Passenger and mail capacity for goods stage wagons

[Spenk009]

Back in the day, if the coachman agreed, one could hitch a ride with a stage wagon and save some time and effort in one's journey. Whether it was riding with him to the market or into town, even just to purchase goods and return home. If instructed to, he may even be able to bring any mail to or from the local post office to the farm/shoppe.

Would there be interest in stage wagons offering a single passenger spot and 1-5 mail capacity? In order to not disrupt current playing, these would be appended like bays in ships, have no length penalty and be weightless. A low comfort rating and the minuscule capacity would be inherent. Benefits would be boosting the local productivity of factories and make them viable destinations for mail and passengers.

[Matthew]

I like this idea. It would have to be optional, as you suggest, so that wait-until-full functionality was preserved.

[wlindley]

"Wait until 1% full" at a farm or mine would work, too.  This could also be implemented as a pack horse with one rider (or perhaps two) and small mail capacity, without changing anything else.

[Spenk009]

The waiting for a specific percentage of full is an issue. If the wagon only holds 3t (units) of long goods, then loading it until full (2 passengers + 5 mail) would result in two passengers and one item of mail completing the originally set 30% capacity requirement. In the case of planks in a sawmill, the income from 3 units of mail is 0.06c/dist but planks is 1.11c/dist (1.43c if convoy is full). A type filter for changes in load would be very handy, especially for earlier mixed goods trains, although likely not a priority for developers.

If the player takes the distance and average speed into account compared to productivity of the industry, then they can set a frequency that guarantees appropriate service. But this is not a nice "solution".

wlindley, the pack horse idea is a great addition. While the horse may not be able to take additional weight as a passenger, a few letters crammed in the saddle wouldn't have an impact. Do you think the livestock drover capable of being a guide for people to walk with as well as impromptu mailman for the farms?

[Vladki]

I'm not sure if that was suggested before  - for mixed goods (train) there would be useful option to wait either for 100 % load of ALL goods (as is now), or 100 % of ANY goods. E.g. depart with 100% bulk goods, but (half-)empty piece goods wagons. So this would be a further extension - specify WHICH goods the wait for load applies to, ignoring any other (pax, mail).

[wlindley]

I edited and compiled a test of a pack horse rider with one passenger and mail capacity of 2, usable only as a trailing unit behind other pack horses.  I also as a test added the mail capacity of 2 to the drover.  The diff file is here.

However, given how the game picks whether to wait and ride or to simply walk, in a year of 1850 game time on a new world, no passengers and no mail seem to use them between any type of farm or mine and a moderately close town or city. Seems unlikely to be useful at least before the grand re-tuning.

Perhaps the "CartMailNew" (1825-1905 mail cart) with its max speed of 12 and capacity of 95 could have a variant with 1 or 2 units of goods and one or two passengers, with very low comfort?  It seems possible that such a thing might have existed, maybe even been somewhat common among farmers at the time -- If someone can find a prototype description?  I'd be happy to try an experiment if someone can find reasonable numbers.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your thoughts in relation to this. First of all, can I check the historical basis for this - did passengers routinely hitch rides on non-passenger specific stage wagons? I know that there was a monopoly on the Royal Mail (to allow interception and surveillance by the state), so there will not be for letters, but we do not necessarily want to replicate this here.

I am sceptical that passengers would have been able to ride on pack horses - a saddle horse and a draught horse are very different things, and horses have to be trained specifically (and built sturdily enough) to accommodate a rider in a saddle. I have not seen any historical references to pack horses carrying passengers - the depictions that I have seen even show the driver of the pack horses walking on the ground beside them, suggesting that they were not to be mounted.