Transport Tycoon Forums

Ok, i've had a slight brainwave, why don't we add Fares to the game?
Nice and easy way to do this is to set the fare per tile, so a journey of 3 tiles would cost $/£/€ (insert amount here), and a journey of 500 tiles would cost $/£/€ (insert amount here).

The reasoning behind it is that you have company A running from A to B (10 tiles) and B to C (15 tiles), and they have a competitpr that runs from B to C, The vehicles being used will collect any cargo waiting, so Company A will get to B and have no cargo waiting, and will make a loss on the journey from B - C.

But, if you had fares, Company A could set a fare of £1 per tile, and Company B £2 per tile, This makes Company A more attractive, meaning that Company B now has no passengers, even though it is a shorter journey it's fare is too high.

It could add a great level of competition to the game, as currently once you have set up the routes and added vehicles you can leave a game for a few hours, whereas with fares it would require great skill to get the correct fare against the running costs of a vehicle.

I don't see this making it in to any of the major releases, but if it could be integreted into CargoD(e/i)st or Infrastructure Sharing then it would make me smile.

I've had the same idea, only that the fare should be set as a percentage of the current fare/income. The advantage is that it is not possible to set insanely high fares (max 100%), and that fast travel will still be awarded like today. Cargo chooses the company with the lowest percentage fare. Unfortunately you need BOTH cargodist and IS for it to work properly.

Nice to see I'm not the only who want this approach

Dimme

A big problem with this approach is that it's easy for a company with a lot of money to force a new competitor (think multiplayer servers where a players joins at a later date) out of business.

Yexo wrote:A big problem with this approach is that it's easy for a company with a lot of money to force a new competitor (think multiplayer servers where a players joins at a later date) out of business.

There is that, but it's still better than nothing. Anyway, if the new company was to be running along a subsidised route and the competitor decided to also run that route then the competitor would be disadvantaged, as a) he has no subsidy, and b) he won't have as much cargo.

Yexo wrote:A big problem with this approach is that it's easy for a company with a lot of money to force a new competitor (think multiplayer servers where a players joins at a later date) out of business.

That is true. It will result in a very competitive game, where the ultimate result may be that only one company remains. In order to survive as a small company, you would need to be very flexible, and change routes when the others try to squeeze you out. That is not possible with trains, but maybe with the other transport forms. Subsidies, as welshdragon mentioned, is also a good example of an opportunity for a small company. In practice though, I think this mode will only work well when players are quite comparable, and start simultaneously. Then it can be exciting, as you may actually loose. Some really good players may find it challenging to start late though.

It could also be possible to put restrictions on how fast the price level can be changed. That complicates things though.

Also, an important (more subtle) point is that cargodist has a severe lag in calculating the link graph. That is good, as it may allow new players to keep a route at full price for, say, two years until they are forced to move to another place. (The time it takes until the competitor has a competing route up, plus the lag). Micromanagement is easier for small companies, as in RL

Dimme wrote: Also, an important (more subtle) point is that cargodist has a severe lag in calculating the link graph

You can change that. Decrease the linkgraph recalculation interval in the linkgraph settings. If 1 is not enough and you want to burn even more CPU cycles on getting more frequent updates let me know and I'll implement that.

No problem fonso, I also said it is a good thing in this context

Another thing about cargodist that makes it better for this game mode than earlier attempts on cargo destinations, is that if a big company wants to squeeze a small company, it will need to grab all cargo between two destinations (and at a lower price than the break even price). Otherwise, the small company will always get a share.

Btw, full IS is not needed. Either station sharing or some sort of station walking is sufficient.

I don't see a need for IS at all. If two companies are competing for cargo now, it's distributed according to station ratings right? So, if you add difference between fares as modifier for station rating...

But, I'm not an expert in internal game mechanics so I might be wrong.

Yes Sarin, that is possible. It would give a very different result though, and players could fool the system by having buses that run feeder services for free. Not really what I want, but not a silly idea.

What variables are currently used to set fares (profits) anyway?

Type of cargo transported, distance traveled, and time spent in transit.

The only way I can actually see this working is with some form of Cargo Distribution. as thinking about it the current game would not manage.