengers do represent the missed opportunity of more paying passengers, and it is a pretty decent reputation meter for that stop. And in my opinion, reputation affecting passenger "generation" in real life is localized closer to that level than being city wide, like Transport Tycoon. A city wide reputation would rather reflect the local governments willingness to let a sloppy company have their way with the shaping of the infrastructure and the city itself (which is also what Transport Tycoon does).
I agree. Unhappy pax are a decent reputation meter for a specific stop, and a city can be too large an area.
However, that's simplification for gameplay reasons. "city" is just the next best level to apply a reputation meter to, since just the station is way too localized (an overcrowded station likely means overcrowded vehicles. Those are not represented in Simutrans, but would reduce reputation down the line, etc.). Plus, since the point is to build up reputation over a long period of time, you wouldn't want to connect it to stations or lines the player could just delete and rebuild/reschedule. You could apply reputation directly to each tile, but that would be an awful waste of resources.
Granted, if you have a giant map plastered with just one city, it becomes a bit odd, but that only opens up new design space; eg. once a city reaches a certain area, it could spawn new cities around itself instead of expanding further, representing districts or suburbs. This would also help with cities always having rectangular borders, and it would mean that on a larger scale, cities composed of multiple ingame-cities will grow more in areas where you actually deal with traffic.
Also, If Simutrans ever gets a system where cities would forbid the player to build within their borders - yeah, that could definitelly be a side effect of city happiness, among others, at a later point. It's just not relevant to this discussion, but a seperate feature.


Quote from: DrSuperGood on September 13, 2018, 08:48:42 PM
In real life the only reason you transport anyone on time or in comfort is not to be fined (financial penalty)... That is why in the UK it makes more sense for transport companies to cancel trains/busses than it does for them to run many trains late since each stop late is a fine but a cancelled is only a single lump fine.
Well, as I explained above, if somebody bought a ticket, causing a contract, you are legally obliged to transport them. You would want them to buy tickets if you are somewhat part of a free market and need to make profit. You'd try to be comfortable to get more customers. I'm sure you know, and "only reason" was just an overstatement.
Isn't it in the UK that any train service has a contract with the government for it's lines, which both allows them to have trains on that line, but also requires them to service all stations defined in the contract? This would easily explain why the government fines them - they don't fulfill their contract. It's also why ghost lines nobody uses exist in the UK - because they are part of the contract. Any country that does not have a franchising system for train routes will have very different rules[/quote]

Quote from: DrSuperGood on September 13, 2018, 08:48:42 PMHence overcrowding causing a fine and some "alternative transport" cost penalty seems pretty realistic to me.
Even if we assume it would be realistic outside a british railway scenario, it would still be strange as to what really happens, and probably hard to communicate to a player, especially the alternative transport part, and even more so if the explaination is that the player unknowingly paid for an invisible vehicle that didn't need any kind of way to deliver them to the next station. I could see "pax pay less on arrival in overcrowded station" and "every month, pay a fine for each severely overcrowded station" and "if there are way too many pax in a station, delete some" as seperate options, but teleporting seems oddly specific - at least for standard.

DrSuperGood

The teleportation would be needed to stop potential deliver to nowhere exploits, especially if the cost penalty is fixed or linear with number of stops or passengers. It also is needed for symmetry in network games when sharing passengers so that 1 player messing up does not cause everyone to have asymmetric traffic.

Dwachs

Nice hijacking of the original bug report! Now, is there a bug or not?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

DrSuperGood

QuoteNice hijacking of the original bug report! Now, is there a bug or not?
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