High Speed Rail

[dogsaregreat 3]

Will a high speed rail network benefit my region or is it just eye-candy? Is it difficult to work with? How far apart should the cities to which I connect it be? Does the pack come with stations or do I need to download those separately?

  Edited September 25, 2012 by dogsaregreat  

[SimGuy23 67]

It's just draggable monorail - with a different skin. People create large stations for it, but it doesn't effect the monorail network. It's just eyecandy, but it makes you think. And no; the speed of the monorail does not change.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Will a high speed rail network benefit my region or is it just eye-candy?

High Speed Rail is just monorail, so whatever benefits you'll get out of HSR will be identical to that of Monorail.

[danthaman4671 133]

How about ground high speed rail?

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

How about ground high speed rail?

Same thing; It's Monorail. The only benefit is that you can have sunken Monorail, but there are no other benefits.

[dogsaregreat 3]

Will monorail skins affect HSR and vice versa?

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Will monorail skins affect HSR and vice versa?

HSR is Monorail, and the trains used are the same for both networks, so yes.

[Cefien 361]

i'm sorry for going out of topic but, since it's talking about rail, then i wanna ask about Tram...i mean, i consider myself as a newbie cause i recently played SC4, and i dont know just how to build its rail system for i couldn't found it in my road and rail transportation menu. and plus i dont even have a single Tram station within transportaion menu. The funny thing is, this tram puzzles is available in my NAM i've downloaded before. so my questions is obviously:

Is it available only when you download it?? or is it missing from my transportation menu???

[cogeo 960]

GLR (Ground Light Rail) as well as Draggable GLR, GLR-in-Avenue, GLR-in-Road, GLR-on-Road and GLR-on-Street, are all part of the NAM, and fully contained within the NAM download. Either you have chosen to not install them, or you have an older NAM controller in your plugins. Reinstall NAM, after fully unistalling the previous version(s) (better use the BSC Cleanitol to detect and remove all older plugins). I have also made some additional puzzle pieces (Fenced GLR), get them from the STEX, if you are interested. No stations are contained in NAM. so you have to download and install them yourself.

[Fatherted 129]

They are at the top of the Misc. Transit menu (below rail).

[Dudely 10]

The key is realizing that Ground Light Rail and Tram are the same thing.

[Haljackey 17,302]

Here's a simple break down of the transit networks in SC4:

Road networks (car, pedestrian, bus, freight truck): road, street, one-way road, avenue, NWM additions, ground/elevated highway, RHW.

Rail networks (passenger train, freight train): rail

Mass transit networks (commuter rail): elevated rail, ground light rail/tram, subway

Monorail networks (monorail): monorail, High Speed Rail, Bullet Train/Shinkansen

...And then there's the ferry network

  Edited September 30, 2012 by Haljackey  

[617squad 52]

if my memory serves correct, the shinkasen/bullet train mod does affect monorail speeds; if only a tiny bit.

[Haljackey 17,302]

if my memory serves correct, the shinkasen/bullet train mod does affect monorail speeds; if only a tiny bit.

Back in the day the BTM had it's own traffic simulator to increase the speed of the monorail network among other tings. In 2009 it was taken out and the mod was tweaked to be compatible with the new NAM simulators. Today its a simple re-skinning of the monorail network for those of us who don't want the tacky look of the monorail tracks or go through the work to build HSR with all those starter pieces.

[danthaman4671 133]

if my memory serves correct, the shinkasen/bullet train mod does affect monorail speeds; if only a tiny bit.

Back in the day the BTM had it's own traffic simulator to increase the speed of the monorail network among other tings. In 2009 it was taken out and the mod was tweaked to be compatible with the new NAM simulators. Today its a simple re-skinning of the monorail network for those of us who don't want the tacky look of the monorail tracks or go through the work to build HSR with all those starter pieces.

Tacky?

[z1 566]

...And then there's the ferry network

Ah yes, ferries. Actually, ferries don't have their own network; to some extent they share a network with freight trucks, but the ferries don't really use it (not traveling on land and all that). They're essentially a travel type without a network.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I've always thought that ferries were instantaneous. The eye-candy is exactly that.

[danthaman4671 133]

I was wondering, where did the design for the HSR tracks come from?

[Haljackey 17,302]

I was wondering, where did the design for the HSR tracks come from?

That answer is probably buried deep in this thread:

That's where all the HSR development started and led to the creation of the HSRP. This project was eventually integrated with the NAM.

[z1 566]

I've always thought that ferries were instantaneous.

It's hard to tell. On one hand, they do appear to have infinite capacity - definitely not the capacity of 1000 that the Prima Guide claims. (This is even taking the 400% capacity bug into account.) I've seen evidence in support of fast ferries in that if you put ferry terminals right next to a bridge, a lot of the bridge traffic would be diverted to the ferries. Maxis obviously didn't want to make ferries travel at anything like a "normal" ferry speed; the poor Sims would use up all of their meager six minutes of commute time before they even got off the ferry. But is the speed truly infinite? We can't say for sure, because it's hardwired into the executable. But the fact that not all bridge traffic is diverted to the ferries implies that their speed may be faster than that of cars on a road, but definitely less than infinite. In support of this, the Prima Guide claims that their speed is 96 kph. The Prima Guide is correct on the speeds of all other travel types; my guess is that it's correct here as well.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

That speed makes them ground-effect amphibians or hydroplanes with one what of an acceleration. If there was a hull in the water similar to the automata for ferries, the speed would be a lot slower. There is a standard formula for boats under 65 Ft, and if I remember it correctly it is 1.34 times the square root of the length at the waterline. The magic constant is for fresh water without considerations for tides or currents.

[Fatherted 129]

How do they "share" with freight trucks?

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

How do they "share" with freight trucks?

How does what "share" with freight trucks?

[z1 566]

How do they "share" with freight trucks?

If you look in the exemplars for the Traffic Volume Data View, you'll see that the network IDs for both freight trucks and ferries are the same (even though ferries don't really have a network). The code in the game clearly special-cases the ferries so that they don't get confused with freight trucks, but it's not 100% effective. To see this, look up close at a section of your city that has heavy freight truck traffic. Go to the Traffic Volume Data View and select "Freight Truck". You should see some coloring of the freight truck routes, indicating freight truck volume. Now select a different travel type that doesn't use roads, such as "Monorail". The coloring from the road routes will disappear, since monorail trains don't travel on roads. Now select "Ferry", and watch the roads closely. The colors shown in the "Freight Truck" view will briefly reappear. Then the code that differentiates ferries from freight trucks will kick in, and the volume color will disappear from the roads.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Just what did that mean? If you mean how does freight get on ships, the answer is that if the port is enabled for rail and/or roads, it will go there if the port is faster than taking the freight to the edge.

[Fatherted 129]

Thank you! Actually, I did notice that. They must have to share a preset network because the ferry uses none, and it would be a waste to redo it.

[jdenm8 362]

Just what did that mean?

Ferries use the network code for Freight Trucks with some back-end code hacks to keep them separate.

[NCGAIO 562]

Coming from observations of Swamper77... differently of common networks where path is determined on the tiles , the ferry has run through set of connection points (port) between batches.

Depending on the group specified occupant (0x1308 to Car Ferry or 0x1309 to Passenger Ferry ) the use of these connections on lot determines the conversion of input and output.

TAG1x1x3_ferrytermin_2C52

TAG1x1x3_ferrytermout_2C53

The placement of the lots TAG1x1x3_ferrryopp-2C54 determines the connection (path) and also the appearance of automata that can not use "Folow Road" (there is no defined path on the tiles) and must always be seen at the level of the water.

ports TGI

6534284a c977c536 2c540000

6534284a c977c536 2c530000

6534284a c977c536 2c520000

Regarding the similarity to the Data View ...

". Ports are setup similar to the airports in terms of Functioning. They use a set of exemplars Developer (1 for the buildings, one for the Lots) and have exemplars for each building and Lot (1 each for every port Functioning Lot). The game handles the transfer of the freight from trucks to the port. Basically the game views the ports the neighbor connections, the way out of town for the office."

Ferry traffic and other questions about watercraft automata

Treatment as "neighbor connections" maybe can be confirmed by failures like this ....

"Here's an outline of the situation, I want to cross the river and not use the bridge since that's too invasive. Instead I opted for a small ferry and ran into trouble ......

...... WMP sims street ferries and travel abroad, ie leave the tile instead of crossing the river.

Custom ferries not working properly

  Edited October 4, 2012 by NCGAIO  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

How utterly arcane. I wonder if SC 2013 will have working ferries and intercity freight? Garbage by rail? Garbage barges? Ports?

[NorthStarDC4M 8]

From the existing previews Garbage Handling seems pretty rudimentary (local use garbage trucks, dumps and incinerators), and there is a water transportation option on the transport menu...