Terminus Stations, longer Days

[unmerged(347098)]

Ok, the Idea behind CIM2 is very good. Why do not plan with a scedule.

But, unfortunattely it is not very realistic, that a subway takes 4 hours from one site of town, to the other. The whole thing with bringing people to and from the work won't really work this way.

So make 120minuts for a game day. By this, a week would run 14 Hours. -> Lets make a 4 day week.
Workday1, Workday2, ShortWorkday (Disco and Nightravel), WeekendDay. (Families visiting attractions)

Having long lines with 8h turnarounds is a pain.

The most easiest way to fix this would be, allowing that the start depot has not be the same, as the finish depot.

More realistic would be, that you can have more than one depot en route, and each depot has its own scedule.

Most realistic would be, if you bring out a station type Terminus, and bind Scedules on this. Each Terminus should be bindable to a depot, so programatically, if vehicle is on bad conditions, or if there wont be a vehicle at departure time, vehicle comes out of depot. If vehicle arives at bad conditions, or if waiting time is more than 30 minutes (or custom design), or if there is another vehicle arriving than vehicle goes into that depot.

The Terminus Bus Station should get a bay, so it does not produces traffic jams.

 

[unmerged(145555)]

I do agree, the way pace of the game and the speed of the vehicles does seem a bit off. You can get across Los Angeles in far under 4 hours using the metro, and it's much larger than anything we're seeming in CiM2, even with the (very lovely!) larger maps.

 

[xenon5]

But every game requires some degree of abstraction from reality. In CiM 1 many journeys took a week or longer! If they slow the game clock down without changing animation speeds, it will take longer to get through a game day relative to real time. The fastest game speed is already quite slow so I don't think this is ideal unless they can speed up the fastest game speed considerably.

 

[C40LFR]

But every game requires some degree of abstraction from reality. In CiM 1 many journeys took a week or longer! If they slow the game clock down without changing animation speeds, it will take longer to get through a game day relative to real time. The fastest game speed is already quite slow so I don't think this is ideal unless they can speed up the fastest game speed considerably.

I think abstract is something we will just have to deal with. It's the same thing with the capacity of the vehicles. Even the biggest cities in this game could be run using 40 foot buses at 12 minute headways at best. While person ration is 1:1, it would be no fun if even a standard length bus could barely get fully seated, let alone standing room only.

 

[Guvnor33]

It's a computer game and you have to allow a level of abstraction. In OpenTTD it can take 3 to 4 days for 120 passengers to load onto a train. Game first, simulation second.

 

[unmerged(467496)]

The abstraction of the vehicle capacities is not an issue as it is in balance with the other abstractions in the game - notably the population.

The abstraction of the journey times is a problem because it is not in balance with the concept of a daily timetable. In CIM1 there was no timetable so it didn't matter that journeys took several days to complete, but in CIM2 it breaks the timetable concept if individual journeys take too many hours.

 

[unmerged(413392)]

Day length was a large topic in alpha and beta... At the beginning, it was only 24 minutes, but we nagged the devs hard enough that they bumped it to 48 minutes. itssomething.jpg
I dont see the chance for another bump. It was pointed out that its not the goal to be realistic with this. What you can do is adjust to the new system and e.g. build shorter lines.

 

[unmerged(721632)]

As RbBot already said that's not a matter of realistic or abstraction level - the problem is the concept. I basically love the time table concept but there's no sense in having rush hour time tables if the bus takes 5 hours to complete a relatively short 7-8 stop round.

 

[Arado787]

I also find that very odd and it makes me wonder if workers really get up at 4 in the morning to reach their job on the other end of the city or if they go by car. I addition I saw that buses no longer have a speed value, so I guess all of them have the same speed? It would make kind of sense as different speed limits may ruin the whole timetable concept. On the other hand it would allow the buses to go faster if they are behind schedule. The only difference I saw was the acceleration.

 

[Co_Karoliina]

The vehicle capacities are not realistic and not meant to be realistic. We are publishing modding tools in a few weeks and then players can make their own rule sets and edit the capacities. This should help!

 

[Alex_brunius]

Day length was a large topic in alpha and beta... At the beginning, it was only 24 minutes, but we nagged the devs hard enough that they bumped it to 48 minutes.

Did you not sign an NDA?

"NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement; you have basically agreed not to tell anything about what happens here. This NDA is permanent, we do not believe in revealing the development process after the game finish."

 

[unmerged(273101)]

Co_Karoliina, would this modding tool allow us to change the daytime length too?

Cause that would be so cool!

 

[Zarine]

The vehicle capacities are not realistic and not meant to be realistic. We are publishing modding tools in a few weeks and then players can make their own rule sets and edit the capacities. This should help!

Will the modding tool enable also the change on the day length because this part is the biggest concern in the topic as far as I understand.
And the question would be if changing the day length is something well handled, ie if there is still X passenger per hour or if this number gets multiplicated as well.

Also, will it be possible to have smaller time interval available thanks to the modding tool ?

 

[unmerged(720975)]

i agree that every game requires some degree of abstraction from reality, but still kind of liked the money flow in Simcity5. But then the big question that would it work in this game? maybe not, because now you have to really THINK what kind of lines you make and where..
First hour when i played i was frustrated, but now like 4-6 hours more im starting to like the game more! Maybe this just needs time and patience! And who knows what kind of DLC there is coming! :happy:

 

[MouldyK]

Will the modding tool enable also the change on the day length because this part is the biggest concern in the topic as far as I understand.
And the question would be if changing the day length is something well handled, ie if there is still X passenger per hour or if this number gets multiplicated as well.

Also, will it be possible to have smaller time interval available thanks to the modding tool ?

The game needs either a length change or all vehicles/traffic/pedestrians need to go twice as fast.

I'm hoping at least one of these is possible in the mod tools.

 

[Co_Karoliina]

The modding tools are not finished so there might still be changes, but at the moment you could adjust vehicle speed and amount of people in the city, which should make it possible to make a more realistic rule set. The day length can't be changed because it's mainly a performance issue (the computer requirements would go through the roof if the game would have to make the simulation calculations any faster). I'm feeling very positive about the modding tools, they will give a lot of power to players so everyone can adjust the feel of the game to suit their liking.

 

[Zarine]

the computer requirements would go through the roof if the game would have to make the simulation calculations any faster

Could you still enable it maybe with a warning message as it would be the modder choice to "kill" his computer like that.
Also, if calculation power increase, it would be sad to say that in 4 years the computer requirements would be lower than the low end computers (little overstatement) and not being able to use the full power of the computer to increase the gaming experience according to the mod.

 

[MouldyK]

...but at the moment you could adjust vehicle speed and amount of people in the city...

Well that's the best news I can hear today! Thank you so, so much for telling us this!


-goes to focus on the other issues at hand-


Also, will the modded ruleset be compatible with multiplayer games?

 

[unmerged(347098)]

About Time Issue:

So if Speed is so much of an issue, why can't player just set it themselves?

If I would be the programmer for this, (unfortunattely game developers are much less paid, that industrial programmers) I would spend the game a Settings menue, like Chris Saywer did. So you could set up your game profile.

So in this case, you could say, 1 Game Hour is X real Minutes.
(1 = 24 Minute days, 2 48 Minute days ...)

So that weeks dont get to long, lets spend the configuration pannel 7 Checkboxes, so you are able to select the weekdays you want to play.

With this, you could do more realistic scenarios like,

There are several nightclubs in town, and they are unhappy about the situation. (Scenario starts Friday 12o'clock and runs til Sunday 8'o Clock) with 4 minutes per Hour.

About Terminus Isssue

With the Terminus / more Debot it is possible to bring in more vehicles to one line.
Because at the moment it is totally senseless to start an extra vehicle in rushhour, because till it reaches the other point of the line, rushhour is history.

 

[Zarine]

Because at the moment it is totally senseless to start an extra vehicle in rushhour, because till it reaches the other point of the line, rushhour is history.

Well for this all the point is that you put the timetable so that the bus is on time at the right station to pick up the passengers. After, if it takes 3 hours to bring them to the correct point, it's not a problem.
So if it reaches the worker house 1h after the first departure, you would have to start the rush hour timing 1 hour before the actual rush hour.