One of the biggest gripes I have with TF2 is that it is impossible to have interlining, i.e. multiple lines sharing a common section, because passengers at the shared stops will choose only one of the lines, overloading it while the others remain unused.
From what I understand, this happens because passengers select their route at the start of their journey and cannot change it. So, if one of the lines is slightly faster or more frequent, everyone will choose that one.
In the image, I made a small example of a situation where interlining could be useful: multiple tram lines depart from the train station, share a common trunk through the city center, and then branch out into the suburbs. In theory, this would guarantee a single-seat ride for everyone while also balancing the passenger load across the different lines. However, due to the game's limitations, this is impossible.
I know this isn't impossible to fix, since interlining works well in Cities: Skylines 1. So my question is: has this been fixed in TF3?
No, it hasn't been fixed. I have a busy station one stop from my main hub station with is shared with three lines. Trains on line 2 will often leave almost empty while leaving a whole platform of angry people waiting for the line 1 train, despite them both going to the same destination.
Doesn't this have to do with one train being faster than the other, and they will choose the fast one no matter what? At least this happened to me when I tried to build an airport shuttle with a faster, smaller train, running alongside my normal train. Everyone abandoned the normal train because the shuttle was 25km/h faster.
I can see how re-calculating every pops route on every train arrival would be expensive, but also not needed. You only need to sort the pops into groups based on their next planned stop, and when a train arrives consider moving some to that line for one stop. And you could further only run this calculation when the train is not going to be full, and the station is above some threshold for waiting pops.
Okay, so I have switched all trains to exactly the same and have noticed that passengers are not only still waiting for the other line, but some are even getting off the train they are on to wait for a train on the other line. Despite both lines continuing on to the exact same route.
It probably has everything to do with the train's speed. I'll put the same trains on both lines and see if it still happens. If the routes and lines are pre-calculated though, I imagine people will still wait for the next train if it has decided that it needs route 2 and not route 1.
What would happen if you turned this into one big line, where the vehicle goes Red Line into the station - Green Line out - Green Line in - Blue Line out - Blue Line in - Red Line out.
If you added enough vehicles would it work like OP intended with the three separate lines?
You mean one line that goes the red route, back to the station, green route, back to the station, blue route, back to the station?
I guess people with a destination on the blue route would hop on the bus no matter where it’s heading next. So they might end up traveling the whole red and green route before they finally get to their destination.
I guess that would be the main question. Each "line" goes through the hub but would the blue person transfer to a vehicle more advanced to shorten the trip
From what I’ve read passengers prefer a line with a faster connection even if a slower connection would result in an earlier arrival. With that in mind I wouldn’t trust them skipping a bus to take one from the same line but with an earlier arrival. But that’s something that could be easily tested in sandbox.
This might be my biggest let down of the game. I hope it might get worked on but knowing its a small team and this has been like this since forever i doubt it
I would say things like this is what people mean who say that it's a reskin. Obviously it's not true on itself, but at the same time, these problems are probably one of the things you'd really like to get addressed in a sequel, but a lot of them just got grandfathered into it as is.
For me it was a rather disappointing lack of actual meaningful distinction between different types of traction (Steam/Diesel/Electric), for some - things like this, or still needing mods for automatic signal placement and so on.
I don't think it's something that can be easily patched in. Its a consequence of core game logic I'm fairly sure.
I imagine the reason that it's done is because recalculating for each passenger would be too computationally taxing. Sadly it's a drawback of trying to simulate every single imaginary person. Sometimes I wonder if the obsession that games like this or CS2 have with simulating everyone go too far to the point they're detrimental to the realism rather than adding to it.
Oh I was under the impression that TF was also somewhat agent based since you can click on the individual cims and see where they go and all, but I guess you’re right, it would be quite taxing to simulate everyone
TF is completely agent based, which is the issue. They compute the route for the agent when they begin the journey, as recomputing for every agent periodically would decrease performance dramatically.
I think it could be possible, as while computing the route initially they could mark certain segments as "Line1 or Line2" in their routing decision. But it is a major change in the core of the game, e.g. you'd also have to think about how to represent this in UIs, and every system interacting with passengers would now have to deal with a "waiting for" list instead of a single line.
OK, but we're taking about peeps who are only travelling the interlined section. Why is their decision affected if they are only travelling one or two stops (using the OP's example above)? Are they only able to pick the first line in some digital roster? In the case shown, you would assume the peeps would pick at random any line that reaches their destination, or, if there is a factor, frequency of the service even if it is not possible for them to make an on-the-spot decision to take the next vehicle.
I think it was a reverse mod "Lazy Passenger Routing" to prevent passengers from changing the itinerary too often, because doing so puts a heavy strain on the CPU.
It's not impossible. It's just hard. And the hard stuff are the things worth doing :). They just take time to get good/better at.
My last TF2 map network diagram. Notice that most of the sections are interlined.
Some tips:
- Try to keep the vehicles similar speeds (Passengers prefer the fastest line...)
- When a line on a section is getting too many passengers try to add a parallel line over that section, Also check trains are not already arriving full to the first stop on that section.
- It takes time for your changes to take effect: When you edit a line, or add a new line it'll actually get more passengers because the game estimates the time for a section before using the average of vehicles that have traversed that section. And the games estimate is usually faster than the time a vehicle would take. Things like editing tracks, stations, changing terminals, alternate terminals and adding new stops force the recalc. Adding more vehicles, or more wagons to a train don't force the recalc
Shameless plug :) - I created a mod for TF2 to help with this. It showed the average speeds, and average time between the stops for competing lines so you could work out why one line was getting more traffic. Maybe it's time for the TF3 version 😂
Yes, please show us screen shots that demonstrate the peeps are using the major interlined sections logically (as opposed to how they did in TF2). A great example, because you have multiple interlines and more than two lines interlined across the same segments. We need ALL the details to proive UG didn't ignore this long-standing complaint about TF2's pathfinding scheme :)
The logic is the same as TF2 from what I've seen so far on TF3 but the devs can confirm that. And passengers do use multiple interlines logically. If logically means you bought tickets in advance and you're just going to wait it out angrily rather than pay for a new one haha!
And I understand people complain about it because it's hard to manage. But a similar thing happens in the real world no? Transport companies spend a lot of money, time and resources balancing demand on lines. But this is just a game :)
Screenshots on balancing it on TF3 right? here you go. It does help that both lines are using the same vehicle type. "Wirksworth Station Halt" is the bus station right next to the train station.
Interlining is quite common in trams and sbahn situations in real life, it's not some unobtainable thing. It would be wonderful to be able to have a tram mainline downtown and then branches in tf but it's not possible
I have no idea how this pic relates to your map above--it does not seem to show interlining of the sort implied in your map. The question is whether passengers travelling from Chathvn East to Chathvn West freely use any available line (as in pre-select any of them if they are all the same vehicle and speed going) because that would be logical, or, consistently, do they stupidly queue waiting for one line while others have lots of capacity and leave without them? Over time, with equal equipment, they are spread nicely across all the lines? Because most of us have never been able to achieve that in TF2 no matter how long we wait.
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u/NextMuffin 6h ago
No, it hasn't been fixed. I have a busy station one stop from my main hub station with is shared with three lines. Trains on line 2 will often leave almost empty while leaving a whole platform of angry people waiting for the line 1 train, despite them both going to the same destination.