bokkie wrote:2) The to-do list includes a plan to increase the number of created passengers when more destinations can be reached. This isn't what you mean. What you want, isn't that already implemented? More people travel via the station with more destinations simply because people wanting to those destinations, pass the major hub.
I think the issue is that the number of passengers generated at a station is not proportional to the number of places they can go. The passenger numbers are actually always the same, but are divided down by however many destinations there are available - so if you make two destinations available from the same station, the number of passengers generated per line decreases by half (although it's true there is some compensation in through traffic).
For example, if you build a train route between two large towns, you'll get the full (huge!) number of passengers generated there initially deciding to go to the other town. You might expect that if you build a bus network linking other parts of town to your stations, you'll then get additional passengers on the train - but you don't, at least not in all situations. The current setup means instead you often lose passengers on the profitable route, because they now have a choice of destinations and decide to loop around the town's bus routes instead.
Much more seriously, this issue also potentially affects multiplayer games - a 'troll' in a server game could set up several bus stops to nowhere right next to your intercity railway station. Passengers would happily choose the bus routes over the intercity station, because station ratings come only from frequency of service, not from whether those services go anywhere useful - if the troll made nine bus stops in the catchment of the intercity train station, the real station would easily lose 90% of its passengers!
If you make station ratings (i.e. passenger generation) roughly proportional to the % of destinations the station serves (or similar), these problems vanish. This could also potentially reduce the current capacity problems caused by having insane passenger numbers on links early in the game.
