Modern High-End Buses

[NN]

Hello all,

I downloaded Simutrans a while back and I usually enjoy playing with timeline on, my self-objective being to grow towns as much as possible. I'm a bit of a bus fan atm, however by the late-game (1990s, 2000s and onward) I felt the bus selection gets a bit limited in choice, specially regarding high speed (near 200Km/h) vehicles. While I figured there aren't many coaches in real life that go zoom in actual highways, the game does have 200Km/h roads. Realism wise, maybe some time in the future vehicles should be safe enough to be allowed to travel at such speeds.

So I spent some time searching online for passenger bus/coaches addons that could fully use those juicy 200Km/h roads to its fullest. I actually found plenty, many of them being visually appealing, but I felt the vast majority either was not properly balanced cost and stat-wise for pak128, and/or became available "since 1900" (and without the dat file to allow me to change it), which is a complete turn-off when playing with timeline on.

What I ended up doing was, I grabbed a few well-designed buses with the available dat and pngs that I could find, and created for my own use a set of reasonably balanced (hopefully) buses for pak128 in the 1990 - 2000s range, to complement the choices in the game for that timeframe. And once I did it, I felt maybe I could post this on the forums so others can have a go at it if they want.

None of these graphics are my creation.
I only used already created pngs to modify existing concepts and create a few new ones. I have not asked permission for the original owners to publish this, so I sincerely hope I'm not infringing anything. If I do, I apologise for it, I can remove any files should they so desire. The resources I used were as follows:
Izzy's "Setra 431" 2007 post: http://archive.forum.simutrans.com/topic/05155.0/index.html
Fuzzy Peache's "CityBus" post: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=3242.0
"Bus Collection 4" of JR buses from the japanese website: http://japanese.simutrans.com/index.php?Addon128%2FTrucks

So this is my take on "modern" buses for pak128:

• JR Highway, Double-Decker, and Megaliner Coaches - japanese buses with modified stats, speeds 120-130 Km/h, since late 1980s
• MAN NL262 Urban Bus, an intermediate urban choice for the 1990s and 2000s, with Fuzzy Peache's CityBus graphics
• Setra S 431 DT Coach - bus concept from Izzy, but with "double deck coach" graphics and speed 150 Km/h, a more "powerful" option, since 2001
• Shanghai Inter-city Superbus, futuristic concept with fuel cell, speed 180Km/h, since 2012 and with Izzy's original Setra beautiful graphics
• Shanghai Inter-city Coach, futuristic concept with fuel cell, speed 190Km/h, since 2016

I have tested their stats and movement, but I haven't play-tested them exhaustively yet, so there should be room for tweaking.

Other than these, I also use some SNFOS (http://simutrans-france.fr.nf/doku.php?id=en:vehicules_routiers_byaquel) road buses to further complement the urban high-end options in said timeframe.

So here it is, hope you like it.

[greenling]

excuse me but some of your Coaches have a too high speed!
Coaches be get at a speed from 140km per hour problems with breaking and the Comfort.
In the most Country gives for Coaches a speedlimit with 120 km/h.

greenling

[Václav]

Greenling, but this is game, not real life - and by the way, something is speed limited by laws - and something else is technical speed. Czech train class 680 (Pendolino) has technical top speed 230 km/h but laws and else technical factors decrease its speed to only 160 km/h - in real life - but in game that train can go by its top speed.

[NN]

excuse me but some of your Coaches have a too high speed!
Coaches be get at a speed from 140km per hour problems with breaking and the Comfort.

I do concieve high-end present/future coaches to be able to travel at 120+ speed and still remain reasonably confortable and safe, as long as it's the right circumstances, i.e. in long straight open road and with acceleration/braking in check.

For that reason I tried to adjust their gear, specially the futuristic ones, so they would need a decent amount of time and straight road to reach their top speeds - and don't appear to jolt from 0 to 200 in a second (which would be the 'Vomit Travels' for the passengers).