1.12 Less pax?

[Accord2]

So I had a Brazilian network of some regional, intercity and urban trains in 1.11 and loaded it in the 1.12 beta version. How does demand work now? It just feels so empty. I would transport up to 100k pax in a Monday and around 50k on a Sunday, but now I transport 20k pax in a Monday.

[whyendee]

I've noticed this too. I'm not 100% sure, but try making it so all of your station areas don't overlap? It seems like it has something to do with how pax choose stations now, and the overlapping areas seem to cause problems.

[emkah]

Indeed, also the station radii are much bigger now. This may also have a factor in this equation. Nevertheless, especially on remote terminal stations which do not overlap so much, I coud see that literally no one is boarding the whole day, which was definitely not the case before today.

[Weird and Wry]

The demand system is completely different and it was not possible to establish a direct formula to keep 1.11 demand values. You have two options:
A) Change the global pax demand into a higher value
B) Change the distance demand curve so your preferred distances create more demand

[Cyrielle]

I think the global pax demand might not work anymore; I just increased it to 900% (from 100%) and didn't notice any significant change in my lines' "boarded train" statistics in a week.

I also compared the stats I got with the new demand system to the ones I had with the old one and real life stats of the same region (a city with around 50 000 inhabitants, so it might not be the best example, but I have a Paris save file so I might try and compare from this one, it just takes more time since it runs slower).
With the new demand system, the ridership has dropped significantly from the old one (4 to 6 times less for the regional trains, up to 20 times less for the local lines). With the old demand system, my "boarded train" stats were about 2 to 3 times the comparable real life ones, while with the new one they are 8 to 10 times less.

While I think the new system concept is absolutely incredible and I’m really excited to see it working to its full potential, I'm starting to think the default "strength" of the new system is too low, and that it especially hurts local transport.

[Weird and Wry]

Originally posted by Cyrielle:

I think the global pax demand might not work anymore; I just increased it to 900% (from 100%) and didn't notice any significant change in my lines' "boarded train" statistics in a week.

This should be fixed in 1.12.2.

Originally posted by Cyrielle:

While I think the new system concept is absolutely incredible and I’m really excited to see it working to its full potential, I'm starting to think the default "strength" of the new system is too low, and that it especially hurts local transport.

In 1.11 and earlier you basically opened a firehose of pax for every station, with a fixed pax generation potential directly proportional to coverage. The sim then desperately directed said firehose to any destination it could. In 1.12 the generation potential is *also* proportional to the global reachable set of destinations. More available destinations with significant population = more demand generation. So now your generation will grow with the size of your network, capped by the distance of destination (and in the short distances, the new walk time filtering could also be doing something too).

At the same time I am also making the tools available to change the default demand, including finetunning all the curves.

[Cyrielle]

That's a design choice I respect, I’ll try to create a new network from scratch to design it around this new demand system and see how I feel about it. Thanks for clarifiying!

(Edit: I’m wondering if this new system combined with the increased station reach could be better for creating long-distance train networks, something that was quite difficult in the past without bothering to also create local networks for big cities, so I'll try both!)

[Weird and Wry]

By the way, if it's just long distance that is seemingly too low, you have up to a 50x correction available in the default curve, since it is set at 2% for the long tail of distances, so even in your current save it might just be some curve editing to make it reach the 1.11 levels.

Also now I have several reports of the initial 1.11 import having problems, which get fixed on reloading the save as 1.12. So also try to save the 1.11 import as a 1.12 save (under a new name), load it, and see if it improves.

[PapaBach]

I played a liitle bit around with my existing network.
With the standard settings all my trains are mostly empty and i didn't earn enough money to cover costs.
When I changed all demand curves to full 100%, the game totally runs out of control, with overloading stations and trains.
So I think it will be a lot of trial and error to find the best settings, depending on the network.

[plbztf377]

I am also having issues with demand being way too low (empty trains) when set to a regular demand curves On top of that, the "ridership" count at the top is different when the game is running versus when the game is paused.

It seems like after setting to 900% ridership scale + 100% demand curves, I finally get volumes similar to the ones I had before.

[Cyrielle]

Originally posted by Weird and Wry:

By the way, if it's just long distance that is seemingly too low, you have up to a 50x correction available in the default curve, since it is set at 2% for the long tail of distances, so even in your current save it might just be some curve editing to make it reach the 1.11 levels.

It's actually the opposite: it's short distances that are really low. I've done other tests with the same save (imported again from 1.11 to avoid already fixed bugs) and in 900% demand the local lines (10 to 15 kilometers in length) see their stats divided by ~6 while the regional lines (100 to 150 kilometers) figures are "only" divided by two. Note that I do not have really long distances (more than 150 km) in the save file, so I'll have to test on other ones to compare.

I also checked what happens in the stations: while in think the frequentation of the more rural stations (no local transportation, few stations in a 10km radius) is quite realistic (at 900% still), the frequentation of a local station (bus network (but I see no reason why it would be different without mods, with tramways for instance), stops every 300 to 400 meters) is really really low, I've merely two to three people at a time in the central station (where all bus lines stop and the majority of people do their transfers), and this is still 900%.

Again, this is one save and one only, so I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions (I'll continue to publish what I observe, trying with both a really big pre-existing network (Paris) and with a brand new network created fully within 1.12 and for the 1.12 mechanics). But I think the curve linking the available destinations and the demand might make this last one too low. I'll continue testing.

One small note though, but I think this is important: I fully and only play with unlimited funds (I just don't have fun without, but it's a me thing and I do this in all management games that imply creation, so it's completely unrelated to this one in particular), so I won't be able to give feedback on this aspect of the game (but I fear that the low ridership might make the game more difficult (players who do use the economical system will be able to give better feedback); it could be intentional though, as the old system just threw way too many pax into the stations anyways).

[Weird and Wry]

Make sure you are testing on 1.12.3. Earlier versions had a bug which massively reduced demand after any editing was done to curves or stations.

[Tabo]

I created a new save today (after having an updated to 1.12.3) making a rail network going out of Stavanger (Norways third largest city) out to Egersund running the real life local train route. The maximum I've had waiting at stations has been 5 PAX, this causes me to go in negative so playing with funds is useless. Since the 1.12 update passengers more or less doesn't seem to exist.

[PapaBach]

I tried some setting on demand curves and now I'm almost on 1.11 level, but less chargebacks than before.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3236286017

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3236285982

[Weird and Wry]

In 1.11, the way demand worked, every station was a firehose of pax. Basically it had a fixed capability of generating certain pax/s (in proportion to coverage population sum), and these pax were forcibly made to fit to whatever set of destinations your network supported. New destinations just made set larger, they had zero impact on generating more demand.

In 1.12, demand depends on both the generating area, and the set of possible destinations. If that set is small and low population, less demand will generated, and less pax will be spawned. In 1.12 expanding a network automatically creates more demand elsewhere, since opening new destinations "wakes up" new demand on existing built areas. This is much more realistic than the 1.11 behavior.

The 1.11 behavior, as limited and dumb as it is, has the virtue of making small and low population saves workable without much tweaks. I will see about adding some kind of aid (basically an automatic cheat code) for these kinds of saves in 1.12.

[ibnewton]

Has not been fixed, just made a new save to test and numbers are way too low even at 900% demand