Confused by access charges

[Person0123452]

According to the information I could find:
"# toll_waycost_percentage apportions the specified percentage of the way tile's
# monthly maintenance cost (and, for electrically powered convoys, also the specified
# percentage of way objects' monthly maintenance cost) from the convoy for every
# tile of the other player's way over which it passes."

So, my understanding from reading this is that if I set toll_waycost_percentage to 100 and company A creates a length of track, then company B runs a horse down that track, that should cover the maintenance cost for that piece of track for the entire month in one go?

Except it doesn't. It pays out a tiny fraction of company A's maintenance costs. In fact if I let that horse run up and down that (roughly 8km) piece of track for a whole month, it doesn't even generate half of the maintenance cost of the track it's running on for the month. So what am I missing here? Is this function even useful, since you can't set it to more than 100 (why not by the way)? Why doesn't it behave the way I expect?

[Mariculous]

(why not by the way)?

Because 100% of ways monthly maintenance already feels to be an extraordinarily high amount of toll to pay. I'd rather ask why this is given in percent, instead of per mille.

Anyways, the observation you describe is not what its meant to be nor what the code ndicates at a quick look.
From that, I'd expect the above:

So, my understanding from reading this is that if I set toll_waycost_percentage to 100 and company A creates a length of track, then company B runs a horse down that track, that should cover the maintenance cost for that piece of track for the entire month in one go?

Are you sure that number is applied to your savegame?
Can you explain how you have set this value?
Maybe this change was simply not applied to the game.

[Person0123452]

Because 100% of ways monthly maintenance already feels to be an extraordinarily high amount of toll to pay. I'd rather ask why this is given in percent, instead of per mille.

Anyways, the observation you describe is not what its meant to be nor what the code ndicates at a quick look.
From that, I'd expect the above:Are you sure that number is applied to your savegame?
Can you explain how you have set this value?
Maybe this change was simply not applied to the game.

I changed it in the menu that appears when you press I. Changing the value does change the amount of income you get so I assume it is applying (and the default is 33% revenue sharing, which won't be the source because the horse isn't generating any revenue).

I did this test because I noticed that it wasn't behaving how I expected in my long term game with actual functioning routes either and again, in that game changing the value in the I menu definitely applies and changes ingame income. Does it function correctly in your game?

[Person0123452]

Ok, another thing is not working as I expect it.



As we can see, this Maudslay Van is leaving the train station where coal has been delivered from the north, on the way to a coal merchant. It has a 6km journey, and carries 3 units of coal for what appears like it should be revenue of 3.48 upon delivery.



When it arrives, it actually generates a revenue of 0.96 which is less than I would expect to be generated for a single unit of coal on this journey. Why is this? Is it a bug (is it specific to my download)? Is there something about some aspect of this that I'm not understanding? Because with the payout as it is it seems to be impossible to generate a profit with many vehicles at least to this point, even when they're running 100% full and it's hard for me to understand why it's working this way.

[Spenk009]

Distance is as the crow flies, not the length of route chosen by the convoy. At a distance of 4 { sqrt(9²+35²) } the coal would give 0.77 per ton (2.31 total), with the way maintenance taking some too. Could you post the graphs from the "Chart" tab next to "Payload", showing Revenue, Running costs, and Access charges?

[Person0123452]

I've updated the game since the last screenshot, which didn't change anything earnings wise, just why the UI changed.



Being that it's a city I don't own any of the ways except the short piece of road from the city to the station and public roads are toll free. As you can see even running full (one direction, empty the other) it doesn't come close to covering it's own running costs and only pays out the 0.96 on arrival. Which is not what I expected.

[Ranran(retired)]

The start of a coal journey is not the start stop of that van. Fare payments are calculated according to the total distance ("freight" origin to destination) and are not split.
(So the fare calculation is not from 0km to 6km, but something like 40km to 44km. And note that the longer the distance, the lower the transportation fare per kilometer.)
A customer of coal transport may have already paid a lot of fare once it was brought to a station near a coal power plant.
Therefore, how much profit you have made by transporting coal should be judged in conjunction with transporting it by rail.

If fares are paid as you assume, then the player could deliberately take detours and split the route between stations to collect more fares.

[Person0123452]

The start of a coal journey is not the start stop of that van. Fare payments are calculated according to the total distance ("freight" origin to destination) and are not split.
(So the fare calculation is not from 0km to 6km, but something like 40km to 44km. And note that the longer the distance, the lower the transportation fare per kilometer.)
A customer of coal transport may have already paid a lot of fare once it was brought to a station near a coal power plant.
Therefore, how much profit you have made by transporting coal should be judged in conjunction with transporting it by rail.

If fares are paid as you assume, then the player could deliberately take detours and split the route between stations to collect more fares.

This makes sense and was my first thought, I didn't realise payout per km went down with more km though so my math ended up being bad. Is there any particular reason for that? It seems counter-intuitive.

[Ranran(retired)]

Is there any particular reason for that? It seems counter-intuitive.

Good having multiple values
Good can have multiple values dependent on for how long they travel. It is specified so that the good generates a revenue up to a specified distance, then another revenue up to the next specified distance and so on. Makes it possible to eg make a good only feasable to transport either short or a long distance.

I don't know the details, but it's listed as a simutrans-extended feature. Someone else may be able to elaborate.
Each product is set so that the fare will decrease when a certain distance is exceeded.
However, in my opinion, it is not counter-intuitive because discounts are generally applied to longer distances.