Transportation Suggestions

[Arakash]

Ive created this thread in order to generally discuss suggestions for improving the transportation system ingame.

Primarily, i think we can suggest how certain types/places/ways of transportation would/could be cheaper than others.

Edit : changed some of this to reflect comments

My first suggestion, would be that one of the factors which should effect transportation costs is the size of the two cities you are transporting between.
I base this on the assumption that larger cities will have larger scale transportation networks between them, so you would get cheaper transportation through the general economy of scale principle (the more that something gets done, the cheaper it is).

Anyone else want to share a suggestion on this topic or comment on this one?

[Frankschtaldt]

I'd be curious to know how the game calculates freight now!

I would think that the cost of intercontinental freight would be more reliant on both cities proximity to the coast than the size of the city. Nearly every coastal city in the world has a port, the majority of them were built there for that exact purpose.

I would suggest (and to be honest this might be a bit to complicated for a game) that the freight cost should be calculated as:
distance to neares coastal city x land freight rate
+
Transfer to sea shipping service cost
+
Distance between the coastal cities x sea freight rate
+
Transfer back to land shipping service
+
Distance from nearest coastal to destination city x land freight rate.

Based on my experience (admittedly not automotive in nature) this is basically how it actually works.
The sea freight would be fairly flat regardless of where the freight was too/from but the transfer and land freight rates would depend on local per capita and labor wages.


Edit: oops! Forgot a "coastal somewhere in the first paragraph.

[Arakash]

I'd be curious to know how the game calculates freight now!

I would think that the cost of intercontinental freight would be more reliant on both cities proximity to the coast than the size of the city. Nearly every coastal city in the world has a port, the majority of them were built there for that exact purpose.

I would suggest (and to be honest this might be a bit to complicated for a game) that the freight cost should be calculated as:
distance to neares coastal city x land freight rate
+
Transfer to sea shipping service cost
+
Distance between the coastal cities x sea freight rate
+
Transfer back to land shipping service
+
Distance from nearest coastal to destination city x land freight rate.

Based on my experience (admittedly not automotive in nature) this is basically how it actually works.
The sea freight would be fairly flat regardless of where the freight was too/from but the transfer and land freight rates would depend on local per capita and labor wages.


Edit: oops! Forgot a "coastal somewhere in the first paragraph.

You made an excellent point there, that it may have more to do with costal proximity. There is an Era specific focus on Railroads that may also be very relevant though. I think a lot of transportation in this era was highly Rail focused in more developed areas, as rail was one of the big things that drove the industrial growth in the late 19th century.
Im not disputing your analysis, im just suggesting that the era was a lot more rail focused than the current one.

The economy of scale i mentioned should perhaps be a secondary rather than any kind of primary determination of cost. So vehicles may be cheaper per unit to transport in large quantities, but the infrastructure concerns would be far more important.

You also provided a great list for Transportation implementation there, i would be happy to see that ingame.

On the actual implementation ingame, i was discussing this with Eric on IRC not long ago, and i believe he suggested it was currently mostly a cost per mile kind of calculation. I'm betting he will jump in and explain it more clearly though.