Having real problems setting up long distance ferries.

[Martin]

I have 3 towns connected.. allegedly.

Town 1 has a cargo dock modded into a passenger as well. Bus station at the dock and in town.
Ferry from dock to other 2 towns.

Noone uses the route. In 13 yrs..

Town 2 uses a dedicated passenger dock.
Town 3 uses a modded cargo dock, which works fine for the cargo deliveries, but still noone is getting on the ferries. I have 2 ferry routes connecting through the second town.

All the stations are linked, all are using correct vehicles. Usually similar setups work perfectly fine, in other games.

I'm wondering if the distances are just too great..
Or do I need to get the towns to grow.. to want to move to new destinations?

The destinations aspect of the game is very poorly defined.. or explained. I just "assume" the people want to go to where ever I connect to, but apparently they don't.

Rail over same distance works fine.

[Gregorovitch]

What's the Frequency on the line?

[grapplehoeker]

Depending on your start year...
When starting in 1850, with every town, I focus on the money... which is getting the supply of cargo demands met and the first profitable lines will usually be cargo in the form of fuel, bricks or food (depends on map layout).
Then, to help the town grow and increase the demand, I focus on increasing the destination
demands locally.
For that, I look at the town layout in terms of residential/commercial/industrial (or where they live/where they shop/where they work).
Then I place up to 4 bus stops in a loop, so that 2 cater for as much of the residential as possible and 1 stop in each of commercial and industrial. I run a loop in the opposite direction by placing a stop opposite the other. I usually buy at least 8 buses (4 per line) and get them running.
They won't make much money at first, but the objective is to add destinations to add a 10-20% growth to the city and that's pays back by increasing the cargo demand.

Once both cargo demands are being met well, say 70%-100%, and the city has grown, then, assuming I have done the same for at least one other if not all potential intercity destinations, I'll consider setting up an intercity line.
The reason for this is that locally, any losses the passenger buses incur will be much smaller than the initial losses an intercity line will incur. Plus, once two cities are large enough, they will be able to fill the intercity passenger lines to at least 50% capacity. That's the fill % you should be looking for to get a profitable passenger line.
Anything less means you haven't developed a good innercity public transport route yet. Do that first and then add the intercity stop later and you'll see numbers rise in both cities as they travel to each other's city to shop or work.
That's their destination, to get to the shops and places of work in the other city, so if you don't provide them a means to get to them, then it will fail.
As I explained above, I set out to provide that right from the start since it takes time.

[Autocoach]

Quote :

I'm wondering if the distances are just too great..

I am of the opinion that passengers have a time 'budget' for which they are prepared to use (say 20min for example) therefore they have to get to the destination within this set time from their home . Therefore the test of this is to save the game , move the clock forward to now and chuck some hovercraft on the route and see if it works then as the route will now be quicker.

[HellAManOP]

Try removing all line stations and adding them back. This time, be sure to click on the passenger icon of the harbour, not the cargo icon and also not on the dock. Made the same mistake in the beginning.

[Parkera]

Are you selecting the PASSENGER ICON on the ports that are Cargo/Passenger?

[xoraphox]

Be sure to click the right dock when creating the line! The same with train stations with multiple platforms, you need to select the passenger dock and not the cargo dock to load your people. Maybe thats the reason why your line is not properly registering?

EDIT: Posted at the same time as Parkera over here ^^ but yeah that

[Vimpster]

I agree with Autocoach. People definitely have limited time to travel. Due to this ferries are just not well suited for long distances mainly because of their slow speed. But this is compounded by their high capacity. The reason I say this is that players reasonably conclude that because the ferry carries so many passengers that they don't need many on a line, perhaps even just one. But that makes it all the more unlikely that it will be used. You need many ferries on a line. The longer the distance the more important it is to have a short frequency on the line to make up for the long travel time in order to coax anyone into using them. It just isn't economical either way.

Ideally there would be much smaller capacity ferries available for longer distance trips so that you could put many on the line and not be paying for a massive amount of capacity that doesn't get used. And due to the very lengthy docking/undocking process (which granted is improved from the last game), ship lines of both sorts, passenger or cargo, are just not designed for short distances in this game as they would spend the majority of the time just doing the docking/undocking process rather than actually travelling between docks, which is very inefficient.

[Martin]

Originally posted by Autocoach:

Quote :

I'm wondering if the distances are just too great..

I am of the opinion that passengers have a time 'budget' for which they are prepared to use (say 20min for example) therefore they have to get to the destination within this set time from their home . Therefore the test of this is to save the game , move the clock forward to now and chuck some hovercraft on the route and see if it works then as the route will now be quicker.

I'll give that a shot when I get hovercraft, I gave up for now, just bulldozed the passenger docks. The Cargo works perfectly fine, going exactly the same distance as does the train, that actually goes further, but it does go abit faster.. the boats were going at 16mph the trains at 50mph.

As for the other questions, frequency etc.. shouldn't really matter, I should get at least 1 passenger within 2-3 yrs of starting.. not none over 20 yrs.

It was like something just wasn't connecting, like the cities couldn't "see" each other for passengers via the docks, noone went on either of the ferry routes, I tried building dedicated passenger ferries but noone went on those either. As soon as I added trains, I now have 300 passengers moving back n forth..

So it could be a frequency thing.. maybe the game prefers shorter routes.. but I don't as they don't make any money.

With regards to grapplehoekar, yeh I usually do the same, build up infrastructure and then passengers.. usually with buses first, then trains. But since I had a river spitting map, I thought I'd try early ferry, I've used long routes before on ferry, entire length of the map type distance and it worked.. didn't get alot of passengers.. maybe 30 max.. half the ships capacity, but it was still something.

I tend to go with the idea that moving people about helps with city growth.. it probably doesn't.. I guess the extra people get born in the city instant adults etc..

I do wonder if there's a max distance a passenger will walk.. from a bus station/drop point to the dock terminal.. I had to use the small platforms to extend the range of the dock so it would pickup directly from the forest, the initial line was moving logs to a sawmill. I wonder if the people just won't walk the distance that logs will travel from the industry to the dock.

I've noticed that the max range when placing a bus station for example, the area that is highlighted.. is much smaller than the max connection distance of a dock or train station.. when connecting to industry.

I'm trying get the achievement for not taking out additional loans.. so it's abit tricky for money esp having to bulldoze stuff that doesn't work properly.

[Vimpster]

The devs really simplified the way passengers work in this game. For better or worse. The previous game you could transport passengers much further distances if you made the route cheap enough (slow enough). In this game they seem to be bound by a strict time limit and will always opt for the more expensive (faster) transport if it gets them to where they want to go on time.

As far as how passenger transport affects town growth, it is based purely on potential rather than actual usage. You could have zero people using your transport but so long as your transport adds additional potential destinations for people to reach it will contribute to the growth of the town. No one has to use your lines for the town growth to benefit from them. Though that said if no one uses your lines it will mean heavier traffic on the roads in the town which will cause a negative growth modifier, albeit a relatively minor one.

[Darthy66]

Discovered this today myself. Set up a ferry route and not a single passenger. Really annoying as it means one of my main towns will now remain isolated for many decades. I do wish the devs wrote at least basic manuals for these games as it really would be helpful to understand what you can and can't do.

[Martin]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

As far as how passenger transport affects town growth, it is based purely on potential rather than actual usage. You could have zero people using your transport but so long as your transport adds additional potential destinations for people to reach it will contribute to the growth of the town. No one has to use your lines for the town growth to benefit from them. Though that said if no one uses your lines it will mean heavier traffic on the roads in the town which will cause a negative growth modifier, albeit a relatively minor one.

Yeh I've noticed this as well, just supplying the demands the city grows in size. Without any passenger movement at all. Even with completely isolated cities, that aren't connected by roads.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by UGP_Batman:

Discovered this today myself. Set up a ferry route and not a single passenger. Really annoying as it means one of my main towns will now remain isolated for many decades. I do wish the devs wrote at least basic manuals for these games as it really would be helpful to understand what you can and can't do.

I bet if you put enough ferries on your line people will start using it. It probably won't make any money though. Something I think some players fail to realise is that frequency matters to the passengers. Frequency is part of the calculated trip time so if you have a long frequency that can make the trip time so long that no one will use the line, even if the vehicle itself is fast.

[Martin]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

Originally posted by UGP_Batman:

Discovered this today myself. Set up a ferry route and not a single passenger. Really annoying as it means one of my main towns will now remain isolated for many decades. I do wish the devs wrote at least basic manuals for these games as it really would be helpful to understand what you can and can't do.

I bet if you put enough ferries on your line people will start using it. It probably won't make any money though. Something I think some players fail to realise is that frequency matters to the passengers. Frequency is part of the calculated trip time so if you have a long frequency that can make the trip time so long that no one will use the line, even if the vehicle itself is fast.

Yeh.. putting more ferries probably would produce a passenger or three.. but the point of the game is to make profitable lines.. as well as supply demands.. if they've done this on purpose then they've sold a broken game.. on purpose. Knowing it'd fail as least partially..

Ferrys only seem worthwhile in late game and only really for moving people within a city.. ie like a taxi.. or over a river.. which means all those ships they added in.. are completely worthless until you get the hovercraft and later the glider.

[grapplehoeker]

On my current 'diary map', I have Afforte in the east which is completely isolated. I shipped in all cargo and ran bus/trams locally until 1891, when I started a ferry line both ways to nearby Laurito.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968560631
They use Klondikes now and I can get them at least 60% full for that route.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968561253
Meanwhile the Klondikes heading back and forth west to Sassopiatto are always full!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968561529
This isn't to say yah boo sucks Martin, but rather, stay optimistic mate, it is doable ;)