Hi Colossol Order,
I think the Bravil City map has clear examples of problems with the traffic AI. Traffic itself is not a problem, and adds to the gameplay dynamic, so reducing the number of vehicles in a game is not a great fix.
The key issues I've noticed are;
1. Traffic light timings between close intersections where traffic turns from a horizontal to a verticle vertex (and vice versa) leading to a horizontal intersection causes a bottleneck in traffic.
Fix: Let us have the option to customize light timings perhaps over a fixed cycle period (aka, every traffic light repeats at max 2 game hours, we can override how long each approach gets in that 2 hour cycle.
2. Turning lanes for Roads/Avenues ; A four lane Avenue (1 bus lane, 3 traffic lanes) ends up having a single dedicated lane for turning each direction; If 99% of traffic needs to turn right into a four lane avenue, the light timings are too short to support traffic throughput.
Fix: Let us adjust the lane configurations where the receiving road has the capacity to receive the number of lanes.
3. Highways off-ramp -> on ramp ; Vehicles seem to use offramps cross an intersection to the onramp and join back to the highway. Not sure why as the path is longer than the highway, and using one way roads seems to fix the issue, but none the less, it appears to be a bug (weighting issue on the nodes identified as offramps/onramps need changing maybe in the pathfinding)
4. Vehicles exiting highways to on ramps/off ramps ; This is really BAD, and Bravil City (let it run for 5 min and see what happens) shows how highways bottleneck because a car at the last minute decides to merge five lanes to join an offramp, or alternatively vehicles that decide not to use an offramp, merge to the far two lanes and not use the 3 lanes closest to the offramp. Similar issue with onramps coming onto highways. Happens regardless of oneway/highway pieces attaching onto the highway.
I think the Bravil City map has clear examples of problems with the traffic AI. Traffic itself is not a problem, and adds to the gameplay dynamic, so reducing the number of vehicles in a game is not a great fix.
The key issues I've noticed are;
1. Traffic light timings between close intersections where traffic turns from a horizontal to a verticle vertex (and vice versa) leading to a horizontal intersection causes a bottleneck in traffic.
Fix: Let us have the option to customize light timings perhaps over a fixed cycle period (aka, every traffic light repeats at max 2 game hours, we can override how long each approach gets in that 2 hour cycle.
2. Turning lanes for Roads/Avenues ; A four lane Avenue (1 bus lane, 3 traffic lanes) ends up having a single dedicated lane for turning each direction; If 99% of traffic needs to turn right into a four lane avenue, the light timings are too short to support traffic throughput.
Fix: Let us adjust the lane configurations where the receiving road has the capacity to receive the number of lanes.
3. Highways off-ramp -> on ramp ; Vehicles seem to use offramps cross an intersection to the onramp and join back to the highway. Not sure why as the path is longer than the highway, and using one way roads seems to fix the issue, but none the less, it appears to be a bug (weighting issue on the nodes identified as offramps/onramps need changing maybe in the pathfinding)
4. Vehicles exiting highways to on ramps/off ramps ; This is really BAD, and Bravil City (let it run for 5 min and see what happens) shows how highways bottleneck because a car at the last minute decides to merge five lanes to join an offramp, or alternatively vehicles that decide not to use an offramp, merge to the far two lanes and not use the 3 lanes closest to the offramp. Similar issue with onramps coming onto highways. Happens regardless of oneway/highway pieces attaching onto the highway.