Darkslide

Hi. I just got into this game and mod (thanks for all your amazing work!) and got very confused by the way the traffic simulator models the effect of intersections, especially the interplay with NWM and FTL networks. I think I understand how it works now, but... I'd just kinda like to understand *why* you guys chose to do it that way? It seems to create very arbitrary effects and doesn't really make sense to me. As I understand (and seems to match my in-game observations), the natural slowdown of traffic at intersections is modeled by setting the second and third ITCE value to 0.2 and 0.4, which means tiles one or two steps away from the actual intersection see the congestion by having their capacity artificially reduced. The actual intersection instead has its capacity increased to 1.25 because that's used to boost capacity on certain networks (the DIP thing). This would make sense to me if it worked consistently on all networks, but the problem is that it doesn't work for DIP networks at all (like most NWM roads or turning lanes) because the DIP tile itself already counts as an "intersection", and the game can only apply one ITCE modifier at a time. So the DIP tiles always have 1.25 capacity even if they're one tile over from the "real" intersection. What this means in practice is that if I use a normal road to connect to my intersection, I see a very heavy congestion effect (0.2 is a pretty harsh factor). But if I upgrade the road from normal RD-2 to NRD-4 or ARD-3 or almost any other NWM road variation, the intersection effect suddenly disappears completely (so while an ARD-3 is "supposed" to be 25% better than a RD-2, it actually feels 1.25 / 0.2 = over six times as good in practice). When I instead try to add a stretch of turning lane in front of my "problematic" intersection (which would sound like a realistic way to improve intersection congestion in real life), it doesn't really do anything useful because while the FTL tiles themselves are now free of congestion (thanks to their 1.25 DIP bonus), the normal road tile right before the turn lane starts now suddenly gets 0.2 capacity (even though it is far away from the "real" intersection and realistically an opening turn lane should not cause traffic to slow down so much there). So FTLs unintuitively don't reduce congestion at all, they just "push it down the road" (literally). Unless you build an entire stretch between two intersections out of turning lane tiles, then the whole intersection penalty magically disappears again. So it kinda feels like this system just arbitrarily punishes you for using default networks and makes NWM/FTL networks incredibly overpowered by bypassing a major balance mechanic entirely (which is sad for me because I like to use Tram-in-Avenue and 3x3 roundabouts a lot, and those don't support intersections with NWM networks or turning lanes). I understand that there's no "better" way to model intersection effects without reducing all DIP networks to a cosmetic-only change, but if the solution is so broken then why try to model them at all? I feel like at that point it would be better to just give up on trying to make intersections affect traffic completely, and then at least you get consistent results for other (non-intersection-effect) congestion (e.g. upgrading a RD-2 to an ARD-3 actually makes it 25% better, and not 500%). Would it make sense for me to change my files so that ITCE is 1.25,1.0,1.0? Or does that break the simulator completely because then traffic flows way too well?