Everyone here agrees that there are problems with the traffic system, and quite a few suggestions have come up. I want people to gather suggestions here- NOT complaining about the problems.
Here are a few of my ideas

-customizing garages. i.e. making them only for use for teamsters or other proffesions. ths will help to ease congestion by stopping certain people entering the road system.
-priority, being able to create priority lanes for industry to speed up goods transportation, these would cost extra.
-I like the ideas for bus statons and taxi services too.

Are you suggesting that perhaps someone could say that really the game would be more playable if not every adult citizen and every tourist had complete and unlimted access to garages?


Suggestions:

• Leave the programs for buildings alone I'm sorry, but after all this time I don't remember what I meant.
• Change programs for units/persons
  • Restrict uneducated and HS use of garages to when in work status only
  • Lift restriction on tourists for return to accomodation
• Establish a "road side" wait period for Teamsters and El Prez Limo. Perhaps a month.

Yes - there are a lot of things going with those. But study them a bit - O.K.?

(20-12-2009 07:15 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  Are you suggesting that perhaps someone could say that really the game would be more playable if not every adult citizen and every tourist had complete and unlimted access to garages?

My word! What a thought?

Suggestions:

• Leave the programs for buildings alone
• Change programs for units/persons
  • Restrict uneducated and HS use of garages to when in work status only
  • Lift restriction on tourists for return to accomodation
• Establish a "road side" wait period for Teamsters and El Prez Limo. Perhaps a month.

Yes - there are a lot of things going with those. But study them a bit - O.K.?

so your saying that if you incorperated bus stops, then people would get to work via garages but everything else would require public transport? I quite like that idea

(20-12-2009 07:53 PM)TropicoJoe Wrote:  so you're saying that if you incorporated bus stops, ...

I really didn't mention buses (mass transit) at all. I didn't intend the changes I suggested to be dependent on the introduction of mass transit -- in history, people did walk (at least on small islands).

Nor did I address the army/rebel system. I think rebels' going to a garage to drive red jeeps to an attack (as if they were going to work) is a bit far-fetched. Rebels should walk.

(21-12-2009 03:21 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  Nor did I address the army/rebel system. I think rebels' going to a garage to drive red jeeps to an attack (as if they were going to work) is a bit far-fetched. Rebels should walk.

Yes. I still find that completely bizarre. You would think the state funded garage system would take note of that massive amount of red rebel jeeps parked in their garages.

Traffic is a total mess in this game, to the point where you have to go to exhaustive lengths in planning and execution just to make sure you can get paid regularly on a populous island.

One of the simple ways I would like to see this addressed is the addition of avenues. This way the left lane is always used for through traffic and the right lane is only used for traffic pulling over or turning onto the roadways.

The lack of a bus system in this game is also baffling.

Perhaps you shold be able to ban specific people form the roads- or groups of people. Like you could ban all non-supporters of presidente's regme from the road system, or a whole faction, or a job like unemploed.
Perhaps a stupd idea... would be funny listenng to jaunito though
"today el presidente baned the religeous facton from the roads, i persnaly agree with him but the leader of the facton say's god will send him to hell"

I just setup my roads so that I have an outside ring road around my city which connects to the industries and dock. the innter circle of roads are not connected to the ring road except in certain spots so they can get home. That helps me lots.

(21-12-2009 06:49 PM)FritoPatata Wrote:  

(21-12-2009 03:21 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  ... I think rebels' going to a garage to drive red jeeps to an attack (as if they were going to work) is a bit far-fetched. ...

Yes. I still find that completely bizarre. You would think the state funded garage system would take note of that massive amount of red rebel jeeps parked in their garages.

Traffic is a total mess in this game, ... One of the simple ways I would like to see this addressed is the addition of avenues. ...

The lack of a bus system in this game is also baffling.

O.K. - I supplied the emphasis in the quote.

FritoPatata's guide to roads & traffic has been recognized as the standard for T3. Yet here you can see his comments about Rebels driving to the attack and no multiple-user vehicles.

Will the T4 improvement on "road construction" really correct all the traffic problems? Has FritoPatata made a recent comment on the question of "traffic jams" and fire trucks passing rapidly to the emergency?

(15-05-2011 03:06 AM)rj66 Wrote:  CK;
They have a new forum for T4. You probably posted there, so you know that this is the wrong forum to continue an old discussion with a T4 connection. Make a new thread in the T4 forum and link in whatever quotations from this forum would be an appropriate method.

Oh yes! After the sermon I see the light. It is "not nice" to disturb old threads which are to R.I.P. and in obscurity.

In my momentary regression into sin against etiquette and civility, I thought perhaps I could rouse FritoPatata to comment on roadway imporvements in T4 by raising his old comment to the surface again.

A great sin, eh?

ouch. guess nobody notices that people STARVE if it take a very long time to get to a location (aka WALKING).
A very SIMPLE solution is just changing how cars/trucks move. Basically watch the traffic. you'll notice cars stopping, but very SLOW to start moving again. cars behind them suddenly have the same issue. cars in intersections and in buildings (garage, contruction, teamsters, etc) will REFUSE to get on the road if there is even a hint of a car driving by.

Simply by speeding up their reaction time (and max speed) would greatly improve traffic flow.

Too bad they have already announced they will do NOTHING about the traffic issues.

appropriate method.

Traffic management is part of the strategy of this game. Without the traffic element, island planning would become very straightforward and simple.

That said, I agree that public transportation has potential. And it is pretty hilarious that the rebels run first to a garage to swipe a car, before heading out on their missions. Yeah, changing that might be nice. Even more fun would be chase scenes, with a first-person view in the soldier's truck as they pursue the rebels out of the garage and through the city, exchanging gunfire as they cut through plazas and llama ranches. heh heh. Okay, back to reality. Transportation is just about right, just the way it is. Don't make it easier.

I think part of the problem again is that developers focus too much on buildings and not on people. Imagine now that poor farmers actually... you know... live near or at their farms? Like real people? Without having to live in shacks? And for the rest you have supermarkets.

You could even set it up in such a way that farmers (not teamsters) sell their surplus food at the local supermarket, which would justify their house rather than shack. Again, maybe I am asking for too much. And reduce some of their daily needs such as faith and healthcare. In reality people don't follow a meter on these things (particularly not healthcare), since you visit the doctor when you become ill, usually not before. I realize it might be hard to program an AI without a meter because it makes it easier for us players to track them, but instead maybe using a bit more sophisicated system would help here. For example, we already have that some citizens support the religious faction between 0-3. Instead of having a faith meter, a citizen will be more or less probable to visit a church depending on its faction support. A 3 person would therefore try to visit a local church very often and a 0 never at all or very rarely.

And yes, I always wondered why the heck any Tropican has access to a car even when they are obviously too poor to own one. This is an issue of game speed vs game animation balance. Same issue The Sims series suffer with sims brushing their teeth for 30 min, and unfortunately it is one that is very hard to solve.

LeaT,

I agree with basically everything in your post. Yeah, farmers commuting? It is a bit weird. That said, I think the game does a pretty good job creating an entertaining setting as-is. If I had my wishes, a car would be an expense for each Tropican, just like rent and entertainment. So if your farmers are poor, you would have to put everything within walking distance for them. At the same time, the services they can reach with a car would motivate them to make more money. It feels rather unrealistic to have a cluster of farms and a huge, multi-story garage dominating the landscape.

I think some of your thoughts actually are addressed: People have importance meters, in addition to need meters. Presumably, a person with a high religion need will "recharge" their faith more often and also is more likely to be in the religious faction. That's my assumption -- I don't know exactly how those mechanics work. Some time I will experiment with this: Make enemies of a faction (example: the religious faction) and systematically imprison, exile, or assassinate their leaders and senior members. I think you can actually cultivate your population in such a way that everybody left alive has a very low Faith need, and therefore you wouldn't need many churches. This trait *should* be passed along to younger generations of Tropicans. Of course, all this assumes that you can stay in power while persecuting a fair portion of your peeps! Ah yes, Experiments in Tyranny...

Yes, don't take my moaning as I don't enjoy the game - I do! But, I think some aspects are just tossed in there to make the gameplay for the player simpler but in reality makes no sense because it could be solved in a completely different way. I just don't like how Tropico prefers the player to develop urban areas I suppose, instead of allowing the development of rural areas as well. I know, Tropico is about the development of a poor banana republic, but truth remains, a lot of banana republics consist of a large rural population. So in reality this population is only represented through their work but they don't actually lead their life as rural people.

Rather than a whole new transport system.. they just need to allow multiple tropicans to travel in one car. At the moment tropicans turn into cars so they can't 'share'. If they shared, there would be less cars on the road.

plus, I do think you should be able to decide if tourists are allowed to use cars from the garage, if not they can just use taxis. (a good way to lower unemployment imo)