Question about fianl consumption of industry

[raveneer]

Hello. Thank you for developing such an in-depth pack. I am amazed by this pack and the system of Extended. The route map, in particular, is a game-changer!

However, I have some questions that came up while playing the pack. Is it normal for the consumption rates of the final industries to be very low?




For example, the car dealer sells 1 car per month, and the bookstore sells 4 books per month. Assuming an average playthrough in the 1980s, what percentage of the player's income would typically come from passenger transport and freight transport? I enjoy industrial transport as much as passenger transport and think industrial transport should be a significant part of the game, making up 50% of the content. However, in Extended-Britain, I am unable to engage in industrial transport, which is problematic.

Does the consumption rate of the consumer market increase with the number of passengers visiting the location? For instance, if 100 people visit a car dealership per month, by approximately how much would the consumption rate increase? I read the manual, but I could not verify this in my gameplay.

Additionally, are new consumer markets (like department stores) generated as you play?

Lastly, the infrastructure costs are excessively high, making it almost impossible to play before 1950. Was this intended? For example, building a single bridge costs over $10,000, while a vehicle transporting 10 passengers generates less than $1,000 per year. Thus, I tried to rely on public roads, but the public roads between cities, especially those connected to rivers, had weight limits so low that even lightly loaded vehicles could not pass. However, building a bridge had such a low return on investment that I couldn't use that route at all.

I read the forums but found few questions of this type, so I am unsure what I might be doing wrong. Thank you for reading.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your interest in Simutrans-Extended. I will try to answer your questions one by one.

Assuming an average playthrough in the 1980s, what percentage of the player's income would typically come from passenger transport and freight transport?

I do not think that I can answer this in general, as this will very much depend on play style. However, you can download here the saved game from the most recent Bridgewater-Brunel persistent online server that ran from October 2022 until May 2024 in real time (1750-2026 in game time) and see what different players had in fact done there.

Does the consumption rate of the consumer market increase with the number of passengers visiting the location?

Yes - the number of people actually visiting the consumer industry does directly affect consumption: the goods are only consumed when visiting (rather than commuting) passengers visit the industry - unless the industry has a visitor demand of zero (e.g. a power station, or a dairy, which delivers produce rather than relying on customers to collect it), in which case the consumption is a steady rate as it is in Standard.

Additionally, are new consumer markets (like department stores) generated as you play?

Yes. There is a long-term plan to integrate this more closely with town growth when the latter is overhauled, but there is some other major work to do on the game first.

Lastly, the infrastructure costs are excessively high, making it almost impossible to play before 1950. Was this intended? For example, building a single bridge costs over $10,000, while a vehicle transporting 10 passengers generates less than $1,000 per year. Thus, I tried to rely on public roads, but the public roads between cities, especially those connected to rivers, had weight limits so low that even lightly loaded vehicles could not pass. However, building a bridge had such a low return on investment that I couldn't use that route at all.

Players have successfully played with the current balance all the way from 1750 to the future. If you select the "Play online" option, you will see what players are managing to do in, at the time of writing, 1759 with stage coaches, canals and ships. It may be better to ask those who play online frequently for tips as to how to get started.

I should note that the game/pakset is due to be rebalanced in the future, but some very substantial and complex features need to be implemented before this can be done.

[raveneer]

Thank you for the detailed answer. By reading various documents on GitHub, I could imange how much thought, data, and efforts needed for this project. You are doing a legendary work!

[jamespetts]

Thank you for the detailed answer. By reading various documents on GitHub, I could imange how much thought, data, and efforts needed for this project. You are doing a legendary work!

Thank you!

[jamespetts]

Thank you for the detailed answer. By reading various documents on GitHub, I could imange how much thought, data, and efforts needed for this project. You are doing a legendary work!

And also, I should note, thanks to the many contributors to Simutrans-Extended, including Ranran, Neroden, PJMack and many others.

[raveneer]

from version nightly 14.21 #5ed7a33



I am still unable to consume goods in the market. I need help.

1. The market is connected to one large city and three small towns.

2. About 10 consumers visit per month (I don't know where they are coming from).

3.I can see very rarely that consumption occurs when the operation goes up. (1year 1ton like)

4. However, the operation rarely goes up, and I don't know why it goes up or why it doesn't.

5. When I check the detail info of the stations, the success rate for jobs in all stations across the map is 0%. I think this might be related.

6.The map size is 1024*1024.

I link the save file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16voBgyPk0YXsq6CbT5V0pSLv2LnTcagZ/view?usp=sharing

[jamespetts]

Judging by the screenshots, no commuting passengers managed to make it to the market. The commuting passengers are the people who work at the industry. In this case, nobody can buy anything because nobody is working there to sell the market's wares (see "Jobs (available): 9 (9)". That means that 9 people are needed to work at the market, and there are currently 0 people working there. This might happen if, for example, you set an extremely high number of industries compared to the number of towns when generating the map, or if a cluster of industries has formed in the vicinity of only smaller towns with low populations.

[raveneer]

Judging by the screenshots, no commuting passengers managed to make it to the market. The commuting passengers are the people who work at the industry. In this case, nobody can buy anything because nobody is working there to sell the market's wares (see "Jobs (available): 9 (9)". That means that 9 people are needed to work at the market, and there are currently 0 people working there. This might happen if, for example, you set an extremely high number of industries compared to the number of towns when generating the map, or if a cluster of industries has formed in the vicinity of only smaller towns with low populations.

Thank you. It know that the extend aiming for the distance pax can travel within a limited time. Does this mean that the workers of this industry are the pax within the 'travelable time distance' of the industry? I understand that pax can also walk. So, if no one has a car, the workers of this industry must live around it. Is that correct? In Standard, it was easy to supply workers because we could see which city they came from. However, in Extended, even if I connect all areas of the city where the industry is located, workers do not come to work.

I carefully examined the save file of the server game you uploaded. In that game, most of the revenue comes from passenger transport, and industrial transport is either not properly carried out or the volume is so small that it doesn't seem profitable. For example, in 2026, a pub was consuming 25 tons of beer per month, which is a very small amount in terms of revenue. This means that only one truck per month is needed, and on the huuuuuge 7000x2000 map, there were about 10 pubs and 2 supermarkets. The final consumption industry still seemed too weak.

I felt that Extended is focusing on passenger transport. I believe that industrial transport in Simutrans should come before passenger transport, because while user may not know where passengers come from or where they go, but industry is. This allows users to easily estimate the profitability of industrial transport, making the game's start smoother. Extended is interesting and interesting thing. However, I suggest that for industries, how about supply workers from specific cities like standards? It is too painful to see industries not operating at all even with a sufficient passenger network (connecting 1-4 nearby cities with inner bus lines) that would be considered adequate in Standard.

[neroden]

This needs several changes to repair properly; the first is how many different destinations passengers will look at when looking for work.  I've reported this before.  The first fix has been in my ncn-integration branch of pak128.britain for months now and is used in my personal copy, but James has been resistant to raising the numbers to the necessary levels for reasons I don't understand.

Code Select Expand

--- a/config/simuconf.tab
+++ b/config/simuconf.tab
@@ -162,10 +162,16 @@ commuting_trip_chance_percent = 20
#min_alternative_destinations_visiting = 1

max_alternative_destinations_per_visitor_demand_millionths = 2750
-max_alternative_destinations_per_job_millionths = 12000
-
min_alternative_destinations_per_visitor_demand_millionths = 750
-min_alternative_destinations_per_job_millionths = 6000
+
+# With 5 jobs per building in a typical 1750 industrial building,
+# trying to fill a single factory in a single disconnected village
+# on a map with 1600 factories (most with similarly low number of jobs)
+# and a similar number of industrial buildings requires searching most of the map.
+# Nothing less than this will do.
+# In fact, 1 billion (1000 tries per job) is not enough. 2000 to 10000 is enough.
+max_alternative_destinations_per_job_millionths = 10000000000
+min_alternative_destinations_per_job_millionths = 2000000000

# Passengers have a maximum tolerance level for how long that they will spend travelling.
# Passengers are generated in two groups: commuting and visiting passengers. Commuting

The second problem has to do with the balancing of production levels, which is a mess because of an excessive number of modification factors which make it hard for the pak author to even tell what the resulting in-game levels are going to be: I've been hoping to fix that underlying issue, but there's a lot more code cleanup which ought to be done first.