I see that you suggest using a median starting size of towns of 4,500. That being the case what would your recommended as a starting number of towns for a map size of, say, 1024 x 2048, given that figure? Or are town size and distribution handled differently in version 9.0.
You speak about "the city clusters feature". Again is this new or have I missed something?
I have encountered a problem regarding comfort ratings for buses.
When playing my last game I noticed that the comfort ratings given in the depot screen do not correspond to the ratings given in the graph on each bus. For example, the Leyland Titan has a depot screen comfort rating of 56, but it's graph rating on the road is 248. The Dennis Dominator has a rating of 65 on the depot screen but 0 on an individual bus's graph. Only the AEC Reliance ST and the Merecedes Citaro G have the same comfort ratings on both.
I'm afraid I have no real idea as to what might be causing these discrepancies, unless I'm completely misunderstanding the information given in the screen and graphs, but they do not seem to affect the game to any great extent. Of course the p****engers generated and corresponding revenues may not be correct. Possibly the information is correct but the graphs display it incorrectly. Sorry I'm just guessing here.
I've uploaded a test game with just one bus route in a medium sized city with one of each type of bus on it to show you what I mean and to get information for each bus.
The results are attached text file as the file is quite small.
I also have a 'real' game – the same game I uploaded for the question regarding long distance trains but played till 2012 – and it shows the same pattern.
Glad that my game report was of some use to you. This current game is the longest Experimental game that I have played so far. I have started a few games with previous editions of Experimental but the version 8 series game is the first that I've been able to get this far, making a reasonable profit, without resorting to the freeplay button. That said I was able to learn much from those previous efforts, but I have got the most out of this current game in terms of enjoyment and increasing my knowledge.
As I mentioned, I have been playing this game pretty cautiously, trying not to make any huge errors, so I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible in this game, but as I now have a decent bank balance, I'll see if I can do as you suggest to make the game more challenging, if not in this game then certainly in my next. The replayability of Simutrans Experimental is certainly one of its strengths. The upcoming increase in p****enger density certainly looks as if it will give the player much to think about.
I'll push this game on a bit more and I'll let you know how it develops in a week or two.
Thank you for your very kind and prompt reply. I am glad that my report was of some use to you and that the problem will be rectified in the next version.
The save game that I uploaded for this post was started in 1830 and I began by surrounding the then much smaller cities of Preston, Swansea and Manchester with suburban rail to minimize the use of slow horse transport with it's lack of capacity. I have, with previous games used solely horse transport in individual cities, but encountered problems with over capacity stops and congestion due to the amount of horse vehicles needed. The above cities have industries in common and this gives p****engers a reason to travel between them due to their work being in one of the other nearby cities. I certainly did not lack for p****engers.
I did not make much money until the “Jenny Lind” and later the “Terrier” tank engines became available, but after that I was able to make enough profits so that expansion became possible. Suburban rail was not necessary later on as it was more efficient to use trams, and later motor buses.
I used a similar strategy with the more northerly cities and eventually had the finances to connect them to the existing network and then, of course, discovered the problem I had to contact you about.
It does seem that it is possible to make a reasonable profit, on a p****enger only network at least, without too many problems, and this is playing fairly conservatively – the south east and some of the north west are still not connected - so I don't find play balance too much of an issue at the moment.
Anyway, I've drifted a little too far off of the original topic, so thank you for the kind welcome and I'll continue to play and enjoy this excellent game.
Specifically the problem routes are Chester – Norwich and Liverpool – Stoke-on-Trent, but the average speed graph of the Carlisle – Chester train also shows the same pattern, but always makes a good profit.
I hope that I have explained this well enough, but please let me know if you require any clarification.
I'm running Simutrans Experimental 8.2 and pak128.Britain Experimental 0.6 on Windows XP.
