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Recents games ...

Since Scenario Won by
13 years ago scenarioTrain ToyLand calimero with 478 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain Desertic Mutant with 390 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain Steam Age calimero with 161 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain Desertic calimero with 420 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain Steam Age Chuck with 113 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain High Speed calimero with 106 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain Steam Age calimero with 100 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain ToyLand calimero with 100 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain Artic calimero with 100 points
13 years ago scenarioTrain High Speed calimero with 106 points

Recents posts ...

03/25, 2012 09:18PM calimero 21 posts
Posted in Bug reports, new ideas - Game duration It seems that there is less people playing on the server these times. I used to play when it was set to end the game when someone reaches the 400 points performance, and not a 10 years duration.

I think it was more competitive before with the performance score only. It could be nice to have games with something like 800 points, to be able to develop a larger network.
03/23, 2011 06:32AM calimero 21 posts
Posted in Server Rules, Scenario details - Re:airport construction and the noise concern Maybe it could be good to set the small airports always available, they are easier to construct.

After some tests with the planes I came to the conclusion that they are actually not usable.

- For delivering goods it looses money in all cases.
- Helicopters: just forget it, they are pure money burners.
- Big planes: the big airports are a pain to construct, and you have to use feeders that will kill your min profit. Too hard to setup.
- The unique option left where you have a chance to be profitable is to use small planes for servicing two middle distance cities. It makes a little money - less than a good train - and can be all right if the planes have a good reliability. But the main problem is the crashes. A plane always crash at a moment or another. In a game I bought 8 planes and in a few years 6 crashed (small planes for small airport of course), making me think it is really stupid to use planes here. Even if you want planes just for the fun these crashes will lead you to hate them. Sometimes when a newcomer starts a company and goes on planes like on any easy server the experimented players are kidding about the inevitable crash that will happen, and it always does.

What about reducing the crashes or turn them off? This would be a step to plane usability on this server. At least we could use them just for the fun without being pissed off by the normal behavior of the planes that is to finish all crashed.
03/18, 2011 02:20PM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Multicargo lines Another original tactical sheme: to transport multiple cargos in one train. Usually people use one train per cargo type: the goods or food or any secondary industrial product is transported by dedicated trains from a dedicated pickup station. This maintains the station ratings and keep the payments high.

An alternative approach is to bring back the goods with the same train, and transfert them to other vehicules who will deliver them to the final destination. In the example above we have a city in station A, a farm in station B and a food factory in station C. The trains go from B to C carrying grain and livestock. They also have some food wagons (about 40% of the train). When they arrive to the factory they bring back the food at B and unload it without making money. From there road vehicules deliver to A.

Why to do that? What is the interest?
- To keep the min profit high, even using road vehicules: they get all the payements for the goods and make a good profit (14000 minimum per rv in the example).
- To keep min revenue stable: less wagons to load so the trains moves fast and the payements are not too spaced and the revenue curve is not going up and down. The station ratings are kept high with the frequency of the trains entering in. To space the trains and optimize the ratings timetables can be used.

You can't start with that unless you already have enough for a big investment. To make money in the first times I start with a classical line to deliver primary products. When I have enough trains on this line I make the delivery junction and the road/track to the final delivery destination. Then I buy another train and start to add goods wagons and change the orders to feed the junction. A roundloop line is also possible: in this the trains directly deliver the goods to the final destination and come back to load. This is just efficient when the final delivery destination is not far from the primary industry, or when it is along the line from primary industry to factory.

This is quite fun to play because you need to make your network evolve until all is well balanced. If you are tired of boring single lines, give a try to this original kung-fu style.
multiple_cargo.sav, 62 downloads.
03/04, 2011 04:21PM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Re:Transfert systems Thanx for you support JStaxton.
Another variation I found:

# The switch. Situation: 3 high populated cities at equal distance, short. The problem was to transport all the passengers from the 3 cities with maximum profit. I could have done direct lines, but income would be low for the vehicules because of the sort distance to the central city. So I made a transfert switch in the central city. In this way the buses transport passengers from the outside cities and passenges from the central one, so their individual profit gets higher.
To keep the exact amount of vehicules needed full load orders can be used at the switch for the weakest side of the network's vehicules.
transfert_switch.png, 64 downloads.
multicargo.png, 73 downloads.
03/04, 2011 01:10PM calimero 21 posts
Posted in Bug reports, new ideas - Re:wrong name This bug can be a problem! Today I was recognized as Wakoo, and it said: "You now have administration privileges"...

Some stupid people could go like: "cool, i'm god, let's fuck up everything!".
03/01, 2011 08:57AM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Re:Transfert systems What are you uses of the transfert orders? Have you experimented original ways or profitable situations to use them?
03/01, 2011 08:48AM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Re:Transfert systems # Junction. This is for the case of a station is not reachable by a vehicule and it needs a relay. Example: to connect by boat a city near to the sea to another city that is not close enough to the sea to be covered by the harbour. The boats drop passengers at the junction and the buses pick them up as they feed the junction from the city.

I use the unload all order here instead of the transfert order. The ships load at the junction station and will make money on the delivery. When they come back they do not make money, just drop the passengers. With this the buses that make the junction get all the income, and this does not affect min profit.

You can choose to handle all the trafic from the biggest city, or only take from it the same number of passengers provided by the smallest city. To do this set full load orders to the ships on the weakest station, and full load order for the buses at the transfert station, so they will only bring in passengers if they pickup some. To handle all remove switch the full load orders : city for the buses and transfert station for the boats; and just increase their number to match the volume.

This type of junction works well, the difficulty is as long as the trafic rises you need to keep an eye on it and tune it so that both sides bring the same amount of trafic, or the profits will decrease badly.
junction.png, 70 downloads.
transfert_switch.sav, 70 downloads.
03/01, 2011 07:54AM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Re:Transfert systems # Delivery station. This one is simple. We have lets say a farm with a line to the food factory. The trains deliver to the factory and pickup the goods there to transfert them to the farm station. After this the goods are delivered to their final destination by other vehicules.

Advantage: less trains to make the goods travel, and they can go further with less investment. In the example below the food factory is producing a lots of goods, feeded by several farms. So the trains from the main farm have more goods wagons than livestock and cereals, because the factory production is high. Difficulty: it is only efficient when there is enough trains to handle the production.
delivery.png, 61 downloads.
transfert_junction.sav, 60 downloads.
03/01, 2011 07:09AM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Re:Transfert systems # Second use: dispatcher. Here the pax hub is also used to transport goods or food to the cities of the network. The goods are delivered to the hub and picked up by the pax and mail trains on their way back. Depending on the number of goods but the pax trains must have only one, maybe two wagons of goods, no more than 1/3 off the train.
To be efficient, this method requires a high frequency of trains entering the hub, so the goods are always picked up. The full load orders are not always possible because the network must stay fluent. So the good station rating must be obtained by the frequency of trains entering in. A balance between number of trains/wagons per train must be found.

In the example below a farm is located near the hub. Livestock and cereals are transfered to the hub by trucks. Some trains pickup these to bring them to the food factory. Once at the food factory they drop their cargo and pickup goods to transfert them back to the hub, where they will be handled by intercity trains.

This system is quite hard to maintain because it requires fine tuning with number of wagons/number of trains and it can change while the network evolves. You also need some money to make it work good: it is less profitable than direct lines in the begining but more efficient when it is sized: you can handle a lot of cargo with less trains, keeping a high station rating.
transfert_dispatcher.sav, 65 downloads.
transfert_delivery.sav, 69 downloads.
03/01, 2011 06:13AM calimero 21 posts
Posted in General Discussion - Transfert systems People usually use transfert orders only to make feeders. I tried to make full transfert systems where vehicules not only feed but deliver at the same time. There was a problem: a vehicule with orders transfert and load often takes back his own cargo, even if there is cargo from other stations waiting to be picked up.

To solve this issue i made up a dual station transfert system. Lets say i have a transfert station B with vehicules coming from A and C. In B i make 2 stations: vehicules coming from A will unload at B1 and pickup at B2, and vehicules coming from C will unload at B2 and pickup at B1. This prevent the vehicules from taking the wrong cargo.

Once this soluced I applied this station design for different purposes. After some tests I found several situations where this can be profitable.

# First use: the pax hub: a transfert station in the center of a start network: all the passengers are transfered to the hub, and they are picked up to travel to some other city of the network.
To be profitable it is very important that both sides of the transfert hub bring in about the same number of passengers. That means some fine tuning with the number of vehicules on each side, depending on the distance from the hub and population of the city. For example if A provides more passengers than C to handle all the trafic you will need to set full load orders in the city A while not in B, so the vehicules do not wait and can pickup in the transfert station all the passengers from A. It is very important that passengers don't wait in the transfert station, or the income will drop. To balance both branches of the network it is also possible to use side feeders to provides passengers from the nearby towns, as showed in the second savegame below with the trains.

I make other posts for next uses to be able to attach screenshots and savegames.

tram hub.sav, 63 downloads.
trains_transfert_hub.sav, 61 downloads.
dispatcher.png, 72 downloads.