Questions about convoy spacing and unhappy passengers

[Carl]

There are two features in Experimental that I'd like to understand a bit better. I've had a brief look around the forum but couldn't find existing answers to the relevant questions. Hopefully this thread will also be useful to those just picking up Experimental.

Unhappy Passengers
If a passenger has been waiting too long at a stop, she calls it quits and leaves -- and the value in the 'unhappy passengers' column increases. If this happens too much, the stop status turns orange. Some questions about this:

-- What governs how long a passenger will wait at a station before 'disappearing'? Is it a fixed value, or is it determined by simuconf.tab? If a fixed value, is it set in relation to months, or is it set in relation to 'real' time (i.e. the time found in journey time figures in the stop details)?
-- Does the passenger behaviour differ between stops where they are originating and stops where they are interchanging?
-- How do unhappy passengers contribute to the "waiting time" value?


Convoy Spacing
I've had a read through the 'Metronome for Timetables' thread which gave rise to this feature, and I still have some questions to get to the bottom of how exactly it works.

-- Does this feature only take effect at stops where a convoy is waiting for a certain load-% level?
-- This feature seems to determine a specific time for convoys to wait at stops -- how is this time calculated? This is the most crucial question -- knowing this would make it easier for me to work out what value to set in the Cnv/Month parameter.
-- How does this interact with "max wait for load"?
-- Does If this feature is applied to a pre-existing line where the convoys are not currently evenly-spaced, will they eventually even out? Or will the feature preserve the existing spacing?


Many thanks in advance!

[jamespetts]

Unhappy passengers

1. The value is set in simuconf.tab. See this example from the Pak128.Britain-Ex simuconf.tab:

Code Select Expand


# This setting gives the maximum time that passengers are prepared to wait for their
# transport. The setting is divided by speed bonus value to get the number of minutes.
# In pak128.Britain and pak128, the default speed bonus value for passengers is 18. So,
# at the default wait time of 2,700, the maximum time that passengers are prepared to
# wait is 2,700 / 18 = 150 minutes, or two and a half hours.
#
# The same applies for other sorts of goods: for example, the speed bonus value for
# mail is 15. So, with a passenger_max_weight of 2700, mail would wait for 180
# minutes before being discarded.

passenger_max_wait = 19440


2. No - the behaviours do not differ.

3. When passengers leave the stop, they add twice the time that they have spent waiting to the waiting time value (to take account of the effect that they would have to wait still longer before departing - twice is an estimate).

Convoy spacing

I did not program this one, but I think that I can answer most of your questions.

1. Yes - this only has effect where there is a load level. The idea behind this was, I think, that there is no point in full convoys waiting around at stops.

2. The parameter sets the number of departures per game month for all the stops on the schedule. So, if the cnv/month value is 10, and a convoy has a minimum load of 50%, the convoy will depart from the stop either when it is at least 50% full, or when 1/10th of a month has elapsed since the last convoy in that line has departed from any stop.

3. If I understand correctly, if there are a minimum load, "max wait for load" and "cnv/month" all set, then the convoy will depart when the first of the three conditions are met (i.e., the soonest of when either (a) the vehicle is loaded to the appropriate amount; (b) the requisite proportion of a month has elapsed; or (c) the requisite time has elapsed since a convoy's last departure in the schedule).

4. I am not sure of the answer to this question - I suggest testing it to see.

[ӔO]

4. yes, you can apply it retroactively on existing lines.
the key thing is that you have to set minimum load for all stations you want the convoy to correct its spacing at.

I find that every other station works works well.

how many convoys a month is a bit of trial and error, but you can use the info/query tool on a path that the convoy passes to find out, roughly, how many convoys pass in a month currently. If your convoys are bunching up at the waiting points, then you can increase the convoy/month.

[Carl]

That's all very helpful -- many thanks. A couple of follow-up questions:

1.

The setting is divided by speed bonus value to get the number of minutes.

Which "speed bonus value" is this? Is it one of the following, or is it somewhere else in simuconf?

Code Select Expand

min_bonus_max_distance
median_bonus_distance
max_bonus_min_distance
max_bonus_multiplier_percent

2. How does this interact with the feature which (if I remember correctly) makes passengers who have been waiting a while get on any transport to their destination rather than just the fastest one? At what point will they start doing this?

[jamespetts]

1. This is the speed bonus rating that appears as a percentage in the list of all goods.

2. If I recall the code correctly, it doesn't interact at all: the passengers calculate how long that they should hold out before getting a non-optimal convoy based on average waiting times.