"Routes"

[audigex]

Hi guys

Not totally sure if this exists, or if I'm gonna have time for this, but it's something I'd like to see in game so I figure it's worth a discussion if anyone has any thoughts. I think it would fit in nicely with some of the timetable/cargodist type development at the moment, and frankly, I just want it myself so I'm willing to give it a go. I'll give it a suitably convoluted name and acronym shortly. Maybe Audigex's Route Corporation (ARC).

Basically I'm wanting to make timetables/routes more user friendly - sort of an expansion of the shared orders system. My last TTD game was on the UK map, and I found that I spent most of my time trying to fix timetable separation and routes. What I'm thinking of doing is allowing the user to setup route segments (in the same way as you'd give a train orders) between major junctions or destinations - ie
London-Birmingham
Birmingham-Manchester
Manchester-Carlisle
Birmingham-Liverpool
Birmingham-Carlisle
Carlisle-Edinburgh
Carlisle-Glasgow
(this is just discussing a few routes, in actuality it is more likely to include things like Manchester-Preston, Preston-Carlisle, Preston-Blackpool etc, smaller segments). These can be shared by multiple super-segments, but should rarely (possibly never) overlap. This part may be entirely/partially auto-generated, I'm not sure.

These are then combined into super-segments/routes. ie (London-Birmingham, Birmingham-Carlisle, Carlisle-Glasglow) which essentially make up one journey. This may also be auto-generated (ie the user chooses London and Glasgow as endpoints, and the system suggests routes via Birmingham and Carlisle, or Birmingham, Manchester and Carlisle, based on segments). Each train can be added to a route, similar to shared orders, and the route edited separately to the shared orders. Other statistics may also be available based on this. These may be made up of either segments or smaller super-segments, if you will. ie they can be used within other larger segments, but modifying the smaller segment changes the larger segment.

A final option/aspect would be combining super-segments into optional partial networks or similar - ie a pendolino circuit may include routes London to Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Birmingham. Perhaps specifying that there are 7 departures a day from London (Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow) or merely providing a circuit.

This would allow more powerful timetables and routing (plus modifying of several routes/shared orders at once), in exchange for a bit of thought when setting up the maps (hence wondering how much of the segment stage can be automated. My first thought on this is that it could be set up to allow the user to set the "full" route first - defining the entire route London-Glasgow, then going back through the route and "splitting" it into a tree. ie "split at <station>" and then build a new sub-tree from there to Edinburgh. These trees could then be merged back into the main trunk later, or finish at a new end-point.

I imagine it will take a fair bit more thought for the detailed planning of the system (although a lot of it, in my head, is already looking logical in terms of linked lists and trees), but it seems workable to me. Can anyone think of any major objections/obstacles I'll have to overcome, or any other ideas/thoughts/discussions on the idea?

Cheers

[ic111]

Are you aware of this project of me?

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=57397

The current state can be seen from in the post with the screenshot towards the end of the thread. There are several tasks for me left, but I think chances are good that I can make a release towards autumn.

[audigex]

I had a scan but didn't see the bullet point about train lines looks good though - have you looked into the train lines/routes side of things yet, or are you still focusing on the timetable aspects?

[ic111]

My main motivation for introducing routes is that I want to make them the basis for train graphs of routes. I.e. I want to establish a view where one can easily see what trains are scheduled in which order on which route. In fact, my main motivation for investing time for that is that I found timetabling a quite interesting feature, but at the same time, its current implementation is not at all easily usable IMHO.

Additionally, I use them for an alternative GUI for selecting the next order destination, which offers the player the stations which are reachable via some route from the current station (see screenshot in the other thread).

I have thought about some sort of hierarchical timetables, but tend to the opinion that they would be too complicate at least for now. After all, there are things like conditional and implicit orders, where regarding the latter ones, I have the hope that my concept makes them somewhat superfluous as all aspects why they are needed can be achived using alternative concepts.

So, what I will not have is a GUI as you suggest, where you can enter start point and end point, and the system suggests a sequence of routes. If I would invest time for something like that (most probably not within the next months, maybe not at all), I would rather take the approach of hierarchical timetables, where one e.g. has timetables A, B, C, and makes a super-timetable E, containing e.g. the timetable A with offset e.g. 30days, B with an offset of 60 days, C with 45 days.

[Scay]

See this 5 year old suggestion of mine, feasible?

"Routes" primary way to handle traffic: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=34086

[audigex]

It looks feasible to me - in the original thread someone mentions the upcoming new feature of shared orders, which is now in trunk. I'd say the best, fastest and most effective way to implement your suggestion would be to build it on top of shared orders. It's quite similar to my suggestion, with the caveat that yours covers one set of orders from a start to end station whereas I'm trying to break that down into smaller segments which can be combined into a large national network.

For your suggestion I'd advise look at adding functionality to aggregate the profit/loss from all trains with a shared order set, and a way to modify the properties of trains which have shared orders, then put them in a nice GUI

[Lordmwa]

You mean route profit as opposed to vehicle profit? Doesnt seem like a bad idea to me

[audigex]

Pretty much - it could still be broken down into trains, but I think a total route profitability would be more useful. If you can see how much demand, capacity and profit there is on the route, it's much easier to decide whether to add/remove a train to/from the route. This would be a side effect of the main aim of improving train management and removing some of the micromanagement: it should also allow better timetable separation to some extent - sending trains down each part of a total route at specified intervals...

Ie I could specify that 10 trains per hour leave London, of which all go via Birmingham, 2 continue each to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh with a further 1 each to Crewe and Preston. Of those, they would alternate between going via Watford or via Milton Keynes... just an example, but it would allow much more powerful diagrams to be set on a timetable basis, without micromanaging or creating stupidly long shared orders lists.