In Cities in Motion 2, ticketing and fares have grown far more detailed to reflect the varied needs of citizens travelling between different areas of your city. With the larger map size, it was a nice addition to have more ticket types as well as price zones. The system now has 4 kinds of ticket for each vehicle type, and monthly passes for most variations.
Single fare tickets are for one trip without changing a vehicle. They are the cheapest tickets. The single fare ticket does not have a monthly version, but they’re fast and easy to use, and thus popular among citizens who don’t travel often.
One-zone tickets give passengers the freedom to travel within one zone and transfer freely between vehicles – such as taking a bus to the train station. Very useful on short commutes! The one zone ticket can also be purchased as a monthly pass.
Two-zone tickets are much the same as one zone tickets, but for a larger area. Also available as a monthly pass.
All-zones tickets are the most expensive, but a passenger with this premium fare can freely change vehicles in all zones and travel as far as he or she likes.
Every ticket price can be set separately, or you can raise or lower all prices of a vehicle type. This makes it easy to set the prices right and make larger adjustments to all prices, and then tweak individual fares more carefully. The system tells you if prices are too high or low, so it’s easy to find a nice comfort zone. The optimal price is calculated by looking at how many potential passengers choose to take their own car or walk just because of the ticket prices. Thus, the optimal ticket prices will change according to the routes available. If you have only a few lines that don't link together, only people who are going to those locations will be regular riders. A huge, city-wide system with more coverage will have much more accurate information of the ticket prices and more fluctuation, because almost all journeys can be made with public transport.
The zoning tool is used to paint different price zones on the map. If the tool has not been used, the entire map is just one zone. You can have up to four zones and each has a separate color. Zones are useful for large cities, or on large maps with multiple city centers. A map with four city centers could be divided so that each center is its own zone; that way, trips within each center area are cheap one-zone tickets or single fare tickets, but going from one center to another would be a two-zone trip or more. This lets longer journeys bring in more money, which is good because long journeys are more taxing on vehicles’ condition, and this will even out the cost. Large cities with only one center can have a zone system like the London underground system, with the innermost city area being one zone, and a few outer rings being their own zones. Clever use of zones can bring in the profit!
Another heavily requested feature was the inclusion of a better, more detailed means to control fleets. Timetables were an important part of games like Transport Tycoon, and we wanted to give the player more control in our sequel, so we created the day and night cycle – and with it, detailed timetables. They are an essential part of Cities in Motion 2, and actually one of the first features we identified as a “must-have” in the game.
All vehicle types have timetables, but they vary a bit according to passenger capacity. When a line is created, the game automatically creates a default timetable for it and counts how many vehicles it will need on average. The transport system will work with just these presets, but to optimize your system and make the most of your fleet, you will have to adjust the timetables to fit customers’ needs. Do you have a ferry line that leaves the pier every 45 minutes? Set the bus line that transfers there to drop off passengers at the pier only ten minutes before the ferry leaves, so commuters won’t have to wait for a long time. If passenger numbers rise due to your route being fast and efficient, you can make the ferry line go more often, and adjust the bus line the same way so the buses always arrive just before the boat leaves the pier. Short waiting times keep your customers happy and encourage them to use your services more often.
There are different timetables for weekdays, Fridays, weekends, and rush hours. On all timetables, you can set when the timetable starts, ends, and how frequently vehicles are dispatched. Multiple timetables can be used simultaneously – that’s how the rush hour timetables basically work. When citizens leave for work in the morning and go back home in the evening, the rush hour timetable sends out a few extra vehicles to handle the increased amount of passengers. These extra vehicles go out automatically, no matter what the day’s timetable says, so you might have the regular timetable sending out a vehicle every half-hour from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, and the rush hour timetables sending out an extra vehicle at nine in the morning and another at five in the evening.
The Friday timetable is separated from normal weekdays so that it’s possible to respond to citizens’ greater need of leisure activities. Many of the citizens have free weekends, and want to enjoy the end of the work week at entertainment destinations. Traffic-wise, Fridays are in between a weekday and the weekend, so you’ll need to manage citizens who still travel to work during the day, but might not go straight home at night.
You can also save your own timetables and re-use them on any lines you choose, so when you find good timetable settings for long, smooth rides, you can easily save the settings and use them for all the lines you feel would benefit from them.
Timetables are an important part of Cities in Motion 2. Are you looking forward to tweaking your own timetables or will you go with the defaults?
Single fare tickets are for one trip without changing a vehicle. They are the cheapest tickets. The single fare ticket does not have a monthly version, but they’re fast and easy to use, and thus popular among citizens who don’t travel often.
One-zone tickets give passengers the freedom to travel within one zone and transfer freely between vehicles – such as taking a bus to the train station. Very useful on short commutes! The one zone ticket can also be purchased as a monthly pass.
Two-zone tickets are much the same as one zone tickets, but for a larger area. Also available as a monthly pass.
All-zones tickets are the most expensive, but a passenger with this premium fare can freely change vehicles in all zones and travel as far as he or she likes.
Every ticket price can be set separately, or you can raise or lower all prices of a vehicle type. This makes it easy to set the prices right and make larger adjustments to all prices, and then tweak individual fares more carefully. The system tells you if prices are too high or low, so it’s easy to find a nice comfort zone. The optimal price is calculated by looking at how many potential passengers choose to take their own car or walk just because of the ticket prices. Thus, the optimal ticket prices will change according to the routes available. If you have only a few lines that don't link together, only people who are going to those locations will be regular riders. A huge, city-wide system with more coverage will have much more accurate information of the ticket prices and more fluctuation, because almost all journeys can be made with public transport.
The zoning tool is used to paint different price zones on the map. If the tool has not been used, the entire map is just one zone. You can have up to four zones and each has a separate color. Zones are useful for large cities, or on large maps with multiple city centers. A map with four city centers could be divided so that each center is its own zone; that way, trips within each center area are cheap one-zone tickets or single fare tickets, but going from one center to another would be a two-zone trip or more. This lets longer journeys bring in more money, which is good because long journeys are more taxing on vehicles’ condition, and this will even out the cost. Large cities with only one center can have a zone system like the London underground system, with the innermost city area being one zone, and a few outer rings being their own zones. Clever use of zones can bring in the profit!
Another heavily requested feature was the inclusion of a better, more detailed means to control fleets. Timetables were an important part of games like Transport Tycoon, and we wanted to give the player more control in our sequel, so we created the day and night cycle – and with it, detailed timetables. They are an essential part of Cities in Motion 2, and actually one of the first features we identified as a “must-have” in the game.
All vehicle types have timetables, but they vary a bit according to passenger capacity. When a line is created, the game automatically creates a default timetable for it and counts how many vehicles it will need on average. The transport system will work with just these presets, but to optimize your system and make the most of your fleet, you will have to adjust the timetables to fit customers’ needs. Do you have a ferry line that leaves the pier every 45 minutes? Set the bus line that transfers there to drop off passengers at the pier only ten minutes before the ferry leaves, so commuters won’t have to wait for a long time. If passenger numbers rise due to your route being fast and efficient, you can make the ferry line go more often, and adjust the bus line the same way so the buses always arrive just before the boat leaves the pier. Short waiting times keep your customers happy and encourage them to use your services more often.
There are different timetables for weekdays, Fridays, weekends, and rush hours. On all timetables, you can set when the timetable starts, ends, and how frequently vehicles are dispatched. Multiple timetables can be used simultaneously – that’s how the rush hour timetables basically work. When citizens leave for work in the morning and go back home in the evening, the rush hour timetable sends out a few extra vehicles to handle the increased amount of passengers. These extra vehicles go out automatically, no matter what the day’s timetable says, so you might have the regular timetable sending out a vehicle every half-hour from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, and the rush hour timetables sending out an extra vehicle at nine in the morning and another at five in the evening.
The Friday timetable is separated from normal weekdays so that it’s possible to respond to citizens’ greater need of leisure activities. Many of the citizens have free weekends, and want to enjoy the end of the work week at entertainment destinations. Traffic-wise, Fridays are in between a weekday and the weekend, so you’ll need to manage citizens who still travel to work during the day, but might not go straight home at night.
You can also save your own timetables and re-use them on any lines you choose, so when you find good timetable settings for long, smooth rides, you can easily save the settings and use them for all the lines you feel would benefit from them.
Timetables are an important part of Cities in Motion 2. Are you looking forward to tweaking your own timetables or will you go with the defaults?
