Transport Tycoon Forums

Currently, passengers in OpenTTD do not care where they are delivered to. It has been suggested several times to change this somehow. But as far as I know, it has never been suggested that passengers find a path to their specific destination using train timetables.

If the player defines a timetable(schedule) for all of his passenger trains and buses, the passengers could use these timetables for planning their journey to their specific destinations. For example, let's say that there are 30 towns on the map and that all towns generate an equal amount of passengers for all other 29 towns. Then, a passenger wanting to travel from a certain tile (e.g. a house) in one town to another tile in another town on the other side of the map would calculate a route which may look like this:

1. Take the bus to the local train station (or walk if no bus connection exits).
2. Take the next passenger train to the next larger city (which has better and faster train connections)
3. Take the next fast passenger express train (InterCity train) to a major city near the destination town.
4. Take the next passenger train from this city station to the destination town.
5. Take the bus from the station to the destination tile (or walk if no bus connection exists).

In order for passengers to decide which route to take, all that OpenTTD must do is apply a standard pathfinder using the train and bus timetables defined by all players. This pathfinder is programmed to find the fastest route but also takes company rating into account. For example, a passenger will be less likely to use a train of a player with a low company rating. The company rating is high for players whose trains keep to their timetables and low for players whose trains/buses have frequent delays.

Passenger trains will not leave a station until their planned departure time. If trains do not keep to their timetable, they are penalized. Apart from the already mentioned company rating, the delays of trains are also counted as the journey time. Income from passengers is less if the journey time is higher (this is already implemented in OpenTTD). Also, if a train arrives late and therefore passengers miss the train for the next stage of their journey, the total delay in the passenger's journey is also counted as journey time of the train who caused the delay (which further decreases the income of the train).

This suggestion would also make coverage areas of stations obsolete (at least for passengers). It will of course still be important for train stations to be inside or near towns. But train stations can easily increase their effective coverage area by providing frequent bus service from the station to the surrounding area, so many passengers would have a fast route to the station (which makes the station attractive for the passenger route pathfinder).

This would also make multiplayer games more interesting, because all players would try to cover as many towns as possible in their network and provide the best (frequent and fast) passenger service.

Is this what you're looking for?

Ah, thanks for pointing out this thread to me. Before posting, I searched the "Suggestions" forum thoroughly. I guess I should have also searched the "Development" forum.

However, my proposal is significantly different from the patch you referenced. My proposal uses timetables instead of standard train orders. Also, in my proposed system, passengers take the fastest route, based upon the timetable/schedule. In the patch, passengers instead take the route with the smallest number of stations.

Therefore, in my proposed system, fast and frequent service is rewarded. Passengers will always take the fastest route, which encourages players to offer faster routes than their competitors. Passengers can even decide to take one player's train for the first stage of their journey and a different player's train for the second stage of the journey. In order to do this, a passenger could simply walk from one player's station to another player's station in the same town (the pathfinder would consider this possibility automatically). As far as I can tell, such things are not possible in the patch you referenced.

Another advantage of my proposal is that fixed coverage areas of stations would no longer exist, at least not for passengers. The further away a train station is, the further the passengers would have to walk. This makes it more likely that the passenger will find an alternate (faster) route which doesn't use the train station. This will encourage more fierce competition by competing players trying to offer better (faster and more frequent) local passenger service in order to take away passengers from other players. This fierce competition will reduce the effective coverage areas of all involved players, because passengers will only be prepared to walk an extra distance to another player's station if that station offers a route which is faster. This is because walking also costs the passenger travel time. Therefore, the effective coverage area of a train station is dependant on its quality of service, i.e. how fast and frequent the connections are that this station and its connected train network offers. I think this system of flexible coverage areas would be better than the current system of fixed coverage areas, since fixed coverage areas can be exploited very easily by attaching a train station to a large airport (which has a much larger coverage area).

I like this suggestion, even if it were only because it bring structure to the current jungle of shared orders, which does nothing but confuse me.

If you'd implement this very deeply, I could inmagine Trains and groups being replaced by "services" or "lines", where you say "I want this engine, and these cars for this line, and I want X trains for that. The game/PC would have to manage the buying/selling of the trains, which leaves the player more time to create, improve and expand his network.

For example I have cities A, B and C, and there is a connection between them (line 3304)
the services at line 3304 are being provided by 4 trains, each consisting of a 'SH 30' engine, pulling 3 passenger cars, and a mail van.
These trains would be named Train 3304.1 , 3304.2, 3304.3 and 3304.4

Do you know anything about coding though? All I can do is a bit of php, html and basic

I really like this idea of yours... I would call your proposal "auto-managed lines". And your proposal fits very well together with my proposal of train timetables.

I am a C programmer and also am familiar with C++. But unfortunately, I am devoting all my time on my Realistic PBS project and currently have no time to work on this proposal.