Town growth

[atlan]

I have a question concerning the town growth.

In the regular version 0.5.2 rc3 or something (the newest one) its basically like that:

You build 2 bus stations, 6 busses and build a 2x2 road grip and then leave the town alone - thats the most effective way to get a town growing. Goods of any sort or more passender/mail transportation do even limit the max size of the town as you use up crucial space with your stations...anyways

Is the town growth the same in the nightlys? Or have there been any changes to it? Though the game is named TRANSPORT tycoon, town growth is an important part of the game and its somehow disappoiting that the town growth is calculated this way.

[atlan]

in the wiki its written that goods etc. increase the speed of the city growth...maybe the speed but very soon the stations limit the towns size. I made a game with a city and 3 stations in it and the city grow to 450k, while another one, next to it, with huge amounts of busses with passengers, mail and goods stopped at 120k...and the amount of busses and bus stations was the only difference between those cities.

[Mchl]

Some of the cities will grow large whithout your attention, others will stay at low populations whatever you do... It's random as far as I know.

[Maedhros]

Town growth is basically controlled by the number of stations serviced in the last 20 days. The town growth will increase with the number of stations within the first town radius (which depends on the town size) up to a maximum of 5.

In the nightlies the overall town growth rate can be changed within the patch options dialogue, and you will also find an option to set the number of cities (which grow twice as fast) with the same rules as normal towns also applying. Whether a town is given city status or not is determined at the start of the game.

It doesn't matter whether goods, passengers or mail has been delivered, as long as a station has been used. Arctic and tropical climates also require food and/or water, but that should be explained on the wiki.

[Mchl]

Still, I used to have cities with really well serviced stations, that would not grow at all, and cities with only one bus station, that would grow quite big.

[Maedhros]

It depends on where those stations are, and whether the town growth algorithm can actually find a way of expanding.

[atlan]

are there any plans to improve those algorithms to include goods, more stations, amount and frequency of deliveries and pickups?

[Maedhros]

I think about it every now and again, but I haven't got as far as actually writing any code for it. Neither has anyone else that I know of.

[atlan]

you would have my moral support and big thanks for that - my own coding skills are somewhere close to zero but i could help with a few thoughts about parameters and stuff.