What happened with passengers in 0.6.0 ?

[futurix]

I switched from 0.5.2 to 0.6.0 about a week ago, and since then I cannot play OpenTTD the way I normally do - usually I build a network of passenger-only railways (e.g. transporting only passengers) and let AI competitors to service the industries. In 0.5.2 my company was quite profitable and usually performed much better then AI companies, however in 0.6.0 my profits are much lower, while AI companies (servicing industries) quite get more profit and overtake me...

So the question is - is something changed with the way passenger traffic is prices in 0.6.0 ?
And if it is - how do I change it back?

[Rubidium]

No idea, and the fact that there's no savegame makes it impossible to take a look at it.

[futurix]

Oops, sorry - will play it again today and post save game

[futurix]

Here is the save game

[Alberth]

I loaded your game. Your trains (or your tracks) are not very efficient. For example Train 5 moves non-stop passengers between 'London station' and 'London Charing Cross', which is only a few tiles away from each other although the trains moves throughout a large part of the city. Since you get paid for the manhattan distance between the stations, you don't get much money.

You should either have a more direct line (so you can move passengers/hour), or add stops to all the other stations that it passes.

[futurix]

Alberth, this is only early beginning of the game - this line is supposed to be like Circle line in London (but due to lack of trains it temporarily has a token service between two stations that do no have other connections). So unprofitability of it is not a problem (and it wasn't a problem in 0.5.2 where the rest of the lines was profitable).

[Alberth]

Could you be more precise in what has changed then?

What train, how much income in 0.5.2, how many passengers?
Same in current version.

Anything that is different between both versions, as small and specific as possible.
(between 0.5.2 and 0.6 there are something in the order of a thousand changes orso, a remark like 'it has changed' doesn't really narrow down the search).

With that information devs can search for the answer starting from something specific that is known to be different, rather than first finding the different needle in the haystack in your 3MB save game.

[futurix]

Could you be more precise in what has changed then?

The AI players get much more profit much quicker then in 0.5.2, while my company struggles and has nothing near to previous profit level. This is as much as I can describe it - this is not train specific as far as I can see, and this is with exactly the same scenario as before.

[Alberth]

Hai,

I looked again at your game, and it seems that the major cause is that you run your service with slow and short trains, while your competitors use longer faster trains (more speed pays double, you get paid more, and you can visit the stations more often per year).
The competition also has more trains than you have, and much less track. (ie their train/track ratio is much better, they pay almost half the maintenance costs).
In addition, you give away almost 10,000 pound to the bank yearly while you have plenty of pocket money.

You can make a lot more money by upgrading your trains. Attached you see 2 train lists. At the left your original trains, at the right a few changes I made. The number to watch is the profit last year.
I upgraded trains 8 and 12 to the fastest diesel and the longest train that fits in your stations. As you can see, it triples profits. To see the effects of taking an electric train, I switched train 2 to the fastest electric. The capacity decreased from 76 to 56, yet profits go up by a factor 1.60442084111 for this year (a factor 2.1 if you compensate for the passenger count).
Trains 1 and 5 are also interesting. A double engine costs twice as much. I ran train 1 for a while with 2 passenger carriages, and it more or less breaks even with the old situation. With 3 passengers carriages, you make more money already.

In short: You have a lot of track, and few short and slow trains. Put more trains on the lines, and upgrade/lengthen your trains and you'll make much more money.

[squishycube]

He is not asking for help, he is asking for an explanation why his setup seemed much more profitable in version 0.5.2 and also why the computer is making a lot more money than in 0.5.2 (I assume nothing has been done about the AI in between versions).

[tb2571989]

AFAIK, nothing has changed. Try 0.6.1 RC1 and see what happens.

[Alberth]

He is not asking for help, he is asking for an explanation why his setup seemed much more profitable in version 0.5.2 and also why the computer is making a lot more money than in 0.5.2 (I assume nothing has been done about the AI in between versions).

Maybe you are right about the AI (all AI work is being put in NoAI branch), but you are also assuming that nothing has changed in towns, payment calculation, random generators, industry production and a few zillion other items that may influence payments, speed, rating calculation, etc.

As an experiment I ran a 0.5.3RC2 game and a r12909 (1 change set newer than 0.6.1-RC1) game in parallel from a 0.5.3RC2 save game for a year, and already noticed a substantial difference in town growth. Apparently, moving passengers has become less profitable for towns (differences in payment was neglectible). I don't know why this is the case. The change is quite likely something of a side effect of other changes, I don't remember anything specific about passengers.
If you want to find out why precisely, there are only about 2900 change sets between both versions, knock yourself out.

While watching the games, I also found some city config settings in the Economy tab (bottom 3) which may be of interest to you.

[Snowdog]

Well I highly doubt 0.6.0 changed anything to passengers as my passenger trains are still my most profitable trains.

[Rubidium]

The only thing 0.6.0 changed is the way the route taken by the passengers is stored. If you transfer people the real origin is stored instead of the origin of the furthest entity in the wagon. This means that profits will be lower when you used this loop-hole.

[Maedhros]

I think the default town growth speed changed between 0.5.x and 0.6, so maybe your towns just aren't growing as fast any more?

[futurix]

He is not asking for help, he is asking for an explanation why his setup seemed much more profitable in version 0.5.2 and also why the computer is making a lot more money than in 0.5.2 (I assume nothing has been done about the AI in between versions).

Exactly!

AFAIK, nothing has changed. Try 0.6.1 RC1 and see what happens.

I did that, and it is exactly the same

While watching the games, I also found some city config settings in the Economy tab (bottom 3) which may be of interest to you.

I tried changing most of them to no effect

The only thing 0.6.0 changed is the way the route taken by the passengers is stored. If you transfer people the real origin is stored instead of the origin of the furthest entity in the wagon. This means that profits will be lower when you used this loop-hole.

I did not use that feature at all.

I think the default town growth speed changed between 0.5.x and 0.6, so maybe your towns just aren't growing as fast any more?

I tried speeding growth, but once again - no real change...

[Alberth]

The only thing 0.6.0 changed is the way the route taken by the passengers is stored. If you transfer people the real origin is stored instead of the origin of the furthest entity in the wagon. This means that profits will be lower when you used this loop-hole.

I did not use that feature at all.

Yes you do, it is built into the 0.6.0 program. There is no way around it other than not using the new version.

I think the default town growth speed changed between 0.5.x and 0.6, so maybe your towns just aren't growing as fast any more?

I tried speeding growth, but once again - no real change...

That's a pity.

The bottom line is, I think, moving passengers has become less profitable in the new version. You can either keep playing the old version, or step up your efforts and provide a better service earlier in the game. The latter is also a good way to make the town grow faster.

[Ar4i]

I switched from 0.5.2 to 0.6.0 about a week ago, and since then I cannot play OpenTTD the way I normally do - usually I build a network of passenger-only railways (e.g. transporting only passengers) and let AI competitors to service the industries. In 0.5.2 my company was quite profitable and usually performed much better then AI companies, however in 0.6.0 my profits are much lower, while AI companies (servicing industries) quite get more profit and overtake me...

So the question is - is something changed with the way passenger traffic is prices in 0.6.0 ?
And if it is - how do I change it back?

I have a question - after loading your savegame made in 0.5x in 0.6.0 and running one year (you can activate "fast forward" option) do you have a noticeable decrease in income for that year compared to the same year run the same way in 0.5h (just don't do anything for this one year but run it for the sake of the experiment). This would give an answer to the question whether there is some change in 0.6.0 that affects your income.

[LordAzamath]

Well.. IIRC there WAS made a change to current AI, so they would use longer trains.. But I don't know if it got into trunk.. That was a while ago..

[futurix]

I found out what my problem is - for some reason most of large cities have slowly decreasing population! Yes, decreasing, even when they are actually shown as cities and settings for city growth is fast. I don't understand what's going on, but this is what's making my company unprofitable - since number of passengers is constantly decreasing with time (compared with 0.5.2 where it increased rather quickly).