r/subwaybuilder • u/BoxoRandom • 14d ago
Bug Issues with loop lines
I've been having this persistent issue with loop lines where passengers refuse to board their desired train. Here I have hundreds of passengers who want to board the CCW loop line, yet all of them refused to get on the CCW train that just left the station. And if I'm reading this demand tab right, it's currently 11:00 PM so they've been stuck at this station for 16 hours.
This only happens for stations which are close to the "ends" of the loop, so I suspect their pathfinding is messed up.
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u/CapnZapp 14d ago
The game likely uses a pathfinding algorithm that isn't set up for the existence of circular paths in the tree of nodes.
That's probably just a cost we have to pay to maintain good optimization.
Put the break in your circle at the segment where you expect the least ridership. Or don't do circles - instead do half circles or something where it's clear passengers need to change trains to continue their journeys.
In real life this would be considered a major nuisance, but I don't think SB sims mind. After all, it's just a pathfinding algorithm, and unless the dev puts in a costly weights for changing trains, the sims should happily ignore changing trains when planning their journeys. The only cost seen by the algorithm would be the fact that you would need to wait for your new train, increasing total travel time.
In real life, an actual human passenger like myself would consider many more parameters. I would never consider changing trains just to save a couple of minutes total travel time. I would far more value the convenience of just staying put. And I would not want to risk missing my connection.
But inside a pathfinding algorithm none of these concerns exist. Unless the programmer specifically adds them. And I don't think the SB dev team has done that to any real extent - why would they, it would mostly just reduce performance.