Scenario 5: Promontory Point doesnt demand travelers

[nifoyg]

I've tried sending grain, citizens and everything I could but it WILL NOT demand any travelers, hence cannot win the scenario. Any suggestions? The city has no clickable to looking inside it, it just gets to a two big size right before I lose the chapter.

[nifoyg]

I am now wondering if San Fransisco needs to be larger. I believe I'm well under 40K.

[Indecorou]

Did you ever figure this out. I have built 3 different connections from SF to Prom Pt. I was able to get 2 passengers to go at first but nothing since.

[Kan]

i did that mission with cutting mountain and building different railway to promontory point with fastest trains with awesome crew just be sure that dont put special train card wagons on express lines.
try to make every objectives on that mission.just connect with San Fransisco and build it properly cause if you cant set point to that train station it must be problem with your railway

[Indecorou]

So basically it was the mountain pass..and doing the quests also...yes I did three routes in one game and that was the last one I attempted then they basically ran there when I was here looking for answers. Good to know the mountain pass, I did one on previous game but didn't focus on getting population to 100k in Sacramento first...oops

[Krovven]

When I built the tracks to Promontory Point, only 1 passenger was going per train. I just waited for each train to leave San Fran station, then Cloned it to send another. Did that 5 or 6 times and let each train take 1 or 2 passengers each. I didn't bother, but to speed up the train, if you are short on time to complete the challenge you can limit the train to just a couple of cars.

Now if I can just figure out how to get the Express train from San Fran to Los Angeles I'd probably have President rating on that chapter.

[Leonsst]

Originally posted by nifoyg:

I am now wondering if San Fransisco needs to be larger. I believe I'm well under 40K.

Yes, more population means more travelers demand from and for the city. I was doing I think 7 passenger per train last time I did the scenario, with San Fran having well over 60k pop.

Originally posted by Krovven:

When I built the tracks to Promontory Point, only 1 passenger was going per train. I just waited for each train to leave San Fran station, then Cloned it to send another. Did that 5 or 6 times and let each train take 1 or 2 passengers each. I didn't bother, but to speed up the train, if you are short on time to complete the challenge you can limit the train to just a couple of cars.

Now if I can just figure out how to get the Express train from San Fran to Los Angeles I'd probably have President rating on that chapter.

Well, not that you asked, but express lines are easier to achieve if you're transporting only passengers and mail on the most modern express train you can buy. If you construct on the edge of the coast between those cities, the track will be cheap dirt.

[LiquidFire]

It's been a while, but seeing this - the transport solution is easy. First - if you you cannot seem to connect the stations- note that Promontory Point is a normal station so you need to cross the tracks to travel both directions (in case you always use the stations with signals). Second - fastest way to drop 50 in PP is with lots of trains. 50 trains with 1 passenger works as good as 10 with 5. Just costs a little more is all. Much quicker to spin up 50 and be done then to wait for a few trains to travel back and forth.

[Furio]

I agree.. just send a ton of trains. They will always have at least one passenger. It's cheesy but you copy the train/route and delete them once they reach the destination if you for some reason can't afford to have many trains.

[chaney]

Disagree?.. Passengers will not be generated faster by giving each one their own train. Passenger generation is based on the two Cities' populations and distance plus other explicit bonuses. One train sitting there for a long time to pick up a bunch will pick up the 50'th one just as soon as using 50 trains. As long as a train with space is at the Station to pick them up, you will get them all. Granted, a train with just a single car will travel a tiny bit faster than one with a couple of passenger cars and 50 passengers, but that's pretty minor.

Still by the time you are doing this, money isn't much trouble so more trains are fine, but I don't think it will be much quicker.

[pmcmull]

Note that the task in the campaign calls for 50 passengers to be delivered to Promontory Point. Not 50 cars of passengers. So even it the cars have only partial loads it will take only about 6 cars of passengers to make it. Or 8 at the worst. That makes it less of a challenge. Make a route you can use the fastest engine to get to PP. Either around the mountains, North or South. Or spend the money that should be coming in by now - or bonds - to put a tunnel thru the California mountains near Carson City.

[chaney]

I recall using a path that took advantage of some valleys and passes to get through the mountains with very little tunnel needed. That lets you start a bit earlier because the cost isn't so high.

[LiquidFire]

Originally posted by chaney:

Disagree?.. Passengers will not be generated faster by giving each one their own train. Passenger generation is based on the two Cities' populations and distance plus other explicit bonuses. One train sitting there for a long time to pick up a bunch will pick up the 50'th one just as soon as using 50 trains. As long as a train with space is at the Station to pick them up, you will get them all. Granted, a train with just a single car will travel a tiny bit faster than one with a couple of passenger cars and 50 passengers, but that's pretty minor.

Still by the time you are doing this, money isn't much trouble so more trains are fine, but I don't think it will be much quicker.

I've compared times on passenger missions. 100% of the time, I can do it faster by spamming tons of trains. I get your math, and logic - but the game doesn't seem to hold to that (Even though it makes perfect sense to me lol). I don't think it has anything to do with the speed, I suspect it has something to do with the % of passengers willing/wanting to go to the said destination. And probably how long they are willing to wait.

I don't know how they have it coded, but it seems like one train going to one specific place doesn't always take 100% of the potential passengers. I feel (Totally gut feel, and some observation here. No inside info or deep study) like what may be happening is: a % are willing to go to "X". Lets say 50% just for easy conversation. So you have 10 passengers, 5 are willing to go to "X". As soon as you take those 5, your train is done loading and goes. I feel like the logic then takes the remaining people and set's 50% of the remaining willing to go to "X" the next time a train tries to load passengers. Next train picks those up immediately. That would give you 5+3 (ok 2.5 but I assume they round up since you cant take 1/2 a person lol). So now in two back to back trains you have 8 people traveling. You are left with 2. Again - they split the total passengers to 50%, next train picks up 1. Leaving you with 1. You load another train, and 50% of 1 rounds up to 1, you have another passenger. So that's 4 trains loaded back to back, and you end up with all 10 of the initial set of passengers. (Plus any new passengers generated by then).

Again, I don't know that is what is happening, but it seems like it. I do know, if I spam a bunch of trains, I always complete the passenger missions much faster than if I don't. I did a quick test just now on the South America, Outside capital mission where you need to deliver 1000 passengers as the first task. Both set up exactly the same. Station with signals, 1 supply tower and the only loc you start with.

Run 1: 1 train, passengers and mail only - passengers set for priority from Buenos Aires (I forgot to do the same for the other town). There were 7 cars /available first run, it picked up 4. Then when it returned there were 6 available, 3 were picked up. It was the same 6/3 from then on. Took until 8/17/1900 to hit 1000 passengers. No train ever took more than 1/2, and no train was ever full of just passengers.

Run 2: same layout, only with 14 trains immediately spammed. Same 6/4 passenger load on train 1, then 3/1 then 2/1. I didn't watch the numbers after that, but watched to see how many trains had a passenger car. From train 2 on they all had 1, except for 1 train which did have 0, and one train which had 2. All others had 1 car. Mission completed May 25th. Basically 3 months faster (or roughly 40% faster).

I'm not positive on the mechanics behind it, but I am positive it is faster.

[LiquidFire]

Oh I didn't say it - but I did the same passenger priority from Buenos Aires, not on the second town on run 2, and launched ALL trains in run 2 from Buenos Aires. If you wanted to cut the time down you could launch 7 from Buenos Aires and 7 from the other town and it would be even quicker. (But the goal wasn't to make it as quick as possible, rather to observe the loading and time taken only launching from Buenos Aires).

[chaney]

I think there is a difference here from what I intended to suggest and what you tested.

The key to fast completion is to get every potential passenger onto your train and then get them delivered. For 50 passengers, the first 49 going earlier won't get the task done faster as it completes only when number 50 arrives.

You can on a City screen see exactly how many passengers are generated that want to go from that City to each other City per week (basic game time scale.) It may have changed, but I'd be surprised. Some of us did some pretty careful testing and I never saw anything that didn't fit the data shown on that screen.

Your test with 1 train fills up to some default level (or after some default time) then leaves. The source Station is then left without a train to pick up passengers. Passengers will only wait at a Station without a train to board for 14 days. (That is not absolutely confirmed, but I do believe it to be the case and I'm not aware of any claims that it isn't true. The 100 year games probably have a longer tolerated waiting time.) After boarding a train, they seem to be willing to wait for ever. So with a single train running the route, not taking the full 50 in the first load, you will be losing a lot of potential passengers while the Station has no train. Your many trains approach likely prevents any loss of potential passengers, as there will be a train loading most of the time with only short gaps between. This difference fits the consensus understanding of the game mechanics.

What I suggest is to use a single train set to pick up 50 passengers in its first load. You can achieve that by setting the stop to allow only passengers and set a minimum number of cars as one approach. (Each car carries many passengers, depending on the date of the game. 50 passengers will probably need 2-3 cars as the final passenger car counts toward the leaving Min Cars before it is full. You can figure the passengers loaded by time if you pay close attention and then reduce Min Cars to let it depart when it has 50, or just let it go early and follow it up with a small second/final train.)

The potential passengers are generated at the same rate either way. Picking them all up is the key to fastest completion. Never leaving the Station without a train for them to board for more than 14 days - however you do it - should get them all boarded as fast as possible.

Beyond this scenario: from what I remember, SF and Promontory Point are on opposite edges of the map. In this case, you'll likely only get passengers going from SF with a final destination of Promontory Point to board. If either source or destination City is not at an edge, you can get extra passengers that are traveling from Cities that are "outside" of that route to board. Bring passengers from the opposite side of the source City to the source City, then send them to the destination City. Passengers wanting to go to the destination or beyond it in the same general direction can also use your train. They "should" all be counted. They initially were all counted, but that got broken when the Japan DLC came out. My understanding is that the bug was recently fixed so all are counted again. This is just a general tip for accelerating this kind of task when either City has some more distant neighbors to supplement the exact demand.

[LiquidFire]

Chaney - so by your theory, if we were to take a train from (again using Buenos Aires as it is a super easy test), set the minimum load to 8 cars, you are suggesting it would be just as fast as running 14, so long as there was never a gap of more than 14 days without a car in station. Given the specific task is counting deliveries both ways by that theory, I could start one train at both cities, min car count of 8 and it would be just as fast as starting 7 at each city.

Again, my experience is counter to that, but always glad to learn. I will give that a try and see how the numbers line up.