Project: Economy and Balancing

[Celestar]

Real planespeeds will come soon.

As for destinations: they will be configurable (none, passenger/mail only, all cargos) to adjust difficulty.

Celestar

[LordOfThePigs]

Just one remark about catchment area and the way passengers get to airports. It seems that catchement areas will be rethought completely. It seems the proposed system will use some saner catchement area for bus stops and railway stations. Here's my opinion about the airports.

The catchment areas for the airports should be really huge. I'm thinking of something like 200 tiles for an intercontinental airport (thus making such a huge airport useless on smaller maps). This allows the airport to catch passengers from a big enough area. Of course the actual size of the catchment area will take several tries to get right (200 may or may not be too much).

Now we need to find a way to dispatch passengers to stations. Lets assume that a house produces P passengers, and that this hous lies into the catchment area of N stations. Each station type (bus, train, dock, airport) has an attractivity coefficient A (for example A = 1 for intercontinental airports, A = 20 for train and bus stations and A = 10 for docks (this would of course need to trial and error to find out which coeffs work best with the game)). Then let An be the attractivity of each station who's catchement area covers the house in question. I suggest that each house dispatches its passengers to the stations using the following formula:

Pi = Ai/(sum of all Ai) * Pg

where Pg is the number of passengers generated by the house as descibed in the existing document, Pi is the number of passengers assigned to station i, and Ai is the Attractivity of station i.

The good point about doing it this way, is that it allows airport to have a huge catchment areas and thus capture passengers from many different towns at once (you no longer need to put your airport in the middle of a city), while not influencing other transport services in a noticeable way (since it would suck 20 times less passengers from an area than a train station) but still provide a generous amount of passengers.

I hope my idea is clear enough. What do you think about it?

[richk67]

One thing I would like to see change is the "minimum £10,000 per vehicle" qualification in the player ratings. This is pretty hard to achieve with inflation off in many usual play circumstances.

For example; if you set up a bus transfer from town to an out-of-town airport, then even in the late game, it will be rare for those buses to make £10,000.

However, for other vehicles, £10,000 is a doddle. Also, with inflation on the target is all too easy.

I would suggest different targets for different transport types.

Road vehicles: £5,000
Trains: £20,000
Aircraft: £50,000
Ships: £15,000

These could also be scaled/use different values as part of a difficulty levels scheme. It would make the target easier for road vehicles to achieve, and a bit harder for rail.

[SmatZ]

One thing I would like to see change is the "minimum Ł10,000 per vehicle" qualification in the player ratings. This is pretty hard to achieve with inflation off in many usual play circumstances.

I agree the minimum profit rating is very problematic. However, I have a different reason. When you build a new vehicle and it hasn't done any profit yet, it lowers your rating a lot. So I think there should be some "average income per vehicle" instead. (anyway, this is not for the first time this is being discussed, but nothing has changed so far...)

edit: this is not true!

[SirkoZ]

One thing I would like to see change is the "minimum £10,000 per vehicle" qualification in the player ratings. This is pretty hard to achieve with inflation off in many usual play circumstances.

I agree the minimum profit rating is very problematic. However, I have a different reason. When you build a new vehicle and it hasn't done any profit yet, it lowers your rating a lot. So I think there should be some "average income per vehicle" instead. (anyway, this is not for the first time this is being discussed, but nothing has changed so far...)

Well - it's pretty straight-forward and if one builds a long straight bus line, one can easily earn those $20,000 per 1 bus because it gets payed in each direction (lorries only in 1 dir.).

[DaleStan]

I agree the minimum profit rating is very problematic. However, I have a different reason. When you build a new vehicle and it hasn't done any profit yet, it lowers your rating a lot.

It does? Last I heard, vehicles less than 2 years old weren't included in the rating calculations.

[SmatZ]

I agree the minimum profit rating is very problematic. However, I have a different reason. When you build a new vehicle and it hasn't done any profit yet, it lowers your rating a lot.

It does? Last I heard, vehicles less than 2 years old weren't included in the rating calculations.

It doesn't, sorry, I was mistaken a lot.

[RainierWatcher]

Real planespeeds will come soon.

Ah good, I have wondered, on one map I took from TTDPatch (real airspeeds) to openTTD, (LinkGame Islands to be exact) I used about 30 planes on TTDPatch with city airports, on OpenTTD about 80 to do the same thing with intercontinental/international airports.

The worst is trying to use them on a 2048/2048 map, they take ages.

May i ask how soon? A nightly soon, or the next release after 0.5.0?

[timon]

I do miss a tiny part in the your concept. Job vacancies and Unemployement.

An industrial facility is only able to run at a capacity of 100% when it's occupied by 100% of it's workforce. So if there is within the range of the industrial facility not enough job vacancies the facility won't be able run at 100%.

To fill the job vacanties for the factories you need to make the city grow. A city will only grow if it meets the requirements for growth. These requirements are the primary needs like food, water etc but also job vacancies!!!)

----
For example:
If the city has primary products for growth (like food, water etc) but there are no vacancies in the cities range -> the city will not grow!

If the city does not have primary products for growth, but there are vacancies in the cities range -> the city will not grow!

If the city has primary products for growth (like food, water etc) and there are vacancies in the cities range -> the city will grow!
----


A city is not a city without supporting jobs, think of shops, gas stations, law enforcement etc etc. Depending on city size there are more or less supporting jobs required.

----
For example:
A city of 300 'people' has 95% supporting jobs and has 5% unemployement if there are no active industrial facilities.

A city of 1000 'people' has 50% supporting jobs (think of shopping malls etc) so that leaves 50% unemployement if there are no active industrial facilities.
----


Job vacancies has it's influence on city growth. If there are job vacancies people will move to the city (of course if the city meets the requirements for growth).

This will work otherwise likely, if the unemployement is high people will leave the city to get their fortune somewhere else. So the city will get smaller!

The city without any transport options will have a limited range where it's inhabitants can work. If you connected to another city by train, bus, airplane or boat the city will have greater range where inhabitants can work.

[cabbit]

I have some questions about the scope of this project:

1) The pdf says that the rebalancing will focus on 1830-2050, but currently there are no GRFs (at least, as far as I know) that provide vehicles prior to 1920, so does the mean:

i) New engines and ships will be introduced to fill the years 1830-1920

ii)The current vehicles intro/expire dates will be 'stretched' to cover the years in question

I ask this becuase it is possible that I could provide some graphics for new vehicles, whereas I'm pretty much hopeless at assisting in any other constructive manner to this project, at least until there's something to play-test.

2) How much further development wise, not time-wise) in the future is this project set for, I mean, is this project basically going to be developed starting from the planned 5.0 version (which, judging for RC #s I would think is 'almost' done) or is it waiting for further features to be developed first? In particular, is this project going to be done before or after the introduction of cargo packets and/or cargo destinations?

3) Is this project intended to be implemented in stages, or all at once (vehicles, for example, could be rebalanced before any changes in the global economy were made)?

[LordOfThePigs]

So Celestar, any updates on the PDF document with all that has been said in the last few days?

[brupje]

has anyone suggested something about travel time yet?

I think it should inflate (or deflate?), as people start demanding faster transport when faster transport is available. For example, in 1850 someone would accept traveling a month from EU to the VS, today we allow only a day.

[Scia]

has anyone suggested something about travel time yet?

I think it should inflate (or deflate?), as people start demanding faster transport when faster transport is available. For example, in 1850 someone would accept traveling a month from EU to the VS, today we allow only a day.

You have a point there.

This reminds me of this:

The first aircraft are not profitable in the game. They should bring in good money as they are only for the really wealthy people. Later in the game they are for all people and should not be so profitable per passenger.

[antichaos]

Any progress on this lately?

Personally I don't mind if the costs and speeds of vehicles are somewhat unrealistic as long as long as they result in interesting gameplay choices. If there is just one clear best solution for a given distance/cargo volume then it doesn't make for very interesting play. Ideally the economy should encourage mixing of transport types in order to maximize efficiency. One example of this would be to make the catchment area of airports smaller rather than larger, so it becomes much more important to use buses and trains to bring in passengers from other parts of the town.

Another example would be to limit a town's acceptance of goods (and food/water) based on its size, so that there would be reason to build distribution centers with goods brought in in bulk and then delivered to several nearby towns by truck.

Obviously this requires the transfer payments system to be working correctly. Can someone confirm if/when that has been properly fixed?

One could also apply maximum acceptance levels to industries. I would do this not in terms of cargo units, but in terms of annual budget. Each industry is given a budget for buying raw materials. It will therefore prefer cargo from nearby, since it is cheaper. By transporting cargo from secondary industries (selling it for them), you increase their budget. As the industry is serviced, it and its budget grows so it becomes able to accept higher cost cargo delivered from further away. Power stations and the like sell directly to their local town(s) so you would need to grow the town in order to boost the coal/oil budget.

The point of all this is to encourage players to build a transport network that actually serves the economy of the map, rather than just going for high profit routes. It would also require players to chose a method (speed and volume) that best matches the budget of the receiving industry / town, which might mean not always going for the latest and fastest.

Any dev care to comment on the feasibility of this? How silly would it be to use the existing station acceptance code and have the industry just 'go invisible' if it is over supplied? That probably isn't that behavior one would want anyway. Either excess goods need to accumulate at the receiving station, where they are paid for when funds are available, or they are just thrown away, or possibly paid for but at a much reduced rate.

I understand that NewIndustries in TTDPatch supports stockpiling, but this is done in terms of cargo units, not money, which doesn't provide the economic incentives described above. Would it be possible to code this in a GRF?

[RMJ]

Just be carefull not to destroy the game. Making its extreme hard and insanely complex isnt equal fun. There is a reason why Transport Tycoon this is and have allways been number 1. Over many many over games.

[RFT]

I wrote a really nice polite post about the suggested speed limits being too restrictive for conventional rail (as 160 kmk/h renders a lot of fast diesel and steam trains pointless) but the bloody anti-spam thing complained about it (why? it wasn;t long, it wasm;'t short. it was just a normal forum post) and I really can;t be bothered typing it all out again as it had disappered when I clicked "back"...

[DarkFenX]

I also support independent of electrification status railway speeds (so all of 3 railway types will be available both plain and electrified).
Lots of sets contain 'future diesels' (fuel cell from uk set) with great speed, and build unneeded electrified railway for them is pointless imo.
...also, roads with different speedlimit would be good too

[antichaos]

Ooooh. New gamebalance branch now on SVN.

Keep up the great work Celestar.

[gkirilov]

Can the slowing down of time be considered as part of this thread (and now branch)?
There is a patch in the MiniIN which does that and it lets you enjoy all periods in the game. The new vehicles are introduced slower, the cities have time to expand and so on. Now 1 in-game day passes very fast.

[Ailure]

And why not have somewhat decreases reliability for new technology as well? (the first maglev train might have a few more child diseases than a later maglev train).

And I like being able to slow down time, as long the vehicles in the game doesn't slow down, only profits and costs. It would work really nicely in multiplayer, as players can afford being gone for 24 hours if it's equilant to a hour on regular speed.

I like the balancing aspects so far, though I hope they won't trouble much for new players... The game is already overwhelming for the newbies I introduce the game to. xD