@fabio The platform length, that has to fit to train lengths, is the obstacle here, it quite increases the effective catchment area to many square kilometres.
prissi: "No worth discussion really: Simutrans never display anything implying 1tile=1km with the execption of the odometer of convois. So what would be the purpose of such setting?"
Isn't the odometer an important enough reason? Catchment area is another one. Population densities might be another one. Last but not least the kinetic of vehicles. There's quite a difference if the inclines are 10 m per 1 km as now, or 10 per 250 m. Allowing for steep gradients was afaik one of the reasons for james' move to a different scale in experimental.
For a simulation game to be playable it needs to have a plausible and consistent mapping of game dimensions to real life dimensions. Else intuition does not work. (Eg. it would be silly to have a plane route for something below 500 km, thus pak authors will balance planes with this in mind, players thinking the same and use it for medium to long distances too.)
"And all vehicles are usually 1/2 tile long = 125m long buses?" They are so obviously at a different scale, the visual scale, that players notice it immediately that they are just token. This might, similar to the two different time-scales, lead to confusion of new players, but would only be solvable with a detailed 3d environment.
