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Vehicle running costs and infra maintenance costs don't seem to follow logic

Started by japa86, October 30, 2011, 06:02:08 PM

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japa86

Hi all!

Sorry if this has been brought up before, I tried to search "running costs", but didn't find anything exactly like this.

First of all, I'm a new simutrans player, and I absolutely LOVE it! I'm playing the newest experimental build. I work as a controller irl, so I love having numeric data about everything, which to my pleasure, Simutrans has alot :) I was happy to see my profit margin go from -200% to +50%, it's exciting to see the world in numbers. But enough about that.

I have been very careful in choosing which vehicles I se and what kind of road I build in order to maximise profit. But to my beginners eye, things don't seem to follow logic. For example all my busses are Guy Special, because it has ridiculously low running cost, even tho it's better than some of it's alternatives. Also, concrete road has really low maintenance cost even tho it can hold 80t and has nice max speed. Compare that to Tamac road and you'll see a great imbalance.

So my question is, is there something I'm missing? Or are things a bit unbalanced? I also feel there's too much to choose from, especially in vehicles - I only use one, the one with cheapest running costs :)

But all in all, lovely game, I'm afraid I'm gonna be addicted to this for long!

-Jaakko

Edit, I need to add I'm playing year 1828 atm :)

jamespetts

Jaakko,

welcome to the forums! Glad that you are enjoying Simutrans-Experimental. May I check - are you playing with the timeline off or on? The vehicles and roads to which you refer are not available in 1828.
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japa86

Ah, seems that I am NOT playing with timeline on. So that explains :) Thanks! Can I somehow turn timeline on in the middle of a game or is it only possible before starting?

Severous

I would like to second that...been a few times I would like to correct the setting and turn on timeline.  Maybe timeline 'on' should be the default?
Regards
Sev.

jamespetts

I don't think that it is possible to apply the timeline retrospectively, I'm afraid. I'll have to look into having the timeline on by default.
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Fifty

I am pretty sure that can be done (at least in 64 and 128, I don't know about 128.Britain or experimental).

Just open menuconf.tab, change
#dialog_tool[27]=
to some unused keyboard shortcut, for example "~" and remove the #
dialog_tool[27]=,~

Then open the game, press ~ (or whatever button you chose) and then change use_timeline from 0 to 1. Then save.
Of course, non-timeline vehicles, ways, buildings, and factories will still remain...but new ones will follow timeline.
Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?

ӔO

the game balance is work in progress.

unfortunately, simutrans isn't exactly the friendliest when it comes to balancing.
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Vladki

Quote from: ӔO on October 31, 2011, 01:19:49 AM
the game balance is work in progress.
Is there any progress in balancing the bus transport? I play with timeline on, currently in 1970, and I cant find any profitable bus except for guy special which has 10 times lower running cost than others. Double deckers are in loss even if running full in both directions. I use buses only for cuty transport so there's no speed bonus. The same applies for mail. Is it just poor balancing or do I miss something that will make my bus lines profitable?

jamespetts

Cost balancing has not been completed yet in either Experimental or Standard. In Experimental, I am waiting to be able to complete a number of features important to balance before undertaking balancing work, and those features are in turn waiting for me to finish even more important features, which, in turn, are waiting for me to catch up the pakset to the features that are already in the game.

Are you using Standard or Experimental, may I ask?
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Bjarni

I encountered some running cost issue, which puzzles me. It's in 1930 with timeline. The map only made 3 big cities and they are completely serviced with trams as well as with bussed to nearly villages. Two towns are connected by rail (40 tiles) and I placed an airport as the only stop in between. I made another airport next to the 3rd town and there are 180 tiles between the airports.

Here is the issue. Hundreds of passengers end up at the airports, which means planes leave right away (good). However using the only passenger plane available at that era, the FordTrimotor(NorthernAndScottishAirways), the planes loses more money than the combined income from all the other stuff combined. How can you make a profit on those planes? It seems like the ideal setup for planes as a railroad would have to circle around lakes and stuff and be at least twice as long as the direct path.

Luckily I saved just before building the airports and will test the railroad and the ship scenario for comparison.

Btw I'm using standard.

Edit: update
I tried building a railroad as well as ships and it seems odd. The railroad is losing money even without including costs of the track. At the same time the ships turn in a huge profit. They all cost 2/km (except Isle of Thanet, which costs 0.02/km, which I think is a typo). This means they cost like 400 for each trip in each direction while they profit like 100k due to having almost 2k passengers moving at 40 km/h. This means a steam turbine costal steamer turns in more than its build cost by going back and forth just once. Steam ships are way more expensive to operate than that! A real life number is the cost of a 100 pax ship@8 km/h used the same amount of coal as a 6 car (200 pax) train going 40 km/h. I was surprised to learn the high coal usage of ships.