In normal TTD, freight is emphasized. I think in part this is because the passengers behave in an illogical way. As a result, while freight traffic in TTD may be somewhat realistic, passenger traffic won't be. There's no connecting services, no "hubs", no local vs. express trains. That's what I'd like to see, and passenger-destinations would allow it. By making the passengers behave more realistically, it would also make the player do more realistic passenger services.
I think that we wouldn't want to do freight-destinations - well, maybe mail, but not otherwise. So that way, a player could play with the freight as they always have and ignore passenger, or play with just passenger in a realistic way, or try to do both without overloading the network.
As far as the destination algorithm, I think that in each town, there should be the potential of a passenger wanting to go to any other town. But if they can't reach it, then we don't need to worry about them further. Or, we could have a second-choice voting.
How about something like this. Of the available passenger per month:
25% in-town service (only if the town is bigger than X, otherwise they'd just walk)
25% split between the nearest 3 or 4 cities
25% to the largest couple of cities on the map
25% randomly allocated to all other cities on the map, but maybe not individually - maybe in 3 groups.
Now, here's how this works. For the passengers which CAN find a route to their destination, they appear at the relevant station and start on their way. For the passengers that CANNOT find a route to their destination, they are listed in the city status window, with their destination, in a different color showing that they couldn't get there. (This tells the player where a new service might be needed, and if there's enough, a subsidy will be generated.) BUT, a certain portion of them (half? 1/3?) choose an alternate destination from the list of places they CAN get to, and set out on their trip in the usual way.
It's like, people would prefer to go shopping in the big city, but if they can only get over to the neighboring county seat, they'll make do with that.
AFA too many destinations, I think this will be a problem only at the beginning of the game. Once the game has been going a while, especially if you have competitors, most destinations can be reached one way or another, given that passengers can change vehicles, and have in-town free transfers to make connections (they took a cab.)
Passenger Destinations
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But one flaw per se with the potential for a passenger to desire to go elsewhere based upon whether they can reach said destination is we the tycoon can control without difficulty. That is, we establish a bus service from a terminal in Town A to Town B and nothing else. Passengers in Town A looking for a change of pace see that there are no other options except for Town B and thus end result is 100% going there.
With the broken down 25% potential, I can see some variables that need to be worked out. What if the passengers are in the largest city on the map? Would their desire to travel to the largest city merge into intercity travel and thus the largest get larger while the smaller slowly fade as the odds favor the largest? If passengers in Town A want to travel to Town C but their only route they "see" is through Town B, then are the passengers ~unloaded~ in Town B (and thus no payment on the tycoon's part) before being delivered to Town C? And what of the little oddball destinations for passengers like an oil rig in the middle of the ocean or a steel mill - would passengers on the other side of the map need to head there for work?
Personally, I would still favor more an exponential reduction of desire for travel the further away some other town is from the current residence. As the years increase and travel becomes more broad, then this reduction can be expanded so by year x travel from one end of the map to the other end of the map is equal to heading to the next town over. Perhaps I am biased since my play style is quite different than I have seen of other people here. I start my games in 1925 and usually by 1950 I have every town connected through roads and buses before I begin expanding with a rail system. With this design, I can see which towns are expanding to which ones are stable as the amount of passengers ebbs and flows.
Thanks for reading.
With the broken down 25% potential, I can see some variables that need to be worked out. What if the passengers are in the largest city on the map? Would their desire to travel to the largest city merge into intercity travel and thus the largest get larger while the smaller slowly fade as the odds favor the largest? If passengers in Town A want to travel to Town C but their only route they "see" is through Town B, then are the passengers ~unloaded~ in Town B (and thus no payment on the tycoon's part) before being delivered to Town C? And what of the little oddball destinations for passengers like an oil rig in the middle of the ocean or a steel mill - would passengers on the other side of the map need to head there for work?
Personally, I would still favor more an exponential reduction of desire for travel the further away some other town is from the current residence. As the years increase and travel becomes more broad, then this reduction can be expanded so by year x travel from one end of the map to the other end of the map is equal to heading to the next town over. Perhaps I am biased since my play style is quite different than I have seen of other people here. I start my games in 1925 and usually by 1950 I have every town connected through roads and buses before I begin expanding with a rail system. With this design, I can see which towns are expanding to which ones are stable as the amount of passengers ebbs and flows.
Thanks for reading.
Well, at most you could get maybe 60% of the available passengers to go to your monopoly service, because only half of the people who wanted to go someplace else, would take an alternate choice. But I see your point, maybe there should be a cap of, say, 25% to go to any one destination.
AFA desire reducing with distance, that would be OK as long as desire also increased with destination size. That way, a really big city a long way away might have the same "draw" as a small city close by.
For choosing destinations, the city you're in is ignored, except that if it's big enough, some percentage is "local traffic" that wants to go to another station in the same city. So, for the largest city on the map, the percentage of passengers who want to go to the "largest city" would actually go to the second largest city.
I forgot about the oddball destinations, like the oil rigs and such. Of course the passengers on the oil rig would follow the usual rules, but as far as delivering passengers there, I just don't know. Ideas, anyone?
AFA desire reducing with distance, that would be OK as long as desire also increased with destination size. That way, a really big city a long way away might have the same "draw" as a small city close by.
For choosing destinations, the city you're in is ignored, except that if it's big enough, some percentage is "local traffic" that wants to go to another station in the same city. So, for the largest city on the map, the percentage of passengers who want to go to the "largest city" would actually go to the second largest city.
I forgot about the oddball destinations, like the oil rigs and such. Of course the passengers on the oil rig would follow the usual rules, but as far as delivering passengers there, I just don't know. Ideas, anyone?
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Japan, American Transition, Planeset, and Project Generic Stations available there
I'm not quite sure whether number crunching is relevant at this stage, but today I use the following strategy :
. town 'X' creates 1000 pax per month
. train with a capacity of 400 pax takes them 50 squares to town 'A', taking 2 months for the return trip.
that means I need 5 trains to provide an adequate service; i.e one train can carry 200 pax per months. If town 'A' is 100 squares away I would need 10 trains because the return trip takes 4 months or a carrying capacity of 800 pax per train.
With passenger destinations, that will look different. Say, town 'X' creates 50 pax per months for town 'A' and another 50 for town 'B'.
Town 'A' is 20 squares away but town 'B' 40 squares. A train will take 15 days to travel 20 squares. The strategy here would be,
. 1 train, capacity 50 pax (X -> A)
. 1 train, capacity 100 pax (X --> B), but it would be better to have 2 trains, capacity 50 each.
If town 'A' and 'B' were more or less in line, we could use 1 line with 2 trains, both serving X --> A --> B and have a carrying capacity of 100 pax each. That would make things rather more interesting; it would mean there is a monthly train service leaving 'X' for 'A' and 'B' taking both groups, dropping one group off at 'A' and may be even picking up some pax at 'A' for 'B'. Or an express service (X --> B) and a stopping service (X --> A --> B). Let alone picking up any business on return (B -> A / A -> X / B -> X)
This means it is up to the player what strategy to employ - 1 high capacity train or multiple more frequent (express or stopping) services, thus making things rather interesting.
. town 'X' creates 1000 pax per month
. train with a capacity of 400 pax takes them 50 squares to town 'A', taking 2 months for the return trip.
that means I need 5 trains to provide an adequate service; i.e one train can carry 200 pax per months. If town 'A' is 100 squares away I would need 10 trains because the return trip takes 4 months or a carrying capacity of 800 pax per train.
With passenger destinations, that will look different. Say, town 'X' creates 50 pax per months for town 'A' and another 50 for town 'B'.
Town 'A' is 20 squares away but town 'B' 40 squares. A train will take 15 days to travel 20 squares. The strategy here would be,
. 1 train, capacity 50 pax (X -> A)
. 1 train, capacity 100 pax (X --> B), but it would be better to have 2 trains, capacity 50 each.
If town 'A' and 'B' were more or less in line, we could use 1 line with 2 trains, both serving X --> A --> B and have a carrying capacity of 100 pax each. That would make things rather more interesting; it would mean there is a monthly train service leaving 'X' for 'A' and 'B' taking both groups, dropping one group off at 'A' and may be even picking up some pax at 'A' for 'B'. Or an express service (X --> B) and a stopping service (X --> A --> B). Let alone picking up any business on return (B -> A / A -> X / B -> X)
This means it is up to the player what strategy to employ - 1 high capacity train or multiple more frequent (express or stopping) services, thus making things rather interesting.
this could work in the same way; but only 1 or 2 towns nearest to an oil rig would ask for that. And oil rigs would only ever ask for their passengers (oil rig workers) to be taken back to a town close by.... oil rigs and passengers ...
Because the train station most likely will not cover the entire town; the in-town service (say local bus routes to the train station) could be used to enlarge coverage. If the town creates 1000 pax per months but the station only covers 33% of the town it would at best only attract 1/3 of those passengers. But with 2 or 3 bus stations/stops strategically placed and served that could be extended to 100 %. Those extra passengers would need to take the bus to get to the station for their first leg of the journey.... in-town service ...
There have been many features that were thought to be totally impossible or far to much work and now we have them. But without ideas and discussions about them nothing is going to happen ever - so we may just waste our time or we may not.Horse wrote:Only the developers igoring this topic so i think it's only dreaming about this feature...
There have been occasions when we had a discussion about an impossible feature, and the Patchteam didn't bother joining because they were busy doing other good work - and then somebody got it into their head to have a go at that feature, and now they are a Patch coder themselves.
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A topic of this caliber would have to have a final consensus before any attempts at patching could be accomplished. Would passengers ~only~ desire to travel to destinations with established travel links? Or would they have an equal chance of heading anywhere with or without variables as in distance and overall size? The year aspect where longer into the game would mean a greater distance desired if this route was originally taken would have to be crunched. And then there is the whole graphical interface aspect to work and integrate into the game.
Thus why this is under the suggestion forum.
Thus why this is under the suggestion forum.
Passengers would have a theoretical desire to travel anywhere, regardless of the presence of transport links, but some percentage of them might be willing to settle for a second choice if they can't get to their first choice. Hard to say how the destination-picking algorithm ought to work, I would say some fuction of distance vs. destination city size.
The OTTD thread had some fairly good GUI demos, which I think would be appropriate in PTTD as well. Basically, it just listed the passengers in the list, except broken down by destination.
The OTTD thread had some fairly good GUI demos, which I think would be appropriate in PTTD as well. Basically, it just listed the passengers in the list, except broken down by destination.
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Japan, American Transition, Planeset, and Project Generic Stations available there
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In early years, passengers should favour nearby destinations more than far away ones; especially as establishing long distance services is rather costly and funds are in short supply and networks haven't been established yet. But in time, their intentions should extend to further away destinations.... distance, time, existing services ...
Yes, existing services should influence their intentions where they want to go. But in the beginning, there are no services, so passengers need to come up with their own idea where to go. But once services do exist, leaving from their town, they could decide to go to an already reachable destination. Also any inbound traffic should create return business, say 1/4 to a 1/3 of arriving passengers should want to leave again in 1 to 2 months time and not necessarily to where they came from.
Not just towns would 'create' passengers; we could also have new industries, like holiday resorts, that could be a destination and only 'produce' return business in the form of passengers, that have actually arrived in the first place.
As far as lists go; we would need 2 types :
a) town list - where passengers intentions are shown, together with potential numbers of pax, their destinations, any subsidies on offer and may be statistics of the current and previous period (month) showing actual pax departed/arrived and how pleased/annoyed they have been with the services offered. This in turn could influence the approval rating. The town list would be managed by the town and be of informational nature only. The Passenger Creation System would consult this list when creating pax. A service in demand would have to exist and the pax would have to be within the coverage area of the station in order to join the station list.
b) once a station has been built and a service established, a station list - the station master would take bookings. Pax would arrive at the station, but only if services to their final destination exist; similiar as today, where pax get to the station only once at least 1 train/bus has called. If it is a transfer station, arriving pax that transfer would also join the list for their onward journey. The list would have an entry for each group of pax, i.e pax with same originating town and final destination. If these waiting pax are left standing for too long, they would start to vanish; if it is a transfer station any revenue already earned would be lost and the originating town informed of the lack of service and the poor performance.
Another 2 cents worth of ideas ...
I'm going to look through those OTTD discussions - it does look interesting, but there is rather a lot.
I like your ideas mostly.
AFA tourist destinations, we already have those in the (test) Japanset. They don't have passenger destinations of course, but the idea is there.
I don't think that a mis-connect should lose all revenue; after all, they did pay the fee to get to the connection city. But obviously you don't get the ongoing revenue, and you get bad rating somewhere. This raises a question though, is it possible to have ratings individually per destination? That would be kind of nice, you could see immediately where your services were weak, where maybe you needed an express train, or just an additional train for more frequent service.
AFA tourist destinations, we already have those in the (test) Japanset. They don't have passenger destinations of course, but the idea is there.
I don't think that a mis-connect should lose all revenue; after all, they did pay the fee to get to the connection city. But obviously you don't get the ongoing revenue, and you get bad rating somewhere. This raises a question though, is it possible to have ratings individually per destination? That would be kind of nice, you could see immediately where your services were weak, where maybe you needed an express train, or just an additional train for more frequent service.
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The easiest way to account for revenue would be, if the company and the train/bus gets credited after completion of each leg. May be there could be a bonus once the entire journey has been completed.... revenue and ratings ...
There is of course also the problem, that a trip, with transfers, can be done using more than one company - therefore proceeds need to be split between companies. On top of that, the current 'feederservice' system has its flaws as well. ATM, if there is some backtracking envolved there is a problem; e.g. in a 2 leg journey, only the first train/bus makes money, the other one looses. Example: A>B (leg 1) = 10 sq, B>C (leg 2) = 30 sq and if the direct route (A>C) was just 20 sq long; then A>C earns $10 (if 1 sq pays $1) and B>C earns $10 too (A>C 20 - A>B 10 = B>C 10) but the travelling time was 3 times longer.
As far as ratings go. It would somehow be necessary to report back to the originating town how many pax have arrived successfully and how long the journey took. From that you could get a ratio of how well things are travellling.
I would say, that each leg of the trip is paid as if that was all that there was. That's realistic too - you don't normally get a discount if you have to double back in your trip, especially if you are using two different airlines, say. It would provide a negative for passengers wanting to go to that particular destination, and an incentive for a company to provide better direct service.
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That would make it interesting ...
If passengers intend to travel from A to C (20 sq away) but the only existing service is via B, resulting in a 50 sq journey, they simply refuse. They would let the player know, that they would travel, if a service with a shorther route were available; thus giving a hint for a more direct route to be established. That would mean, passengers would only travel, if the services available do not exceed the direct route by x %, say 50 %. All distances measured as the crow flies.
If passengers intend to travel from A to C (20 sq away) but the only existing service is via B, resulting in a 50 sq journey, they simply refuse. They would let the player know, that they would travel, if a service with a shorther route were available; thus giving a hint for a more direct route to be established. That would mean, passengers would only travel, if the services available do not exceed the direct route by x %, say 50 %. All distances measured as the crow flies.
A better way would be a sliding percentage, decreasing as the distance out of the way grows. You always have some business travellers that HAVE to go, even if it's out of the way.
Development Projects Site:
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Japan, American Transition, Planeset, and Project Generic Stations available there
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Japan, American Transition, Planeset, and Project Generic Stations available there
Nice topic. But it very complicated. Perhaps in the future there will be a way to add all those features.
I think we should make small steps towards intelligent passengers. In the beginning there could be "local passengers" and "express passengers". It is possible to add new industries, so why not adding "express passengers" as a new possibility. The bigger houses (perhaps those which accept goods) could accept "local passengers" and "express passengers". The smaller ones only accept the local ones. "Express passengers" are automatically limited to larger towns, bacause of the buildings. it would be easy to make the far distant coaches (like in DBSet) carriing only "Express passengers". AFAIK it is possible to add this suggestion with the existing patch features even without new graphics. Please correct me, if I#m wrong!
"Regio Passengers" could be the next step. Or "Tourists"...They are already realised.
I think we should make small steps towards intelligent passengers. In the beginning there could be "local passengers" and "express passengers". It is possible to add new industries, so why not adding "express passengers" as a new possibility. The bigger houses (perhaps those which accept goods) could accept "local passengers" and "express passengers". The smaller ones only accept the local ones. "Express passengers" are automatically limited to larger towns, bacause of the buildings. it would be easy to make the far distant coaches (like in DBSet) carriing only "Express passengers". AFAIK it is possible to add this suggestion with the existing patch features even without new graphics. Please correct me, if I#m wrong!
"Regio Passengers" could be the next step. Or "Tourists"...They are already realised.
Yes, it would be possible to do that, except for two things:
1. You'd have to have dedicated cars for them - i.e. each passenger car could only carry "express" or "local" passengers, not both.
2. There is some sort of limit on how many goods an individual building can accept. I suggested a sort of hack way around it, but AFAIK it's still an issue.
1. You'd have to have dedicated cars for them - i.e. each passenger car could only carry "express" or "local" passengers, not both.
2. There is some sort of limit on how many goods an individual building can accept. I suggested a sort of hack way around it, but AFAIK it's still an issue.
Development Projects Site:
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Japan, American Transition, Planeset, and Project Generic Stations available there
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Ok, I think the first thing shouldn't be a problem. Express coaches could carry only the "express passengers". On the other way, local coaches could be refittable to both possibilities. Same thing for busses. In reality there are also city busses and big "holiday" coaches.
I don't know what's about the second point, but perhaps other goods like mail (only for the large flats...) could be replaced. Time for patch developers' opinion.
I don't know what's about the second point, but perhaps other goods like mail (only for the large flats...) could be replaced. Time for patch developers' opinion.
One problem I can see with dividing passengers into "express" and "local" - advancement of gaming time. When the towns are small, the buildings will favor the local people moving around. Occasionally some people might want to travel, but due to transport limitations, placing them as express would gain the same result as local. That is, the distance and time for a local equals the extended distance and extended time for express. But now those towns grow into expansive cities where the buildings will favor express since the scenario appears as hotels and offices instead of cottages and houses. People will want to go everywhere and at the fastest speed. Would a limitation be placed that people travelling within a city are local while leaving the city are express? Or would express and local become speed elements instead - which would beg why anyone would use a slower local instead of the speedy express for all their transportation needs.
Amazing how one idea has blossomed so many different ideas.
>>>>>Axlrose - ...<<<<<
Amazing how one idea has blossomed so many different ideas.
>>>>>Axlrose - ...<<<<<
Perhaps i'm not understanding, but i can't see the problem. The "express passengers" will make MUCH more money, but they will apear rarely at the stations. And it won't be possible to transport them with the local trains. You can say, that there's no difference between the present passenger system and the "local passengers". "Express passengers" will be ADDED as a new goods. Large buildings should accept "locals" as well as "express passengers". Making "locals" spped elements is a good idea. There will e no profit on "local" transports across the whole map.
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