Measuring line usage, recent changes to

[1993matias]

First of all, I want to thank the developers devoting their time to the Extended branch. This is by no means negative criticism.

When measuring line usage, which unit makes the most sense? Most people would probably say ton-km or pax-km. That does indeed sound reasonable, and in most cases makes the most sense.
Simutrans on the other hand, seems to have had another preference - until recently, at least. It ised to measure all line usages in units only - passengers, mail, cargo, etc. But recently a change made it so line usage is shown as pax-km or ton-km. The decision itself is perfectly reasonable - few cases would see pax-km be less useful.

Unfortunately, the implementation is lacking at best. Instead of introducing a new variable for the new unit, it simply used the old variable and renamed it. Thus making line usage comparisons impossible before and after the change.
Other similar units haven't changed either: free capacity is still an absolute unit (e.g. free seats per month), which is now rendered completely and totally useless without a similar line usage unit to compare to. Now I have no idea at a glance whether my lines need more capacity or not.

It doesn't seem like there has been any discussion of this change on the forum - I haven't been able to find any. So I can't see the reasoning behind this half-hearted change to the display of statistics.

How can we solve this? Either bring back the old way of measuring line usage, and implement pax-km/ton-km as a new variable. Or change all units related to capacity and usage to distance-based units. The current situation is kinda useleess, I'm sorry to say.
I hope to hear your opinions on this, as I am only one of many players of Extended.

[Sirius]

Imho all that needs to be changed is to replace "free capacity" by "average load" (per km)
Free capacity felt way odd to me anyways. I was never interested in "how many empty seats have moved around" but always in the average load, which could somehow be roughly estimated from transported and free capacity on some routes.
There might be different opinions on this, for sure.

[1993matias]

That is a good point. I think what you are looking for is a load factor % - what percentage of seats were taken, or what percentage of cargo space was used.
Especially now that there is no comparable unit to 'free capacity', it is not very useful.

[wlindley]

Excellent observation Sirius! Load Factor would make all the difference.

[jamespetts]

This does make sense - a load factor graph would be more useful than "free capacity".

[zook2]

This has been discussed here:
https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,21348.0.html

...but the discussion petered out somehow. Anyway, it seems you need to get Ranran on board or it won't happen. Maybe offer him some sweet pork. Or spicy noodle soup.

[1993matias]

This has been discussed here:
https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,21348.0.html

...but the discussion petered out somehow. Anyway, it seems you need to get Ranran on board or it won't happen. Maybe offer him some sweet pork. Or spicy noodle soup.

Ah, there it is! Thanks! It seems James simply implemented it without a second thought and without considering the implications the change would have to the other units and to savegames.

[Matthew]

This has been discussed here:
https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,21348.0.html

...but the discussion petered out somehow. Anyway, it seems you need to get Ranran on board or it won't happen. Maybe offer him some sweet pork. Or spicy noodle soup.

Or you could join me in the C++ learners' club.... I think that adding a Load Factor graph is a medium-difficulty beginners' project. You would need to understand both the graphics code and how to change the save format to save the statistics. But you could cut-and-paste  closely follow existing code for both for those aspects. The actual calculations and data collection strike me as more difficult than the Public player finances and taxation project, but not by much.

Resources that I am finding useful as I learn C++ are:

• CPlusPlus.com As a reference. The tutorials got me started quickly but skip some things.
• CXXDroid So I can write practice programs at the bus stop, waiting for meals.... or on the toilet.... 
• LearnCPP More comprehensive and higher quality tutorials
• Visual Studio Code Simple code editor, with plugins for C++ and debugging (code editors are like Marmite, not everyone will like this)