Best score so far is 9 355 at day 33.
How did I get that score? I never used public transports !
I think you should make public transports more efficient, or cars less efficient, to incentivise players to use them.
Great score! Yes and fair feedback about balance. I made the game because I was playing Mini Motorways and wanted to use public transport, but if players just use roads they may as well play Mini Motorways.
I working on some balance changes now: nerfing cars slightly when roads get busy, buffing rail modes and bringing the public transport unlocks earlier. Hopefully that will help.
Currently cars, outside of congestion, are perfect transport in the game. They directly go from the house to the destination, without any delay.
On the other hand, public transports make people have to walk to the stop, to wait for transport, to have a pause at each stops, then to walk to the destination, making the ride longer.
So you could add a way to handicap cars (accident, refill at gas station, adding twice many cars from the start, parking lots, maintenance costs for resident, less roads available for the player, etc.) or a way to buff public transport (more people transported, faster movement, etc.).
In my opinion, the better way would be to generate congestion organically way faster, so the need to have less cars in streets will came at the same time the game gives you the first buses.
Thanks, very helpful. Cars don't slow down for corners, which is one of the reasons they are overpowered, which is something I'm changing. I've also buffed some of the rail modes. I'm making these balance changes in the normal mode, but I'm also working on the Expert Mode which will have some further changes - such as limited car ownership (eg only one resident in each house owns a car, and the second resident can only use public transport). I will post a Dev Log when its ready.
ok but is't the main problem is map size ? like a train/ tube needs to have atleast 10 tiles to achive its max speed (while car need way less also car max speed is so much more than required(also bus have worse of both world with not so much capacity and a far lower speed/acceraltion than car (so either you could make bus as fast as car (unrealistic ) or have double Decker type upgrade after 20 days (these could be expanded to orther transit also but i am not cerative enough ) ?
also pls add a way in normal mode to see how effectively we are useing the line (in tube or rail (cause afther enough rail adding more rail tends to dealy whole line time )
like there are few thing you could do to make orther things good without hevly nerfing cars
1. bigger map - there is no way in irl to have tubes or trams on i thing such congested or desly area ? map size need to inceres if you want city to to last more days (but then you have said that you want mini metro style minimalism ( and i thing that is were you need some out of box solution that even Dinosaur Polo Club has not thought (or you can just have that very eraly game zoom in zoom out thing
2. smart ncp - thing will inculcated things like ncp recalibatreing there path to avoid congestion (like currently if i place a tube station to workplace every preson on that area while be on that line even if it will be less time consuming to dirve there workplace
vice vera if there is shit load of traffic people needs to chose different line (i have tried haveing a rail and a tube(tube will connet whole maps while rail most demanded one but the dumb f##k ncp just filled the tube and run was over
SO they need to calculate which line / road take least time not least distance
but these all are catalyst not solution like that stockhome one freys were great and i loved it but why the hell would one use it if they have enough roads and briges so that map needs to be bigger and have more islands similarly until map is of decently large size manly one the traist solution will not work here
thanks for the detailed thoughts, very helpful and much appreciated as always.
I don’t think the issue is map sized. The acceleration/deceleration curves are not design to be realistic. Acceleration is close to instantaneous and deceleration is pretty rapid; although it is something I could buff further on rail modes.
Thanks to a few people’s suggestions, I have now added a tool which lets you see the elements of transit time (transfer, wait at stop and travel time) and compare this to road travel. What it is showing is the travel time is slightly quicker but the transfer time and waiting at stop are the killers.
We can largely solve wait time by increasing the amount of vehicles granted, which will allow users to increase frequencies on routes.
The transfer time I haven’t cracked yet, but i have been optimising the walking routes to and from stops which has helped. Ultimately i could just increase walking speed, but im trying to keep it semi realistic.
I’m also playing with allowing double width roads, which allow for a dedicated transit lane for buses/trams/bikes as well as a seperate lane for cars. It looks promising but needs some further work as it makes the traffic engine more complex.
On expert mode, it uses smart route planning such that users only take the transit option if it’s about the same time as driving. I didn’t bring this into normal mode as I thought it was confusing if they create a bus line and no one uses it.