Ferries, network speeds and the infinite commuter loop

[monkeywater 910]

I have pretty much neglected ferries the entire time I have had this game.

A few questions:

Are infinite commuter bugs possible with ferries?  For example 4 separate islands, each on their own tile.  Is it possible for ferries to set up an infinite loop between the islands

What is the speed of the ferry network vs other networks?

I have been unable to find many ferry terminal lots.  Do these exist?

 

Thanks

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

1 minute ago, monkeywater said:

Are infinite commuter bugs possible with ferries?

Yep. And as I recall they are the most likely to cause such a loop.

 

1 minute ago, monkeywater said:

What is the speed of the ferry network vs other networks?

Ferries are infinitely fast. The little boat is just the pretty animation and is not tied to the speed of the actual travel.

 

2 minutes ago, monkeywater said:

I have been unable to find many ferry terminal lots.  Do these exist?

I've not looked, but I'll be watching for an answer to this.

[monkeywater 910]

Thank you for the answers!

Infinitely fast!  Wow.  So a region of islands would actually be more efficient than the best rail network for commute times.  This changes things......

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

I believe technically there is a Transit Switch Cost which means getting on the boat takes a few microseconds, but once it leaves the pier it arrives at the next one immediately.

[rsc204 21,869]

Indeed Ferries don't work like most other networks, where the distance travelled is a factor. As far as we can tell, in order to make Ferries work, sims just get transported from one terminal to another fairly instantly.

Whilst there aren't a huge number of terminals out there, they certainly do exist. PEG made some, fitting in with the CDK and other sets. There are some others too, I'd have a search on the exchanges/google, it's bound to bring up some options.

[Terring 6,476]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Ferries are infinitely fast.

It's pity that this ability of the ferries is available only on water and only with the ferries. If we could find a way to have instant transportation of every kind, we would have functional heliports-airports-vertiports-spaceports-teleporters-wormholes-anything transporting Sims (and maybe industrial goods as well) anywhere in the map.

[markussaage 762]

Ferries?! Here there are:

Please keep in mind, that for ferry terminals to work properly, the depth of the water can't be too shallow, otherwise the terminal won't work. I always lower the terrain and flatten it before I place ferry terminals.

The transit switch cost should be set to 0.25... That's according to the NAM settings.

Kind regards!

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

2 hours ago, Terring said:

If we could find a way to have instant transportation of every kind, we would have functional heliports-airports-vertiports-spaceports-teleporters-wormholes-anything transporting Sims (and maybe industrial goods as well) anywhere in the map.

I'm guessing this could be modded to be fairly close to instant if one changed the speeds of each network to a maximum value and removed the delays at intersections. However, all of that being so interwoven into the game design it could create other problems I can't begin to guess at.

[monkeywater 910]

I did some testing regarding the ferry speeds.

One one side of a large map I zoned some residential

On the other I zoned some jobs (farms). 

 

These two areas were connected by road, rail, HSR, and a long water trench with ferry terminals on either side.

I would then interupt all networks (eg cut road, rail and HSR, leaving ferry only) to see what the commute time graph said.

The results are below (in red box).

This does not seem to match with ferries having zero commute time.  Both rail and HSR are apparently faster, and surprisingly, HSR is not ~2x as fast as rail. ( I was under the impression HSR speed was 240, rail was 140 and roads 50)

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

@monkeywater This is a copy of an older post of mine. I'd kind of forgotten about it until I saw your test.

I decided to gather some empirical data on the Ferry travel speed versus Driving the whole distance on a Road. I also tested @11241036's (Nearly) Invisible Underwater Power Connection Lots which work perfectly as advertised.

To start I created a river and set it up so the Sims have two possible routes on which to travel from their homes to the farming jobs:

 

Power grid showing it does travel underwater:

 

Traffic view to better illustrate where the Roads are:

 

Run some time and sure enough all the Simizens prefer the water route:

 

Disclaimer first: I've set the Commute Time Graph Scaling Factor way, way higher than the NAM default. That's ok because all we want to see is a comparison using the same scale (whatever that might be).

 

And here's how it looks with all workers riding the boat:

 

Next I bulldozed out a section of the Road leading from the Ferry to the Sims's agricultural endeavors:

 

In time they all take the Road route to work:

 

Commute time graph updated:

 

Rebuild the Road section and they start altering their route:

 

And in time they are all sailing again:

 

Final commute time graph:

 

So, it is obvious that using the Ferries are a quicker means of travel.  The increase wasn't as much as I expected, but could prolly be attributed to the Transit Switch Entry Cost of entering and exiting the Ferry. It does make sense that there should be a delay of loading the boat while waiting for it to fill up before it leaves its little port.

Attached is the large city tile in case you want to conduct further tests. This will have a dependency of the underwater power transfer conduit thinger.

City - Ferry vs Road.sc4

Edit: A little Oops. I had misaligned the underwater power transfer so I plopped a single grass lot to conduct the power from the Windmill to it. Turns out I used one of my own modded lots and so it'll show up invisible without my file. Hidden picture of its placement:
 

Spoiler

 

(And it looks like I placed the underwater lots backwards. Those little concrete gizmos should be on the banks of the river and not out in the middle.)

Lighthouse Grass Cost Minus One.dat (If downloading the attached city tile file.)