Some annoyances

[montgomery5374]

1. I have many of the contract routes in which I get paid for the route not the tickets. My ticket inspectors are fully researched and yet they still spend too much time "stressing themselves" on contract routes. The other thing I noticed is that they climb in skill very slowly compared to other positions.

2, When you sort buses by fuel they are not sorted properly.

3. Map coverage is super annoying past about 45 percent. Most of the routes I add to get the higher percentages do not make much money and I deactivate them after I get the points I need. However, it leaves bus stops all over my map because deleting a route does NOT delete all the bus stops I added. Deleting those bus stop is a nuisance.

4. After a certain point a game has gone as far as it can go in some locations. It would be nice to be able to stop/cancel/end challenges like carry X number of people in a day or reach X number of weekly ticket holders. My first bus company was started a small metropolitan city and reaching 8270 weekly ticket holders is never going to happen because normal routes make too little money for me to bother with them. The game favors sight seeing routes and contract routes for income.

5. There needs to be a way to increase the number of buses on a route so that the schedule is updated until you change it. Adding additional buses right now is a one time deal and it is a nuisance.

6. "Easy Mode" is not easy at all. If a tour can have up to 470 passengers how can it tell you how many buses you need unless it knows what bus you will send? It only tells you how many buses it takes to cover the time frame demands not the passenger load.

7. When someone asks for a charter you cannot assign the size bus until you finish everything and then go back into edit timetable. If you forget and the wrong size bus is sent you get penalized.

[禾果子 Kakashi]

I have mentioned here are there for some times that refueling objective have NO INDICATION of how much fuel is need to complete.

The passenger count isn't as intuitive, up to 470 pax doesn't mean you need a 470 capacity bus, instead it means a trip could pick up 470 pax max at most.

[numbat]

Originally posted by montgomery5374:

My first bus company was started a small metropolitan city and reaching 8270 weekly ticket holders is never going to happen because normal routes make too little money for me to bother with them. The game favors sight seeing routes and contract routes for income.

I have found the opposite. I rarely use contract routes as I can make more money with a given bus on a public route.

I very carefully select which contract routes to take. There can be some very lucrative ones, especially in the early game, but there are also some very low return ones. Either way, after a while I find contract routes to be more trouble than they're worth. Once they start adding more and more shifts to the route, requiring more and more busses then I generally get rid of them.

Can I suggest that you pick one of your contract routes which has good utilisation, end the contract, then create a bus route of your own over a very similar route. Create a shift similar to what you were running under the contract, and then see how that compares.

If you do some quick comparisons of revenue generated among your contract routes, you might find some insight as to which ones to keep, and which ones to convert to fee paying customers.

Also look at your ticket prices. I rarely reduce mine from the defaults, and sometimes I'll also increase the weekly price - make it about 4.5 times the daily price. Even though high ticket prices causes complaints, I have yet to see it have a serious impact on ridership.

Cheers,
Chris.

[montgomery5374]

Originally posted by 禾果子 Kakashi:

I have mentioned here are there for some times that refueling objective have NO INDICATION of how much fuel is need to complete.

The passenger count isn't as intuitive, up to 470 pax doesn't mean you need a 470 capacity bus, instead it means a trip could pick up 470 pax max at most.

Yeah I figured that out on the passenger count is route based not how many would be on a bus at one time. However if I have a max count of 470 and I want to send out a new ramses at a 55 capacity I will need more than 1 bus. Some of my high numbers are over a thousand.

The game does not make it easy to catch route problems as they are occurring. From the main screen there are no indicators that buses are running at high utilization and leaving people at bus stops. You have to go to the map screen and bus routes and move through pages of routes. When I do catch it and send an additional bus it is usually too late to help. I think the number of buses it suggests on the easy screen should be something you can customize on the advanced screen. That would also give me more control on which buses to buy and send.

[montgomery5374]

Originally posted by numbat:

Originally posted by montgomery5374:

My first bus company was started a small metropolitan city and reaching 8270 weekly ticket holders is never going to happen because normal routes make too little money for me to bother with them. The game favors sight seeing routes and contract routes for income.

I have found the opposite. I rarely use contract routes as I can make more money with a given bus on a public route.

I very carefully select which contract routes to take. There can be some very lucrative ones, especially in the early game, but there are also some very low return ones. Either way, after a while I find contract routes to be more trouble than they're worth. Once they start adding more and more shifts to the route, requiring more and more busses then I generally get rid of them.

Can I suggest that you pick one of your contract routes which has good utilisation, end the contract, then create a bus route of your own over a very similar route. Create a shift similar to what you were running under the contract, and then see how that compares.

If you do some quick comparisons of revenue generated among your contract routes, you might find some insight as to which ones to keep, and which ones to convert to fee paying customers.

Also look at your ticket prices. I rarely reduce mine from the defaults, and sometimes I'll also increase the weekly price - make it about 4.5 times the daily price. Even though high ticket prices causes complaints, I have yet to see it have a serious impact on ridership.

Cheers,
Chris.

I agree on being careful with contract routes. In the beginning you don't have much choice but as soon as I do I look for the price per route. Some of the lower ones 250-400 are great but generally do not pay the big money for very long. The really good ones are 400-600+. Having too many contract routes will wear you out because the game allows the customers to make changes WAY too often. It is annoying to keep updating a schedule because of an email and as soon as you do, some bus driver calls in "sick" and you need to do it again.

I have noticed the opposite on the weekly ticket prices. I lowered mine to 15 and my revenue is way up and those pesky goals of reaching X number of weekly passengers are easier to get too. I will run it the other way for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

[clivebrown76]

For the contracts, i usually try to do the ones which start mid afternoon or evening and run during the evening or overnight, that way I don't usually need extra buses to run them as I can use the buses which have done the morning shift on other routes. Some contracts are not worth bothering, some can be very worthwhile doing and investing in.

[ModerNertum]

OpenStreetMaps is not exactly accurate. I find that playing in my hometown (Porto, Portugal) making a bus route from point A to B can be a pain because of how the bus routing is done (some station icons are deceitful enough to think they’re on the same side of the road when in reality they match the bus stop that’s on the other side of the road, making it so there’s a weird pathing done in game).

[numbat]

Originally posted by montgomery5374:

7. When someone asks for a charter you cannot assign the size bus until you finish everything and then go back into edit timetable. If you forget and the wrong size bus is sent you get penalized.

You get the chance to name the route as you set it up, so I always add the number of pax to the name of the route. This way I only need to remember the number of pax for a few seconds.

[禾果子 Kakashi]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3403036785

It's not the first time people mentioning coverage objective landed on unreachable places...
It's nearly a progress soft lock if we can't cancel the objective or re-roll that

[numbat]

Originally posted by 禾果子 Kakashi:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3403036785

It's not the first time people mentioning coverage objective landed on unreachable places...
It's nearly a progress soft lock if we can't cancel the objective or re-roll that

I would approach that by creating an external depot on the island, and setup some bus routes on the island to connect the POI.

I'm not sure that will work, but it's worth a try. I have satisfied a similar objective (connect x% of suburb Y to your network) with a route based out of an external depot before (admittedly not on an island), so I have good confidence it will.

Cheers,
Chris.

[禾果子 Kakashi]

Originally posted by numbat:

Cheers,
Chris.

No cheers at all, the road is navigable there but no depot can be built any point near the roads.

However when I try to deploy bus from the main island, the bus simply fly to the island started the trip and cleared the objective.

[numbat]

Originally posted by 禾果子 Kakashi:

However when I try to deploy bus from the main island, the bus simply fly to the island started the trip and cleared the objective.

haha. flying busses. love it......

[montgomery5374]

Originally posted by numbat:

Originally posted by montgomery5374:

7. When someone asks for a charter you cannot assign the size bus until you finish everything and then go back into edit timetable. If you forget and the wrong size bus is sent you get penalized.

You get the chance to name the route as you set it up, so I always add the number of pax to the name of the route. This way I only need to remember the number of pax for a few seconds.

This is different. I want to be able to assign the bus preference at the time of the charter route creation so the scheduler assigns the right bus. As it is now, I create the route then I have to edit the timeline of the charter to assign the preference. I have two used buses set aside for charter routes that I have labeled as "Charter" so I know the schedule will never interfere with my other route schedules.

[老爸]

Originally posted by numbat:

Originally posted by montgomery5374:

My first bus company was started a small metropolitan city and reaching 8270 weekly ticket holders is never going to happen because normal routes make too little money for me to bother with them. The game favors sight seeing routes and contract routes for income.

I have found the opposite. I rarely use contract routes as I can make more money with a given bus on a public route.

I very carefully select which contract routes to take. There can be some very lucrative ones, especially in the early game, but there are also some very low return ones. Either way, after a while I find contract routes to be more trouble than they're worth. Once they start adding more and more shifts to the route, requiring more and more busses then I generally get rid of them.

Can I suggest that you pick one of your contract routes which has good utilisation, end the contract, then create a bus route of your own over a very similar route. Create a shift similar to what you were running under the contract, and then see how that compares.

If you do some quick comparisons of revenue generated among your contract routes, you might find some insight as to which ones to keep, and which ones to convert to fee paying customers.

Also look at your ticket prices. I rarely reduce mine from the defaults, and sometimes I'll also increase the weekly price - make it about 4.5 times the daily price. Even though high ticket prices causes complaints, I have yet to see it have a serious impact on ridership.

Cheers,
Chris.

I only take contract routes that are easy to fulfil the requirements and are likely to have low patronage. Never take a popular contract routes because the stakeholder will demand more service and sometimes unreasonable timetable change.

[numbat]

Originally posted by 老爸:

I only take contract routes that are easy to fulfil the requirements and are likely to have low patronage. Never take a popular contract routes because the stakeholder will demand more service and sometimes unreasonable timetable change.

hmmm.... that's an idea that's worth some thought.........

Cheers,
Chris.

[Rusteve]

All these are very good points, and I hope the devs are taking note of them. I have a couple of annoyances off the top of my head,

When trying to assign bays to busses the camera jumps to the bus when it is selected and away from the bay itself.

When placing a decal the option for snapping to grid and mirroring to the opposite side would be helpful.

The possibility to use text and custom fonts when painting and maybe some better drawing tools like line with variable width.