From the absolutely necessary to the extremely ambitious. Please note that I would put performance, stability, train and route quality, and varied timetables above all but points 1-4, but these are just some ideas Bugs 1. Passengers should not appear on the track 2. Passengers should not fall through the platform, the earth, or any floor 3. Passengers should not be seen on ECS trains or trains in sidings 4. Passengers should not cluster together unnaturally, often blocking the player General behaviour 5. There should be more space on trains for the player to sit 6. Passengers should be more varied 7. Passengers should walk on and off trains more naturally, and open the doors where appropriate Guard mode 8. Passengers should have tickets for realistic off-map destinations 9. Passengers should have different ticket types, e.g. railcards, passes, 1st class, train-specific, etc On stations 10. Passengers should enter and exit the station 11. Passengers should appear to use facilities in the station, e.g. ticket machines, shops, waiting rooms, seats, etc 12. Passengers should cross between platforms Timetable intelligence 13. Passengers should not stand on platforms that do not have a service 14. Passengers should not stand on platforms when there is no train for a considerably long time 15. If a platform has only one service, repeated, passengers should clear the platform, for it to be gradually refilled before the next train 16. Passenger volume on trains and stations should reflect known traffic patterns 17. At busy times, there should be standing passengers on the train On the train 18. Passengers should use facilities on the train, like the buffet car, toilets, luggage racks Truly intelligent passengers 19. Each passenger should have a defined start and end destination (which can be on or off map) and their behaviour in all points above should reflect that. 20. Passengers should change trains if this fits their route. Again, this is all very ambitious, and not high priority, but just some suggestions for what could be neat.
Thanks for pointing me to this thread, I've not been as active on the forums lately and completely overlooked it Wholeheartedly agree with all of the points you mentioned. In an age where we actually have to tune down AI to keep it from becoming too intelligent, the current passenger behaviour in a "simple" game like this is just shameful Especially point 1. with the passengers on the track. As has been pointed out in other threads already, if this gets even worse it might even get DTG into hot water with one licensee or another... Your point 19. is a particularly interesting thought. Games like the Transport Fever franchise have been doing this basically from day one, some even older games like for example Tropico too, albeit on a smaller scale. Each resident has a home, a workplace and a shopping/leisure location and wants to get from one to the other. On Transport Fever, it works fine and without issue to calculate this logic for thousands of individual residents on a map. Shouldn't be too hard to do for a meager TSW route then. Especially since it could be dumbed down here a little, like: Spawn an NPC at Frankfurt Hbf, southern entrance. Give them a destination, let's say, Wiesbaden Hbf, main entrance. Now all the NPC has to do is calculate the fastest way there. That might be a direct S-Bahn service, or maybe taking an ICE to Mainz, and change there to a regional train to Wiesbaden Coupled with a limits system, i.e. which station on the route can spawn/accept how many passengers at a particular time of the day, and you've got a pretty solid passenger guidance system I'd say. With some effort this would solve pretty much all the points you listed under "Timetable intelligence" too
Having a passenger logic like this could also add another layer of realism. Imagine this: Your train is noticeably delayed for some reason, let's say 10 minutes. When the delay increases/decreases, your passengers recalculate their options and many might leave your train at some stop if a quicker alternative to their destination is available there If we want to spin this thought even further, this could also factor into onboard or platform announcements
I’m finding the passengers the most annoying part of game play at the moment so I really like this suggestion
