Topic: How do you organize your network?

[LeifInge]

I find my self to allways follow the same way of organisation when building my network.
In the BBBR thread I describe my network like this:

I have in many ways three layers.
- First there is the local busses, I'm trying to have a local busnetwork to ensure that the whole village is covered stations. These lines offen have a maximum off 4 or 5 stops. If they get much bigger I'll split them. The layout is varying, either circular or linear, depending on the form of the city. In each city I got one Main Stop, which is the startingpoint for my next "layer" From the main stop I also have tourism and commute busses to nearby industries and attractions.

- Second I've got intercity buslines, I allways make these between two cities, never more than that. These goes between each city main stop. And directs people to regional hubs.

- Third I have the main lines, these are offen railroads. These are key lines which moves large numbers of people between regions. All these main lines meet in the main hub.
This is a shorter verision, the whole description, with examples are found here:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=2176.msg23267#msg23267

So how do you organize your network?

[vilvoh]

Related topic from the archive about how to arrange bus routes within a city.

[jamespetts]

One thing that interests me is whether the changes to routing and revenue calculation in Simutrans-Experimental makes a difference to the best way of organising 'bus routes, and, in particular, whether the importance of transportation speed  means that, especially where there are rival operators within a town, a larger number of more direct routes with a few 'buses each would be preferable to a smaller number of circular routes with many 'buses each. Certainly, the former way of doing things is closer to reality (fortunately for those who use 'buses!).

[Combuijs]

I organize my passengers/mail network more or less the same as you do. Depending on map size there could only be 2 levels.

Goods transport I organize in the same way as you do with passengers. Every city gets its own "transfer" station. City goods are transported by trucks (sometimes by underground train) from and to these stations. Regional goods are transported by train (sometimes by ship) from and to these stations. If the map is big then there are national "transfer" stations, which transport goods between national stations and between national and city stations (by train or ship). On heavy developed maps these national connections are very profitable as there is often a return load available.

I usually play pak128 which is train-oriented. At the moment I'm playing pak96.comic with only a (dense) passenger network in three levels.

[Severous]

Hi

My first game of Simutrans

V102 Pak64 Year 1800..1815 Timeline on.

Limited transport options.
Frieght (Wood & Planks) – Road (Ox pulled carts)
Passengers & Mail – Road or Ship (Horse pulled stagecoach/mail or Sailing ships)

I have tried various things but the model now is:

Freight
-   Never connect an industry chain directly together.
-   Always via a stop/station I call a ‘warehouse’.
-   E.g.  Forest>Warehouse1>Sawmill>Warehouse1>Materialswholsaler
-   The warehouse regulates the flow of wood or planks to the sawmill or materialswholesaler, ensuring it doesn’t supply too much.
-   The forest and sawmill produce constantly without overproduction. 
-   Warehouse1 approaches 100,000 of stockpiled wood. Wood continues to arrive in the warehouse faster than the sawmill needs it.
-   New industries are either added to the existing warehouse or a new warehouse is created.
-   Warehouses are linked to each other. Some around a single city, others intercity
-   The links between warehouses are 2 to 6 parallel roads full of ox pulled carts.
-   250 convoys on some roads.
-   Biggest route has 5 roads each 200+ convoy’s. 1000 convoys in total.
-   Loaded in both directions in most cases. Route is simple there and back.
-   Materialswholsalers in cities that lack industry have their own warehouse for stockpiling planks arriving from distant warehouses. The carts bringing those supplies have to make return trips to the main warehouse empty. I did play for a while with the line set up to send the vehicle into the depot after delivery. Ie use a vehicle only once.
-   Keep freight out of the city. Ox carts don’t mix well with passenger coaches.

Passenger
-   Lots of stagecoaches within the city.
-   Many lines. Each line has two stops only. One or more coach per line
-   All connect to the main city station. Many stops make up the main station
-   All passengers within a city move into the centre and out again.
-   For outlaying areas like timber industry there is one bus with multiple stops.
-   Intercity Ships connect the main city stops via River/ Canal connections
-   All 600+ ships are on one line which is a long loop serving all cities and outlaying tourist locations.
-   Passengers have to use this loop as there is no other route. Huge money earner.
-   Currently moving to a new set up where an island in the centre of the inland sea becomes a central hub. Multiple lines will bring passengers and mail here from the cities.  No passengers move city to city. All will go via the central hub. Efficient. Not so much money to be made but necessary to cut the number of ships and improve game performance.

Once my shipping hub is up and running I will take another look at transport coverage in the cities.  I’ve ignored them for years so much new building is outside of stations.  There are tons of potential new customers.  It’s hard to keep all the passengers moving with just horse drawn stagecoaches. 

A good look at that post mentioned above is called for. The one with the city layout in the archive. (thanks for that link).  I think what I most need is the detail tactics for stop placement and city planning.  4x4 blocks..3x3 blocks..whats best…how to plan a city roads and place stops. 

Sev

[Combuijs]

Good heavens, you must have thousands of convoys running. Isn't Simutrans a little bit sluggish then?

[prissi]

On normal computer with 512*512 map simutrans should handle about 8000 convois before you need to reduce the frame rate. With about 2000 convois you will be left in fast forward at a factor of 10 or so.

[Severous]

A few screenshots:

Early in the game I was using stagecoaches for intercity transport of passengers.  Being a big map with few cities the distance was long. The road was routed to take advantage of all tourist attractions on the way.


By 1815 (15years of play) and the network is clearly visible.  5000+ vehicles mean many yellow dots. Enough to see the routes on land and at sea/river


Reorganising my ships.  I removed 4 stops from the 18 stop route. This resulted in all the ships that had previously been sailing to stops 15>16>17>18 all now rerouted to stop 14.  It was a bit busy.  Good job theres no collision detection. 

[VS]

Oh. My. God.

"Enough to see the routes on land and at sea/river" describes these pictures about right.

[Lmallet]

Oh. My. God.

"Enough to see the routes on land and at sea/river" describes these pictures about right.

I can still see the dots when I close my eyes

[IgorEliezer]

"Enough to see the routes on land and at sea/river" describes these pictures about right.

I wonder: How would captains and horsemen behave during a traffic jam?

[jamespetts]

Sea rage?

[Matthi205]

I'm principally building a tram line first,between all cities and with much stations(which get overcrowded after 1 month),making very much profit.
I am not focusing on bringing goods from one destination to the other(it brings nearly no profit in pak128),and I don't even try to carry mail.

EDIT:OH......MY.........GOD!!! * falls *

PS:"PIRATES!OUTLAWS!" Does this describe it right,IgorTekton?

[waerth]

I usually end up doing the following.

I play 128 and I only transport pax. I love huge maps so I currently have a 2000 by 1000 px map (approx) with 300 towns, I never manage to connect all places though I have connected 40 towns at the moment,

I visualize regions. One central city (usually the biggest but not always if another place lines up better for interregional traffic, sometimes because of distance the region will only contain the one town) where I have a central station. This central station is usually located outside of the city in an area where there is enough room for future expansion. From this central station I connect the surrounding places and the central city. I start with buslines and upgrade them depending on passenger demand to trams or raillines with 110 km/h speed (to simulate the urban railnetworks). In the cities/towns I have a bushub near the townhall which connects to either the regional central station, or if a city has grown big enough it will connect to a local central station which connects to regional level. Huge cities will get multiple bushubs interconnected by trams or metro, connected through to the central station and attractions.

On top of these local and regional networks there is an interregional service with fast trains (Though they start out as interregional buslines usually)

Waerth

[Matthi205]

*Asks stupidly:*How can I build a metro?

PS:Yes,I know what that is.

[Rohal]

Hi Matthi205,

use the tunnel icon and press ctrl ( on german Keyboards it is Strg) while clicking on the tracktile where the tunnel should start, this will give you just an tunnel entrance.
Now you change to underground mode with clicking shift+u.
With clicking on the tunnel icon and then clicking on thwe track after the tunnelentrance you can build underground rails and stations. So you have got a metro.

Greets

Rohal

[waerth]

First you have to build a tunnel entrance ... you do not need to build the whole tunnel. Do this by laying rails (or road) on a slope. Then press CTRL+the tunnel symbol and you have an entrance. After that press shift+U and you are in the underground mode and can build your network.

I also believe it is now possible to build multilayered underground but I still need to figure out how this works ...

Waerth

[mjhn]

Multilayered underground:
Is as easy as having entry points on different levels (I understand there to be plans to allow for underground slopes in the future, but this may or may not happen). It is also as difficult as trying to work out what square the cursor is on when it is at ground level two or three levels above the track. This second point is being dealt with by the new underground mode, but I am not sure as to the status of that.

My network schemes
I start with building lines for the initial industries. If one of the rail routes connects two towns, I run a passenger train (I generally don't run passenger busses as I have a 2048x1536 map with 48 towns) once I have a good initial income, I then start to complete my rail lines, aiming for around 1/6th of the towns being 'hubs' where multiple routes meet, and having express train between them. On a line between two of the hubs, I have two local lines, each covering one half of the route, and stopping at all stations.

At least, that is the theory. In practise I have semi-fast trains, which connect some stations along a portion of a route, branch lines which connect to small towns not on a direct route between two hubs, and 'sort-f hubs' which are the end of one route, but in the middle of another. I also end up with goods-only bypass lines, passenger-only bypass lines 6-track main lines which cannot cope with the traffic level, and a 7 platform station at a relatively small town (at one end of the platform there is a junction where a six-track main line and a 4-track main line join). Within towns there are multiple stations on the main line through (with platforms off the main line). These are served by the local trains. Froms these stations I have mostly trams (I started my current train with pak128-gb before the omnibusses became available), plus some busses and even some monorails connecting outlying sections of the town, but if the bus or trams routes become too long, I build inner-city railways in the longest directions to reduce the length of the tram and bus routes.
Severous: I am impressed. I only have 1200 vehicles (but I do have 600 lines, and many of my trains have 15 carriages or 22 wagons)

I'd post some pictures, but I have no current access to somewhere to store them.

[Rohal]

Hi mjhn,

you can upload pictures and savegames to http://files.simutrans-germany.com/.
Just use your forum nick and password to lockin.

Greets

Rohal

[ariarinen]

My Freight network are hub based, resources might be transported directly if they are close to the factory, but otherwise factory - hub - final consumer. Air and Shipping done in the same way.   

Passenger: Large bus network, up to 25 stops per line and 45 buses per line, and smaller lines to important places and hubs, air, I have a few large hubs with wide-body planes and smaller airports with short-haul plans.

Mail: Is bad business, I stay out.
     

[Matthi205]

CTRL?Huh,I don't seem to have such a key on my keyboard (maybe because it's from apple?)

Ah,only windows comps have it!Why ?

PS:Transporting mail only gives profit if combined with passengers or goods and between bigger cities (min.4000 people)

[Dwachs]

CTRL?Huh,I don't seem to have such a key on my keyboard (maybe because it's from apple?)

Ah,only windows comps have it!Why ?

does your special apple-key work (instead of CTRL)?

[gerw]

CTRL?Huh,I don't seem to have such a key on my keyboard (maybe because it's from apple?)

If I remember correctly, also apples have a ctrl-key. May it's called 'control' (https://www.purelygadgets.co.uk/images/user/products/Apple-keyboard.jpg). But maybe this doesn't work, since control+left click simulates a right click (apples mice doesn't have a right button...)

[vilvoh]

Another related topic from the archive called Organizing and making money with your transport network. It's written in portuguesse by IgorTekton, but It contains several interesting diagrams about possible tranport networks layouts.

[ariarinen]

PS:Transporting mail only gives profit if combined with passengers or goods and between bigger cities (min.4000 people)

I noticed that and that's why I opt out. I'm experimenting with it now, by letting a dummy player do all the city lines and I'm concentrating on getting the mails out to other city's from my hubs, but the margins are still to low for me.   

[Matthi205]

I didn't try.I played on the computer of my mom.

[mjhn]

Ok I have now got some screenshot.
First the map of my network showing how large in scale it is:


This is then divided into the routes shown on this diagrammatic map:


The key of the map is that thicker lines indicate major routes, divided into express trains directly between nodes (marked as circles) and local routes, stopping at each minor station (marked with bars of the side of the track). Narrow lines are banches, with a single route running between two places, stopping at the minor stops along the route. Black lines indicate freight only lines. These are mainly to access industries away from the main line. In the middle of the map, however, there is a goods-only line avoiding the main busy route, and which carries large amounts of steel and wood.

My games set-up is a map sized 2048x1536, with a station range of 6, and a passenger factor of 2. I find this is effective at spreading the game out, and making stations look better proportioned with the rest of the map, especially with pak128.britain, as the trains are significantly longer than in pak64 or pak 128 (my station platforms are up to 12 square long (class A3+15 carriages), rather than 5 or 6(BR218+7 carriages).

[Combuijs]

Lovely complicated network, mjhn! Did you also write a timetable book? 

[jamespetts]

Hmm, how do people from the city in the very top right get to the one just underneath it...?

[Severous]

That does look impressive mjhn.  Any nice looking screenshots with long trains?

[wing044]

When I first started with Simutrans I used a pattern of regional train -> local train -> bus.

But as the cities and my network expends, the distinction has blurred. Now I'm finding it harder and harder to make sense of it. What I'm trying to do now is to have as many direct connection as possible.

[Combuijs]

Hmm, how do people from the city in the very top right get to the one just underneath it...?

By the light blue and red line. Only one transfer. A relaxed journey, though on bike it might be faster. And healthier. 

[mjhn]

I am afraid getting between the two cities in the top right is not that simple, as they are both on branch lines. The route is more along the lines of light blue branch line, light blue main line, red branch line, second red branch line. The red line actually splits into two at the right hand end, serving the  two cities there. the blue line connects to one of them, and the branch line to the other city in the top right connects the the other. I really need a direct connection, don't I?

Wing044: That is a seriously busy map. What do the really large stations look like?

[Matthi205]

Wing44,if you want to get direct connections,build a underground line.

[Helian]

I haven't found a decent way of organizing people transport yet.  The only good thing I do there is creating bus loops hitting the same spots in opposite directions.  This works great on a small scale to prevent queuing, but on a large scale just has two separate ques.

I have however found an interesting way of doing freight.  It entails two one way tracks with a 1 square space between forming a giant loop backbone.  All stations are connected via an overpass for the far rail, and usually just a flat connection to the near rail.  The whole point is to prevent any trains that are stopping from interfering with the traffic on the backbone, and things can get rather elaborate at high traffic stops, like a refinery that has all three products used.  The end result can be spectacular in it's own way, I have gotten a backbone that at it's busiest stretch was about 50% train (one train length between each train) all going at top speed with no pause.  
The main problem with this is that the trains do not take direct routs, so they almost always take significantly longer and have more maintenance.  I have yet to get enough people traffic for this to be efficient.  I always go for the speed bonus with people, so even the small trains have a high overall capacity, this works a lot better for many slow trains.