Border Connections

[Gilles]

Hi, just wanna throw an idea out : International Connections.

Got this idea by wondering if I will be able to reproduce a map of France to try to make my own railway passenger network. Then I realise that the network would be necessary different if I can't find a way to simulate International Connections with (by priority) England, Benelux and Germany, then Italy and Spain, as they are quite an important traffic generator for high-speed services, especially in the Northern France.

Thus, I find myself imagining a way to achieve that : in theory, it would just require a building who, if I've well understood the concept, would function as a Touristic Attraction, only with a lot more "power", as it would have to simulate the traffic incoming (and outcoming) from another region of the world.

Practically, it would mean painting a building (I was actually thinking of a nonfunctional station, which could be recognized visually as "foreign", with an arrow-shaped sign a-la-SimCity border connections), and program it to only appear at the border. Then, one just would have to build his own station near that building (thus creating the "International Transfer Station"  ) to make the connection and make the passengers enter his own network.

I assume that there isn't an easy way to make a "direct connection" (a-la-Simcity, again), with train directly "leaving" the map with passengers, then "returning" to the map (with a delay? with a random number of passengers, or linked to the "power of the connection"). However I think my first idea, while simulating this connection fairly and in a quite realistic way, will be easier to implement.

Finally, an extra idea : one could build an "International Airport Terminal" which would function the same way (generating passengers for the network), but would cost a lot for gameplay fairness reason (if not, you just would have to spam these buildings to have lot of passengers). Or, we might find a way to enforce a "building limit", which would allow to have only a limited number of this building, but once again this solution is more complex.

[Junna]

For sake of ease, I recommend simply trying the easiest way to simulate this; make a terminal station at the border and place a lot of tourist attractions around it. This will make it a fairly popular destination as well as traffic generator. It works quite good to achieve the sort of thing you seem to want. (Also note that it works well for airports as well).

[ojii]

An easy way to get this would be an option on objects to limit them to be 'close to the border' (of the map). The rest could be handled in paks

[Gilles]

For sake of ease, I recommend simply trying the easiest way to simulate this; make a terminal station at the border and place a lot of tourist attractions around it. This will make it a fairly popular destination as well as traffic generator. It works quite good to achieve the sort of thing you seem to want. (Also note that it works well for airports as well).

I am aware of that, which was kinda what I was aiming. My "request" had just for aim to gather around some pak painters (and devs, if it should be implemented in the map creation process), and hope someone would make the paintings.

In the meantime, I will do as you say, just a question, though, about numbers. How do we know how many passengers/month a tourisitc attraction is able to generate?

[Carl]

All tourist attractions have a "passenger level"; the amount of passengers per month will be determined by the passenger factor on your savegame. Sometimes this takes a bit of trial and error.

FWIW, I use the "tourist attractions" approach to international airports, and it works quite well. I certainly agree that it would be great to have dedicated "Airport" tourist attractions to simulate this more explicitly!