Catchment Areas

[Aracirion]

This post is more about a problem than about a suggestion:

Just from the look of it, it seems strange that this station should get people form only four rows of houses next to it. it looks like less than a 2 minute's walk!



its kinda silly that this train station has a so much better catchment:





Similarly, although airports with larger catchment areas are cool, they create the idea that if ou want to transport passengers with trains you are better off building an unused airport close to town and connecting a tran station to it, so you can use the catchment area of the airport with the train station.


this is just an idea:
the centre of the catchment area could be the 1x2 station building or so
*** EDIT:
I wrote "the radius of the catchment area could be determined by the quality of service you provide at the station" ... I don't really think that's a good idea anymore ... the catchment area should be the area that can reach your station (physical possibility) ... station rating is how many people from that area actually want to go there.
END EDIT ***

It might also be important to connect buildings to your train station with a road to make use of a catchment area ...

[White Rabbit]

It's a good idea...no more building bus stops in the middle of a city and stationwalking your train station outside.

I was thinking about a patch feature for multiplayer, where stations are given full coverage area of the city they are in. This way, all companies have equal opportunities in each city, and therefore the company that makes most money is the one with the best rating. Rarely have I seen competitive play on OTTD determined by station ratings. Primary industries, sure, but almost never cities.

[l_Blue_l]

Great idea. This would work great with passengers with destinations as you could still have your local city services including trains and buses while including a more global station for that city for servicing other cities. I think this is something that has huge potential in the future.

[Moriarty]

Much as I like this idea (and I do!) there are some potential problems:

a) Would bus stations get entire city coverage? Obvious answer = no

b) What happens if I do not WANT entire city coverage.
If the city has a very large population (many thousands), it's going to take a hefty train connection to ensure that all of those passengers/mail bags are serviced - because if they're not serviced you'll get lower station ratings.

My proposed solution:
Make the catchment area size dependent on the train station size. I realise this is technically already the case, but at present it remains 4 squares from the station in any direction.
What if the larger (more platforms) a station was, the larger it's coverage?
Each extra platform is 1 extra catchment range?
For example, Six platforms - Catchment area of 9.

This is much more realistic - just like airports, larger ones have more catchment.

Admittedly this has problems too - specifically what happens if the person builds a 20 platform station (23 catchment!) in the middle of nowhere, they could get several quite distant industries all under one roof.
But then that's a question of playstyle.

It also wouldn't solve the thread starter's problem, but build a couple of platforms to the side (doesn't have to be on-top because of the extra range) and that could work..

[sc79]

I suggested something like the attachment ages ago in relation to some other topic I cant remember now. The ability to position the catchment area in relation to the platforms, rather than just centered. Would work even better if it had a drag-and-drop user defined area, and (as above) the number of squares was determined by the platform size.

[Aracirion]

I think determining catchment area by station size is inherently problematic, as anyone can build huge stations they don't use. That's why I would rather use some measure of quality of service.

[gkirilov]

Once I suggested that the catchment area could be made moveable(around the station) so it can catch whatever buildings from the city you want to.

[csuke]

make the catchment area (note, not radius) dependant on the station area, this would stop people walking things to the centre of the town as it would do very little good, instead they would have to build larger stations, i think that an "intelligent" catchment area could also be implemented with this, whereby houses take away from "area of catchment" at a normal rate, but bare land adds subtracts half of its area value.

also i think that to prevent people just building massive stations all over the place, the rating of the station should decrease quicker the larger it is, dependant on the amount of product supplied by the town/industry of course

[Born Acorn]

You should be able to change the station catchment in the Station window. Maybe expanding it would cost more? (Due to better facilities being needed to entice longer walks?)

[DannyA]

I like that idea - pay in station to change size or move it.

[RiTi]

I like the idea to define the catchment. I don't like the idea to pay. You pay for the building and it's then all up to your servicing that you have a good or bad station. It will pay for itself.

[Born Acorn]

If it's all up to servicing, why not make catchment depend on Transport Ratings for that station, and the Local Authority rating. That way, the better you are at transporting the goods, the larger the catchment.

I'd rather pay a small fee per catchment expansion though. We need more stuff to spend the millions on anyway.

[RiTi]

If it's all up to servicing, why not make catchment depend on Transport Ratings for that station, and the Local Authority rating. That way, the better you are at transporting the goods, the larger the catchment.

If I understand you correctly then you mean that you earn a larger catchment if your servicing is high and when servicing is low your catchment is smaller? If so, then I think that's a very good idea.

[Ben_Robbins_]

RiTi/Born Acorn: Isnt that what was posted in the original message? "the radius of the catchment area could be determined by the quality of service you provide at the station"

Advertisment campains in the towns should increase catchement areas, comparitievly poor services should take it down. That way if you advertise once and then keep up the same quality of service the catchment would stay the same, while bombarding a station with many many trains wouldnt simple generate more people, as like in reality, you would need to convince people to actually come to use the trains.

[Crass Spektakel]

To be honest I think the whole idea of generating/requesting resources is very simplistic and sometimes close to idiocity. Once I build a fleet of ships supplying thousands of passangers to an oil rig but noone wanted to go back from there... Ok, it will never be possible to do a complete realistic cargo system (Simcity 8000 someone?).

But at least Cargo should watch the distances and capacities.

Lets say I build a bus-stop. Why does a 20m long and 3m wide bus stop pile up several thousand passangers in a big city (just imagine THAT picture)? Lets just say a single bus-stop never generates more than 100 passengers a month and never accepts more than 200 a month. This also reduces the odd happening bus-jam. Maybe this kind of "local" bus-stop could be even much simpler than the recent bus-stop, eg. buses stop at the side of the street instead of a special bus-terminal for local connections (see below)

Next, lets seperate between local-stations and long-range-stations.

local stations act as expansions for long-range-stations. While both may look the same I would change some things.
EG local stations are cheaper, have a larger catchment area but can not contact far away long-range-stations.
long-range-stations on the other hand have a drastically reduced catchement-area but can put a lot of stuff through and can connect to far away long-range-stations.

Also we would introduce two kinds of mail and passangers: local and long-range. Local People don't want to get hauled long-range and visa versa.

About other cargo: This should be handled differently and not split into two. Instead limit the amount of cargo a single station accepts, eg a small local bus-station only accepts 200 units of goods a month, no matter how faw the goods got hauled.

These little rules would force the player to build a multi-level transport system, with many small bus-stops and train-stations connecting the parts of the city to an backbone which then is connected to the massive backbone.

And finally it would remove the backbone from the city (where it doesn't belong and isn't found in reality) and move it to the outskirts, e.g. the superlarge airport/seaport/trainterminal/busstation then sits 10 squares away from the city-border. And due to throughput-limits you would be required to strategically extend your long-range-relays.

[RFT]

just off the top of my head...
:
For Cargo it should work as it already does - even a massive statioon should be as close to the steel mill (or whatever) is serves as possible.

For Passengers, it should follow connected roads as a function of it's size. so a 4track, 5-long station could take passengers from the buildings adjacent to the 20 (for example. the actual numbers may need some tweaking) nearest road tiles. - in a way it's a very simplfied implementation of the "5 minutes walk" thing.

Liek I say, the numbers themselves may need tweaking, but I quite like the idea of having passengers following the roads to the station and that defining the catchment area. it would make it possible to have stations a bit out-of-town if a path to it is provided - a bit like a lot of rural and branch line stations that can be quite remote from the villages they serve.

[Moriarty]

I think determining catchment area by station size is inherently problematic, as anyone can build huge stations they don't use.

That's down to a persons play style. If someone wants to play using stations in the middle of no-where I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed. Most people will do the sensible thing and place stations strategically.

[Aracirion]

I think determining catchment area by station size is inherently problematic, as anyone can build huge stations they don't use.

That's down to a persons play style. If someone wants to play using stations in the middle of no-where I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed. Most people will do the sensible thing and place stations strategically.

What I meant was that with those rules, the game would practically force you to build strange things. Be that building station tracks that aren't even accessible from your network (see my first post) or building stations with 7 tracks when only one is used (to get a bigger catchment area).

It's not about playing style, it's about certain playing styles (stationwalking, etc.) being favoured by the rules over others (using stations as stations).

[Brianetta]

I think that, for passengers, a catchment area size that's proportional to the passenger rating of the station is an amazing idea, and I support it entirely.

Other cargos (even mail) shouldn't be discerning - the current algorithms are fine.

[SM9T8]

Spliting Platforms into varyious types is a good idea, perhaps also depending on their length?

Long Distance Trains are generally longer, so you wouldn't run a long distance train into a short platform, although you may want to run short distance train into a long platform.

However your not going to want to build long platforms that never get used, especially if the cost of long platforms is increased. If catchment area was linked to platform length, as well as the service quality, it would prevent small comuter stations needing a 30 train shuttle service to keep the number of passengers waiting down.

Also for freight services the catchment area needs to be reduced, industries don't like having to lug materials and goods a long distance to or from stations because once they have the ability to do that they might as well take them by road. The only case where catchment area for freight needs to be increased is for livestock where the the goods can walk for themselves.