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Topic: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty? (Read 12169 times) previous topic - next topic

P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

So this is transportation simulation.
Unless one is a supercomputer, after a while there will be a station with very high volume of p****enger/mail left at station. But its about the policy of the player. Some might just ignore and some will try to eliminate the situation.

Is it just to set some kind of penalty for accumulating too much p****enger/mail compared to station capacity?
Effective penalty can encourage player to plan more carefully before expanding its service area and/or existing one.

Any thoughts about this?

Type of additional penalty (other than current one(rejected customer=unhappy face))can be
Station exceeding Xtime the capacity limit
A. Destruction of p****enger/mail arriving to that station
B. No income from vehicle arriving that station
C. Hyper maintenance cost for the facility
D. Vehicle stop entering the station (line stops)
E. Negative influence to growth of nearby cities
and others
B seems reasonable.
Ofcourse any combination would work as long as it is balanced...
(I see that some like E is program wise cubersome...)

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #1 –
Also, why not (F) P****engers don't get off vehicle (too scared of the crowds behind window :D )

To me, B and C sound like something that can be lived with, if the situation can not improve.

What would you suggest as "crowding factor"? Twice the capacity? +50%?

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #2 –
um.... like 5 time the base  capacity? That sounds reasonable.
I guess we will see less money accumulation.

I'm totally fine with x2. Wow game will require so much planning now. I guess.

By the way if p****engers don't get off is that mean they keep running the same vehicle
and go back to initial station?
That sounds good because other station will be filled quickly too!(Guess it takes more computing though...)

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #3 –
Err, I'm not going to do this, you know... just talking!

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #4 –
I know :)

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #5 –
I like the idea, but not the A-F alternatives proposed (perhaps only F).  If I don't pay attention to a station and it gets crowded, I would like that that case stopped development nearby the station, but not influence my income.  My idea would be that when city increases population and a new bigger building is to be built, locations near crowded stations are excluded.  Also, in extreme cases, building could be downgraded and effective city population decreases.

Quote from: colonyan – on
A. Destruction of p****enger/mail arriving to that station
B. No income from vehicle arriving that station
C. Hyper maintenance cost for the facility
D. Vehicle stop entering the station (line stops)
E. Negative influence to growth of nearby cities

With goods, more realistic would be that the limit capacity of a station would never be exceeded.  So that space at the destination station is reserved before transporting the goods there.  Otherwise, they don't load at origin.  But perhaps that could be a different game.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #6 –
The current problem is that stations are mainly overcrowded by transfarring p****engers/mails, but the negative impact of the overcrowded stations are only limited to the nearby cities. If there is no city around the overcrowded stations, there is no negative effect. Therefor, what I would suggest is...

H. Forcing all the convois serving overcrowded stations to have "no load" status except for loading the p****engers/mails from the overcrowded stations. This way, convois can earn less money, the overcrowded stations won't be crowded any more, and p****engers/mails will be also accumulated at other stations connected to the overcrowded stations (i.e. origins of these p****engers/mails). This has also negative impact on the growth of other cities as well.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #7 –
Simutrans is not a puzzle game like "Tower of Hanoi" nor "15 puzzle".
It should not be a purpose of the game to avoid overcrowded stations.

In simutrans, number of p****engers depends only on building level.
So if you played large map or pak.128, it was impossible to avoid overcrowded stations even if you played well.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #8 –
Simutrans is not a puzzle game. But it's a transportation game. In the real life, p****engers do choose mode of transportation partly by comfortability. Therefore it's a good idea to have some sort of implementation which reflects p****engers' wills. Of course I don't intend to say everything has to be the same as in the real life.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: z9999 – on
This is your quotas and challenge.

Of course, I do, because this is one of the goals of Simutrans, at least for me. I'm not saying I enjoy looking at overcrowded stations.

My point is, this is a game. Therefore something could go wrong. And if something goes wrong, there should be some kind of penalty. This is how many games work.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #11 –
(If I read correctly, none here came up with this approach in this topic:)
If a station is too crowded, don't route P/M/G over it. Thus, alternate routes will be tried, and P/M generation will fail if there are no transfer stations that are not too full (=> less revenue for feeder lines). This could be combined with a probability of using an overcrowded station, depending on the level of over-utilization.

Variant: depending on the over-utilization of the, add a routing malus (artificially increase transfer count by 1 or more or even a fraction of 1). But this will hardly have an effect unless max_transfers is set to a really strict value (e.g. 4).

Increasing the size of a station to higher levels wouldn't help the player escape this, because lack of transport capacity would make them overflow in any case.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: whoami – on
If a station is too crowded, don't route P/M/G over it. Thus, alternate routes will be tried, and P/M generation will fail if there are no transfer stations that are not too full (=> less revenue for feeder lines). This could be combined with a probability of using an overcrowded station, depending on the level of over-utilization.

That's a very good suggestion!  Avoiding overcrowded stations is one of my most important challenges of the game and I support the idea that there must be some kind of a penalty.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #13 –
I like this one, too!

Let's hear what is wrong with it…

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #14 –
Goods don't save their routes. They know only next station and final destination.
And routes are often recalculated.
- when arrived next(via) station
- new month
- added new line or modified line
As a result, imho, they often repeat back and forth on the same way.

"Overcrowded" is a sign of a problem. reducing goods or avoiding station don't solve the problem itself and hidden the problem.
And penalty affects nothing to players. They do well without overcrowded goods or money.

Of course, I don't like the situation which 10,000 people waiting at bus stop, but this is a little different thing, I thought.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: z9999 – on
Goods don't save their routes.
I implied that the decision of P/M generation (same for hand-over of goods to the transport company) would depend on intermediate stations being full, so the check would only be done once for a goods packet (not every time something arrives at a station). Including the check at the routes' recalculation would be an option.

Either way, the check for a single packet should be something very fast like "if (stop->full_level > acceptable_level_randomized) break;". Marking stops as full (full_level=>1) and other prepation steps have to happen outside of the routing algorithm. Randomization, if desired, could be simulated by something like "repeatedly iterate i from a to b", with an increment for every n goods packets to be (re-)routed.

Quote
"Overcrowded" is a sign of a problem. reducing goods or avoiding station don't solve the problem itself and hidden the problem.
Alternate routes could help the player automatically, but can also lead to more overloaded stations (which will then be ignored, too), because the player will not expect the route to p**** them. The overflowing stations, however, will be apparent to the player - the decision of ignoring the stop (for routing) should happen only for grossly overflowing stations (e.g. >=150%).

Quote
And penalty affects nothing to players. They do well without overcrowded goods or money.
Due to lowered P/M generation, the player may get less demand for feeder services. Non-overflowing parts of the network will suffer from overflowing backbones.

I think this approach requires less resources than an approach of recording waiting times at stations, to reduce revenue due to low quality of service.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: z9999 – on
Simutrans is not a puzzle game like "Tower of Hanoi" nor "15 puzzle".
It should not be a purpose of the game to avoid overcrowded stations.
This, I agree. "Overcrowded" stations should be torelated in the process of a management
of some larger maps.

But when "overcrowded" become "Out of Proportion", there should be some
balancing factor playing.
Thus I support this.
Quote from: whoami – on
Variant: depending on the over-utilization of the, add a routing malus (artificially increase transfer count by 1 or more or even a fraction of 1). But this will hardly have an effect unless max_transfers is set to a really strict value (e.g. 4).
This seems very simple solution to halt Pss/Mil generation. Only if it can recognize how much it is overcrowded....
By the way one tile transfer bus stop with 10,000 waiting should count as 9 transfer point. :D

*charging money seems ok but it COULD make a player all the sudden in astronomical defficit quickly.....
*I also thougt of slowing down the overall map population growth by inserting a factor (x1 ~ x0.1)
  by comparing Total Map Pop. & Total of Out of station limit waiting p****engers.
*Searching alternative route sounds good to but it could confuse player. Especially when map is large.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: z9999 – on
And routes are often recalculated.
- when arrived next(via) station
- new month
- added new line or modified line
No, routes aren't recalculated each new month. I'm currently working on a caching system for the routing of goods (reduce number of waysearch for goods). But this is impossible with a dynamic routing of goods suggested in this thread.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: yoshi – on
H. Forcing all the convois serving overcrowded stations to have "no load" status except for loading the p****engers/mails from the overcrowded stations. This way, convois can earn less money, the overcrowded stations won't be crowded any more, and p****engers/mails will be also accumulated at other stations connected to the overcrowded stations (i.e. origins of these p****engers/mails). This has also negative impact on the growth of other cities as well.

I like this idea too. Train Entering crowded station should not bring any load with it
and it can only take away from the crowded station.
This will distribute the crowded ness among the system...
Smart idea unless someone point out
,,,,  

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #19 –
I'm not for it.  For me, it makes more sense that no goods is loaded at origin if there is not place for it at the destination.  Nobody orders goods if he has no place to store them.

If, for each piece of goods, a route is to be recalculated based on the present occupation of stations, performance can be an issue.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #20 –
Well I understand about 10% of what has been said here.  But if we are going to be penalized for p****engers piling up at stations, please first tell the p****engers to stop taking buses that are going in the wrong direction from their destination!  I hate it when I have citizens from a northern city stuck at some God forsaken tourist attraction in the South.  Then I have to take a special bus down to pick them up.  And you think they appreciate it?  No!  I have to hear them bitch all the way back.  That is, I ****ume I would but well, there's all those babies crying and other things...

BTW I'm going to stop allowing pet pigs and chickens on the buses.  If you've ever had a sow give birth while you were trying to negotiate the curves of a steep mountain road you know what I'm talking about.  The piglets were cute but for crying out loud, I'm trying to make an honest buck here.

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #21 –
 :D

To avoid situations like that, I recommend to make the network purely hierarchical.
 

Re: P****enger/Mail Accumulation: Penalty?

Reply #22 –
Haha whoami, that's a concept I obviously have not grasped yet.  :)

After a few more trips to the boonies I'm taking a second and perhaps a third look at the way I'm doing the routing.