CargoDist, ferries and megabridges

[Kevo00]

A strategic poser I find interesting...

CargoDist is a fantastic feature because among other things it makes ferry services (more) viable. But it can also create bottlenecks where ferry services have to exist as fillers in a rail system (I could use air too, but that would likely create similar problems). See the attached screenshot from the Tempo Peninsula scenario, where I have a crossing from the mainland (on the left of the screen) to an offshore island (on the right of the screen) where the population has mushroomed up to about 45,000, from less than 5,000.

I now have two ferry routes, with 27 ships in total serving them - including eight Maddelena Ferries, and four hydrofoils from FISH - the rest are default hovercraft, which provides a reasonably well flowing crossing. I get some backlogs of up to about 1,000 passengers, but the Maddelenas usually help to clear them. I also rely on a tramway through the town on the left to take passengers from the railway to the ferry, which has come under strain, but running the tramway as a loop has helped to make it more efficient. My shipping division takes in about £450k a year over costs of £315k, so only making about £135k - but obviously contributing to profit in a much bigger way from through traffic and with low infra costs.

But - how many ferries is too many - and should I just build a 'megabridge' instead, even if it is not massively realistic? It would obviously require artificial islands and cost a lot to maintain as well as build. It would also require quite a bit of house demolition on the north side. Additionally, it would require a big redesign of the supporting rail and tramway networks but that through trains could come straight through from the big cities at the north end of the scenario to the island, cutting out three changes. I could also have a high capacity EMU as a shuttle service. The trains would doubtless be very profitable because of this.

What do people think? I like my ferries but masses of them is not hugely realistic either. Does anyone else have masses of ferries on one crossing? Or build huge bridges?

[te_lanus]

If me was playing me would have added a few planes (especially a few big 777/747/A380's from WAS) I personally only use ships on short hops to small coastal towns.

[Alberth]

I wonder if trains would have sufficient capacity, but there is an easy way to find out,just do it!
If you hate it at the end, either revert your changes as real-world would do it, or load an old game, ie time-travel

[Redirect Left]

I would use trains, if only helicopters were bigger and more profitable...

load an old game, ie time-travel

the future is now

[andythenorth]

It's no help for this game, but Squid Ate FISH has the Pegwell 4 hovercraft.

This has 400 pax capacity, and a 70mph top speed. That's half the capacity of the Maddelena, but 3.5x the speed, so for any given time period, the hovercraft capacity is about 75% higher

I would favour smaller faster vehicles over larger slower ones, it avoids large backlogs building up.

[Kevo00]

It's no help for this game, but Squid Ate FISH has the Pegwell 4 hovercraft.

This has 400 pax capacity, and a 70mph top speed. That's half the capacity of the Maddelena, but 3.5x the speed, so for any given time period, the hovercraft capacity is about 75% higher

I would favour smaller faster vehicles over larger slower ones, it avoids large backlogs building up.

Ooooh...I started this game before squid came out unfortunately, and my OTTD time is limited, so it has taken me a while to get to this stage.

I agree though - that's why on this crossing I have adopted a 'composite' approach of some larger craft to mop up the overspill from frequent faster craft.

I will build the bridge and let you know how it goes!

[audigex]

I do wonder if perhaps ships, being so slow, could do with a larger capacity - CargoDist still doesn't do a great job of limiting passengers to capacity, or have a real-world comprehension of geography (typically people will travel within their own island much more often than travel to them)

That's no fault of Cargodist, more a strange characteristic of people which is hard to quantify, but it does give us these annoying backlogs which can only be filled with pure capacity.

[Plord]

cargoDist being as owesome as it is may be it can be tweaked...

actually, cardoDist can be tweaked? is a question.

I know it was pretty hard to develop cargodist and may be it is way beyond our mortal posibilities, but few minor tweaks from now and then.


For example: CargoDist infering distance between locations to send fewer people there or taking population of the cities to prevent sending tons of people to small villages.

may be this last one.

I do wonder if perhaps ships, being so slow, could do with a larger capacity - CargoDist still doesn't do a great job of limiting passengers to capacity, or have a real-world comprehension of geography (typically people will travel within their own island much more often than travel to them)

That's no fault of Cargodist, more a strange characteristic of people which is hard to quantify, but it does give us these annoying backlogs which can only be filled with pure capacity.

if city is in an island send more people in other cities in the island and fewer outside.

[romazoon]

it s allready possible to have the behaviour you guys are looking for.

cargodist settings are tweakable exactly for that reason (advanced parameter)

so the first thing you will want to do is to set "up" the effect of distance on demand. (over 200% at least, even at max with 255% is fine, try and find the number that fits your games).

This first setting will raise the problem where too many passenger might be trying to reach that station in a small village that is right near by a big city, but that s also what you want : that most of the people are not trying to go too far.

So now to make sure there is not 200 passenger per month trying to go to that small village producing 10 passenger per month, simply have a passenger distribution on "symetric" And set the symetry effect the nearer as possible from 100% (but i don t recommand 100% symetry, i recommand over 80 %, and i often use something between 95 and 99%)

Now, the effect of those settings will be very strong on your network, especially where it is very dense with bus stop every few tiles, but those settings are not gonna achieve much if you kind of play with only one (big) station per town/city, or with not enough dense network (people will still try to go relatively far in that case)


NOTE : those settings are great for passengers, and eventually mail too. I would recommand you to turn cargodist off ("manual") for other cargoes and freight with those settings though.

[Kevo00]

Yup, I have effect of distance on demand turned up in the game shown above, to 150%. Did try 200% but it overloaded my tram routes with short distance passengers while my intercity trains were half empty.

[Plord]

After those minor tweaks, 200% effectively my road networks were pulling a massive load of passangers. 120% for me would do the trick,


this tweak solves a problem i had in a game some days ago with Av8 having some planes with very low capacity, and traveling medium to large distances, because every body willing to travel far away i had to buy several airplanes, but only having the smaill airport the scene was like mosquitos in a swamp.

thk!

[Kevo00]

Here we are, post bridge building! Passenger flow is a lot better, and I was able to take the opportunity to deal with a lot of congestion issues. I actually have a green cargo flow line across the bridge now, so it was definitely a good move! Modern high capacity vehicles also help.

[Plord]

and in % of your general bugdet how much that cost? i remember doing it once, it was so expensive that i could build only tiny island for a small rail (normaly i build two rails, for going and coming)

but the price is relative, some airplanes in "WAS" cost a very hugh amount of money but it can transfer 400 pax within seconds or the Concord for extremely long distances, and the space you use for your railstation is almost the same for a large airport.

well, the best solution is the one that suits your game!

------

Looking some real life projects, we have the overseas highway!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Highway that sometime was overseas railway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Railroad (the bridge was so narrow, i cannot believe a train could go thru there.)

it is a pity that the water in ottd is the lowest limit, just imagine a tunnel like the one between france and england!

[Kevo00]

Construction cost me about £17m. I had enough money built up in the bank to enable me to do this. It will take a long time to recoup this, but the EMU shuttles are making more than £200k a year, while with Cargodist the benefits are spread around the network.

There is a 'eurotunnel' patch but to my knowledge no way to build signals inside tunnels - I may be wrong.

[Redirect Left]

Ow, forgot you had to do some terraforming to build little islands for the bridges! Expensive.

[Plord]

With this distance is hard to find why.

But on the northen peninsula you terraformed the coastline, that single part was maybe as expensive as the islands and there were plenty of space behind. Also the Y Intersection could look more atractive with the sea on each side.

on the other side, it is nice how all islands have the same shape.

[Eddi]

the islands don't have to be this wide. only raise 1 spot (or 2 if you want to place a signal), and build a bridge with a foundation (if you do that during pause, you avoid the halftile being flooded). this should save you almost half the cost.

[kamnet]

There is a 'eurotunnel' patch but to my knowledge no way to build signals inside tunnels - I may be wrong.

HackALittleBit created both the Chunnel patch and Signals on Tunnels and Bridges patch, and I believe they can be applied together. If I recall correctly Cirdan's OpenTTD fork supports the latter, and HALB has a Chunnel patch for Cirdan's fork.

[Kevo00]

With this distance is hard to find why.

But on the northen peninsula you terraformed the coastline, that single part was maybe as expensive as the islands and there were plenty of space behind. Also the Y Intersection could look more atractive with the sea on each side.

on the other side, it is nice how all islands have the same shape.

Well, yes I overdid it a wee bit perhaps, and it's true that I didn't need to terraform as much for the station throat. There was some suburban development blocking the potential approach on the North side, so a bit of terraforming seemed to be helpful to help get the station in. I guess I could have done less raising for the signal islands as Eddie suggests, though I hadn't done this since the original TTD, where you would have to build full size islands. So slightly over engineered, but there it is - and it certainly beats the ferries