Some questions about passenger generation and comfort

[mopoona]

The development of the pak.german-exp wont continue until the new SE-version is released. In the meantime, I want to publish some of my ideas, howto create a good balance in SE-paks, for example howto calculate new costs for comfort and speed bonuses.

Frist I like to know a few things:

1 Passenger generation and maximum travel time
Passengers are created in three groups (sort, medium and long distance) with each group having a certain potential. For every passenger a tolerance is chosen.
1.1 As I understand it right, there is a possibility that a passenger traveling midrange_passengers_max distance wants to be transported in min_midrange_tolerance? Same for short and long distances?
1.2 Is uniform distribution used or something else?

2 Comfort and Overcrowding
2.1 If a passenger only finds connections with too low comfort, will he only demand repays or will he (at a certain distance) refuse to travel?
2.2 How does overcrowding affect comfort ratings?
2.3 When do passengers actually choose to use an overcrowded vehicle? When I tried to enforce overcrowded lines all passengers disappeared (max_wainting_time?)

Short answers will do.

[inkelyad]

I sure only about this one:

2.3 When do passengers actually choose to use an overcrowded vehicle? When I tried to enforce overcrowded lines all passengers disappeared (max_wainting_time?)

Passenger will not use overcrowded vehicle if:
1) vehicle is full up to overcrowd limit. (obvious)
or
2) There is non overcrowded vehicle to some destination on the current stop.

[jamespetts]

Mopoona,

I had anticipated that the release of Simutrans-Experimental 9.0 would be important for Pak.German-Ex, and have been working on it, although, sadly, my time is more limited than I'd like. The release of 9.0 is my priority, however, although I do have to ensure that the reported bugs (both in Simutrans and Makeobj) are dealt with first. Any help would be much appreciated! Hopefully, I shall have some additional time over the Christmas holidays.

As to your specific questions:

1.1 Yes. There is no correlation between the distances within the ranges and the journey time tolerances within the ranges, so there is an equal chance of any midrange passenger getting any distance within the specified midrange range and getting any journey time tolerance within the midrange range.

1.2 The distribution is uniform: it is entirely random within the ranges with no weighting.

2.1 Comfort has no effect on route-finding, only revenue. Passengers will take the same routes regardless of comfort, but will pay less the lower the comfort. The decision to do it this way was taken so as to prevent the code from becoming too complicated to program easily or to run quickly.

2.2 Overcrowding means that some passengers have to stand. The capacities are intended to represent seated capacities. Standing passengers are counted as having a comfort rating of 10 (or proportionately less if the base comfort rating is close to or below 10, but that is rare). So, for example, in a 'bus, if the comfort rating is 50 and the capacity is 100, then, if there are 100 or fewer passengers aboard, the effective comfort rating of the vehicle is 100. If, however, for example, there were 110 passengers aboard, then 100 would be carried with a comfort rating of 50 and 10 with a comfort rating of 10, so the actual effective comfort rating of the whole 'bus would be (100 * 50) + (10 * 10) / 110, which equals fractionally over 46.
2.3 I do not understand this question. What do you mean that all passengers disappeared and what do you mean that you tried to enforce overcrowded lines? I have found in recent tests that the overcrowding system works without difficulties.

In general, for tuning and balancing, I recommend having a look at the simuconf.tab values in the latest version of Pak128.Britain-Ex, recently released, which contains values for things such as journey time tolerance and waiting time tolerance that are based on a fair bit of testing (although the testing is not yet complete).

Thank you for your work on Pak.German-Ex, and do let me know if you have any more questions!

[mopoona]

Another question: How is catering related to comfort or routing?

[jamespetts]

Catering is not related to routing. For a detailed explanation of how it is related to comfort, see this thread; in short, catering brings in its own catering revenue per passenger based on distance, and also adds a fixed number to the comfort level of the whole convoy to which a catering vehicle is attached. Be careful to make sure that catering vehicles in trains can only connect to other passenger carriages with a corridor connexion.