Topic: New speedbonus.tab for Pak128 nightly

[jamespetts]

Attached is a speedbonus.tab file that I have written for the nightly version of Pak128: the existing default values, taken, I understand, from Pak64, were generally too low, which would thus make gameplay too easy.

I hope that this his helpful to people: any comments would be welcome.

Edit: File substantially revised, taking into account: (1) the fact that the speed bonus is interpolated; and (2) the necessity for aircraft to earn a substantial speedbonus in all cases. I have also given some consideration to the official speedbonus.tab attached below. Note: this file works best with this patch applied.

[Zeno]

Current values were too low for some vehicles and ages, but too high for others (specially road vehicles).
Btw, a new speed bonus table will be probably needed when the rebalancing of the pak is finished; anyway, it's nice someone takes a look on it! 
Actually, I use my own bonus table

[VS]

Uhm, as it is a tradition to ignore speedbonus updates, I'll repeat it here, too:

Two days ago I uploaded new table made from current vehicle data.

[jamespetts]

VS: Sorry - I didn't have the latest nightly when I wrote that. I have now downloaded the latest version, and it is interesting to compare that to what I had written. We seem to have adopted slightly different strategies: I used the method of using a large number of smaller steps, whereas yours seems to use a smaller number of larger steps. Might I ask - was there a particular reason behind doing it like that? :-)

[VS]

I wrote a program to get all vehicle speeds and extract values min,avg,med,max depending on time.
Plotted that.
Printed the graphs.
Took a ruler and drew some lines

[jamespetts]

I wrote a program to get all vehicle speeds and extract values min,avg,med,max depending on time.
Plotted that.
Printed the graphs.
Took a ruler and drew some lines

Ah, interesting. I just looked at the speeds of the vehicles as they changed over time, thought about how that would work in practice in the game, and added lots of small updates to make changes in the speed bonus smooth and keep players on their toes.

[VS]

If the current setup does not work well, yours will be at least tried, don't worry!

However: looking at your numbers, there are a few things that puzzle me. You do know that these values are interpolated, right? Just looking at the numbers and my graphs, it is clear you're often setting higher bonus speed than any vehicle can manage! Yes, at the points written in the file it works, but between them, you get such situations. Of course this can be compensated to some extent by setting respective running costs, but…


Maybe it's time to make clear what we understand with "speed bonus" and "speed bonus speed"?

You get more for being faster and saving time, that much is clear. But in what situations is it appropriate? This is a really tricky part. Speed bonus is calculated always, for all vehicles, and often turns into malus. Here comes into play another factor - different good types can put either high or even none value on this price modification. So, in the end, it can be bonus, malus, or nothing.

Well, now, as it is called "bonus", I would say it should be positive… So, an above-average vehicle should get some chance at it. That's why I set the bonus similarly to average, with more lenient values whenever it was difficult to copy the trend.

It doesn't really help that the bonus speed is set per waytype, while the cargos' bonus rating ranges from 0 to 15%. The slowest vehicles should (but do they really?) carry goods that disregard bonus and vice versa. However, if you take a look at the graphs, you'll see that the min-max gap keeps opening all the time. Soooo... locomotives are probably tough to balance as there is no way to tell what they carry.

Anyway. Given all this, I see bonus speed as something that the bonus-sensitive cargo carriers should exceed. So, I just push it low. It can be compensated by running costs.

I really want to hear other opinions… because there is no guarantee this is the best way


The graphs I keep ranting about are here:
http://www.simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/vehdata.rar

[jamespetts]

VS,

thank you for your reply. I have only just now had time to look into this properly. Thank you also for the helpful graph. I did not realise that the speed bonus was interpolated: I thought that the bonus specified applied in from the year specified until the new bonus was specified. I have not immediately been able to find where my file goes off the scale, though - if it does, it certainly needs adjusting.

I think that we have slightly different aims in our balancing, however. I specifically designed my speedbonus.tab file to work with my speedbonus patch, here. The result of that is, because local transport is taken out of the speed bonus system entirely, the speed bonus is set more aggressively, because, instead of having to take into account all vehicles, it now only has to take into account vehicles designed for long-distance travel (with the patch applied). I have been testing it: with your speedbonus.tab and my patch, there is more of a gap between local and long-distance revenues than there is with your speedbonus.tab and the default binary (local revenues being lower with my patch applied). With my speedbonus.tab and my patch, however, revenues for local transport are higher (with the local bonus set to 25%) than they are with my speedbonus.tab and the default binary, which was the intention of the patch in the first place. So it might well be that your speedbonus.tab is more appropriate for the default version, and that my speedbonus.tab (probably with some adjustment, in light of what you have told me about interpolation) is better for my patched version.

Incidentally, I think that I need to re-think the approach to aircraft. In the speedbonus.tab that I uploaded above, I treated aircraft just the same as all other forms of transport, and set the bonus quite aggressively in comparison with the fastest available in the fleet. However, it strikes me that, because of the nature of air travel, aircraft should always attract a very large speed bonus: in reality, people pay far more per kilometre to travel by air than any other form of transport precisely because air travel is so much faster; aircraft also cost a great deal more to run than land or sea transport. Therefore, air transport should have very high running costs, but should have its speedbonus set to very lax values (hundreds of kph lower than the fastest currently available, and with, perhaps, no significant increases after the 1960s/1970s), which should give a realistic and workable balance.

[Zeno]

It's a great job... but I find it's an absolutely overcrowded file... I would take out half of values for road vehicles, and two thirds for trains
IMHO, if you trick with such detail into speeds, you will get all trains are ALWAYS very similar in all situations. If the speeds curve is more simplified, you get some "areas" of years where vehicles can vary their behaviour in a small percentage, but not enough to make it lose money from a year to another.
I repeat it's a good job, but too detailed for my way of looking at the game : 
Anyway, as I've told before (in other discussions) I use my own (less detailed) file, as I prefer to have some light economy fluctuations 

[jamespetts]

Zeno,

the reason that it is so detailed is because I did not realise that the program automatically interpolated the values. I will be having a look at this (and the PakBritain version that I made) at some point to rework it in light of that knowledge. I may well remove some of the intermediate values.

[jamespetts]

I have now uploaded a revised version, taking account of the feedback given. There are far fewer individual steps (because of interpolation), the values are far more generous for aircraft (although it looks as though their maintenance costs could do with being increased), and some numbers are adjusted to take into account interpolation to make sure that the speed bonus is ever off the scale.

The idea of this file is to set the speed bonus quite aggressively such that only the fastest vehicles get the bonus: ordinary speed vehicles will either get no bonus or a slight penalty, and the slowest vehicles should get a substantial penalty. This more aggressive weighting of the speed bonus will work better with this patch applied, which disapplies the speed bonus entirely for local transport.