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I've been discovering where CIM2 has changed from CIM1.

Is there a way to re-arrange the order of stops as there was in CIM1 ( by dragging the stop numbers up and down the order of stops ) in order to correct line diversions and unwanted routing?
 
... what I miss after three days of playing CIM2.

First, some kudos: Even in this state CIM2 shows a lot of potential, it is almost playable already :) Finally, a traffic simulator which has a rush hour, allows for ticket zones, supports time tables, etc. etc. Great job so far!

But several things drive me mad:

Edge scrolling: Yes, we need it now! :)

Time: Way too fast. Needs to be slowed down at least by half. Rush hour timetable next to pointless if it is afternoon when the trains that left the depot in the morning reach the other end of the line.

Metro placement: You write in the FAQ that you are working on it. I see two options: Make the roads semi-transparent, or better yet, allow to switch with the U key between three modes: normal view->underground with roads->underground w/o roads->back to normal. Also, building a loop is a pain. Could you include an "auto-loop" button?

Vehicle management: Very tedious. CIM1 was much more streamlined in this respect. Upgrading vehicles is really a pain, as is finding specific vehicles.

Depot/vehicle limits: Either raise the limits, or add the capacity of the "turn-around" depot at the other end of the route.

Line management: Inserting stops seems to be impossible.

Time tables: Could we have a SHIFT+COPY that copies all time tables (day, night, rush hour, ...) from the selected source in one click?

Multiple purpose stops: If I place a bus stop next to a tram stop, it would be cool to see those two stops merge into one.

Single line pricing: Could we have a "disable" here, so that I can force people buying zone tickets? Or will people automatically buy a zone ticket if a single line ticket is more expensive?

Autosave: Would be useful, even if the game (so far) never crashed for me.

Stop naming: Bus stop #42? Is this Leningrad? Why not default to the name of the next street or corner?

Behaviour: Sometimes, my little people behave quite stupid. I had them entering a tram on the stop before the depot, sitting in there while the vehicle was turning around, instead of waiting at the opposite stop (no, it wasn't raining). In another instance, I built a nice interchange stop where many tram and bus lines meet, only to have people leaving one stop earlier, walking two corners, and entering the bus at another stop which comes *before* the interchange. So, instead of sitting in the tram for another stop and then walking a few yards to the bus stop sitting right next to it, these guys walk two blocks, which takes much longer in the end. And not only one or two health fanatics, practically the whole vehicle behaves this way, so you can see large groups of people wandering around and cluttering smaller stops, while my nice and comfy interchange stop is practically deserted.

But again, great job so far, and really outstanding to get this level of support and commitment. I can really see this one to become the next benchmark for this kind of genre - like Transport Tycoon became the genre-defining game years ago.
 
i liked the game BUT biggest issue is Underground metros - if i can't place depot underground or loop
please put Turnback track (simllar one in CIM to turn trains back - this would save money on building depots
also stations - the stations don't look good - no footbridge or any such - i was not impressed so any chance that you could change them because i built 5 track station - each platform had own entrances - its was cluttering street
i prefered that modular stations (each part of station to be placed)
 
Depot/vehicle limits: Either raise the limits, or add the capacity of the "turn-around" depot at the other end of the route.
To be honest, the problem with the depot could be solved by having the cap apply to vehicle maintenance only. i.e. allow them to physically contain more vehicles, but only be able to simultaneously repair some of them.

Line management: Inserting stops seems to be impossible.
Click add stops button on line panel, select desired stop to add, stop is added at appropriate point in the schedule. Pretty sure that works (unless it broke since last I played)? :)
 
"1. By the time you get to laying tram and metro tracks it's night time which makes it extra difficult to get the fiddly bits right (even if you noticed the option to brighten night time)."
You can also construct when the game is paused.

"2. The ability to bulldoze errors on your first tram track appears to be switched off (although restored for the metro line)"
This could be improved, I'll add it to the fix list.

"3. It is almost impossible to see where you have and have not successfully laid tram tracks when you are zoomed out, leading to an almost inevitable unholy mess and total confusion."
Maybe you could build them when zoomed a little closer? The game cannot see when your tram tracks are laid like you want them to, so it's hard to add some kind of highlight that would only show when constructing.

"4. There seem to be some finicky rules about connecting sections of tram track and these are not explained at all. When you select a section of double track only one side is highlighted. Most often when I tried to get the track to go round a corner I managed to connect the right track to the left which scuppered the attempt and meant I had to restart the tutorial (no save). The tutorial should explain why it works this way, what you must do to get a regular double track to turn a corner, and how you select individual sides for special purposes, a loop for example. It's too easy to get completely wrong."
The double track can sometimes be quite a hassle! Basically, you have to click on the section you want to connect and then the section you want to connect it to. You are correct that the tutorial is not very specific on this, I'm sorry for that.

"5. I wasted a lot of time attempting to place a metro depot underground. The tutorial should explain you can't do this and suggest you put it on the edge of the city."
Underground depots were something the engine cannot handle, every building has to be on top of ground.

"6. There is no mention at all in the tutorial about the page-up/page-down level control which is necessary to know to build a metro in the tutorial. I found it eventually in the manual after much confusion and another restart (Grrrr)."
The page up and page down controls are visible in the tool tip when building metro tracks or roads, but apparently they are quite hard to see. I'll see what we can do about this.

"7. The one-click propose extend line, another click propose extend it further, double-click actually build it (and pay the money) mechanism is not obvious and should be explained."
You are correct, it should be explained. I'll see if I can add it to the tutorial.

"8. It is not explained that you have to have either a loop or a second depot to turn metro trains around. This is totally counter-intuitive as IRL all metro trains AFAIK can be driven from both ends. That's what happens on the London Underground anyway. More frustration and another restart (double Grrrr)"
I'll edit the tutorial! Sorry for your trouble!

"9. The final frustration, having established you had to make a loop to get your metro train to return to base and therefore establish a line, was getting the track to loop round and merge with itself. I tried this for ages trying to figure out why it wouldn't do it. I burned 200m in loans trashing the track and rebuilding it in various ways to no effect. I got really, really fed up with that red line that told me "Sorry, mate, no can do(ha ha ha)". Eventually I hit on the idea of trying to make a small spar off the target for the merge which to my amazement it let me do, and then to my relief it let me join loop end onto that. If this is some sort of bug IMO it needs fixing licketyspit, or if not the exact instructions for doing this need to spelled out in the tutorial in terms that idiots like me can understand."
I'm not sure if I understand your problem correctly, it could be a bug. I'll have a look at it. I personally build circular lines where the depot is connect with a triangle shaped instersection and they work really well.

Kind of you to reply. Just to clarify a few points about the tram and metro issues as I know more about it now:

Tram track laying:

the way you've implemented it (semi-automated) actually works very well and is very efficient once you've figured it out - you can lay out sections easily whilst zoomed out and just zoom in for the fiddly bits round corners or special road situations etc. The trouble for the new player is that they do not understand the way the semi-automated track lay works. It is natural to try to lay track zoomed out so you can see where you are going, but then you cannot see what you have actually done since the track is much less visible than in CiM1.

Another problem is one-way streets, of which there are plenty, so that you think you are laying double track but the system changes it to single automatically which you do not notice easily and it's all gone wrong when you try to join back up with a double track section.

A further issue is that when laying a section at right angles mostly the system will make the corner track for you, but sometimes it doesn't (probably if you click something and lose focus on the last track segment, which is exactly the sort of thing a new player will do). It is unclear how to put the missing corner track in, you will try to drag mouse etc which doesn't work, when you click on on end only the right track is highlighted which confuses you. You probably don't even realise the corner is missing and can't understand why you can't connect a particular stop and so on.

I'm not sure what the answer to this is (like I say, it does work extremely well once you understand it) but I think the biggest problems for new player are you can't see the track you've laid clearly (unless closely zoomed), one-way streets and semi-automated segment based system.

Metro:

There are three specific problems with creating loops to turn round metro trains which border on bugs IMO (and obviously make the tutorial extra difficult):

1. If you make too tight a turn (which of course you tend to do to save a much money as possible) the system will create the tunnel but there will be a break in the track which you will almost certainly not notice until it is too late. When you try to fill in the missing track you get error msg "Turn is too tight". IMO it should not let you make a tunnel if you can't have the track as well.

2. It is very, very difficult to get the end of the loop to join successfully back onto the main track. Sometimes it looks like it has but actually hasn't, sometimes it just won't join up where you want it to, or even near where you want it to, for no apparent reason. It usually gives a message "There is no room to build here" but there is no apparent obstruction or reason for this. This doesn't feel right.

3. Both 1 and 2 are exacerbated by the schematic overlay of the road system above in the underground view which often obstructs your view of your tunnel and track. It would help to make the "U" command a triple toggle between standard view, underground view with road schematic, and underground by itself.

Overall this requirement to either create a loop for metro turnaround or provide a depot at either end of a line, coupled with the the inability to put metro depots underground and the fact that they are big and difficult to find a place for on the map is IMO a problem as it makes the tutorial difficult and also makes building metro lines in stages, which of course you want to do because of the expense, extremely difficult and extra expensive.

However the single click propose, right click undo, double click confirm track laying system and the platform placement with automated street access placement etc work very well IMO
 
First of all (and I've said this numerous times on Facebook and on these forums): KUDOS to the team for making this incredibly complex game, and even MORE KUDOS for listening to your fanbase! I'm very much liking the game after about 8 hours of play, mostly on the first campaign level, but a few things are still eluding me (and I haven't even tried to do metro's yet due to numerous people complaining; I'm waiting for the patch).

1. Buses not leaving the depot. I have a line where only 2 of 7 buses will operate, the rest won't drive the route at their assigned times (even if I change the timetable), and my stops are full of angry people! The buses in the depot are all at 100% and should be ready to go... I even bought a few more to see if that would work, but no. I consider this enough of a showstopper that I´ve temporarily stopped playing the campaign.

2. When I load the first campaign mission, it says I´m 20% done with the first objective. But then as the game progresses a few minutes it drops to 6%. I don´t understand why?? I think I've covered at least 25% of the city with my lines...

3. I know there's been a mod posted for this by a user to allow for more traffic, but I would really like to understand why most roads are so empty on the standard game setting. It seems to me like you went through all this trouble to build huge varieties of roads, from one-way to three-lane and expressways and even bus lanes, and then hardly anyone is using them. I think looking at the traffic overlay, I've seen a small traffic jam maybe once. The city just seems empty, and not at all "in motion"! Please note that I do understand that adding more traffic would take up more computer power and some computers may not be able to handle that. So maybe this should be a setting in the Options panel? Or maybe you could make it so I can't follow ALL cars and people around town, but just certain ones, and simulate the rest of the traffic? Either way, having almost-empty cities takes some of the fun out of the game for me personally - the cities seem like they've been overrun with zombies five years ago, and that just doesn't look realistic. Plus, I miss some of the fun I had in CiM1 with trying to work around traffic jams, something you actually tried to help with in CiM2 by adding waypoints. (But waypoints seem completely unnecessary for me right now, because there are no traffic jams to dodge.) I know that CiM1 had issues with too much traffic, but it seems for CiM2 the opposite is true. Please, please fix?? :)

4. Although definitely not a showstopper, I too am interested to see why things like train lines and airports have been removed from the game. For me, in CiM1, they were very reliable starting points in that I knew that they would always attract a decent number of passengers to get my lines started. Additionally, some kind of connection to the "outer world", although abstract, would just add to the realism of the game.

Anyway, again, I'm impressed with the work you're doing and I'm sure it must be difficult to sift out the truly valuable questions and comments from the less important ones. I will patiently wait for the game to get some fixes and then I'm sure I'll go right back to creating awesome public transportation systems! :)
 
1. Buses not leaving the depot. I have a line where only 2 of 7 buses will operate, the rest won't drive the route at their assigned times (even if I change the timetable), and my stops are full of angry people! The buses in the depot are all at 100% and should be ready to go... I even bought a few more to see if that would work, but no. I consider this enough of a showstopper that I´ve temporarily stopped playing the campaign.

3. I know there's been a mod posted for this by a user to allow for more traffic, but I would really like to understand why most roads are so empty on the standard game setting.

I had a line where the buses refused to leave the depot. It took me a while, but I hadn't clicked on the Depot to make it the last stop on the line. I'm going to bet that you have done the same thing - probably have the depot at the start and you finished the route by clicking on the first stop, but you forgot to click on the starting depot at the end to finish the line. If you don't do this the drivers will just sit in the depot and refuse the drive. There is no error message (maybe we should have an error message to warn us of this).

As far as traffic - there is none at the start as the city is empty. As you build the transit network, people move into the served areas and start travelling - and of course a lot will take there cars. In Central City, my freeway is jammed with traffic. So much that I built a subway to replace an express bus that was stuck in the traffic jams. So just wait - the traffic will come.
 
Would be nice if we had the chance to edit the times in the timetable. The calculated times are quite unrealistic.

You can edit them. Just change the start and end times for the schedule, the days the schedule runs, and the interval between buses. You can do this for weekdays, morning peak, evenign peak, night, weekends, custom. Not sure why you're saying they can't be edited....
 
No, wrong understanding. I mean the time between to stations. They are calculated to fast. My vehicles need more time. With the actual calculated time they are alwas late and passanger will be angry.
If i had the cance to edit the calculated time this would have two advantages:

1. vehicles are on time with selfcalculated time reserves
2. Can make reserve time on the other end station to have more syncronous changetime between lines.

(Sorry, i m not a native english)
 
"Depots should not have to be included in a route. They should be placed independently and vehicles should have service intervals or require service when they get below a certain percentage. When this percentage is reached the vehicle calls at the depot the next time it passes through."
The depot system was a design choice we made very early on. We felt having lines connected to specific depots gives the game more depth and a tactical element it wouldn't have with individual depots.

This "Design Choice" made it impossible to build loop lines, which is VERY COMMON around the world.
 
Thank you for the feedback! Here's a few answers I hope might help you out.

"1. If you make too tight a turn (which of course you tend to do to save a much money as possible) the system will create the tunnel but there will be a break in the track which you will almost certainly not notice until it is too late. When you try to fill in the missing track you get error msg "Turn is too tight". IMO it should not let you make a tunnel if you can't have the track as well."
I'll see if this can be done. Generally, when we decided to have a very flexible road and track system, it also meant that there are going to be some instances where it's hard to make the results coherent. I'll be passing this on to the programmer and see what can be done.

"2. It is very, very difficult to get the end of the loop to join successfully back onto the main track. Sometimes it looks like it has but actually hasn't, sometimes it just won't join up where you want it to, or even near where you want it to, for no apparent reason. It usually gives a message "There is no room to build here" but there is no apparent obstruction or reason for this. This doesn't feel right."
Joining the tracks can be difficult. You can also use another depot to turn the metro train, or build looped lines to avoid building the small loop at the end. Large loops are much easier to make in my opinion.

"3. Both 1 and 2 are exacerbated by the schematic overlay of the road system above in the underground view which often obstructs your view of your tunnel and track. It would help to make the "U" command a triple toggle between standard view, underground view with road schematic, and underground by itself."
The underground view is a known problem and we are looking for a solution to it! It should make to the next patch, unless fixing proves to be very difficult.

"1. Buses not leaving the depot. I have a line where only 2 of 7 buses will operate, the rest won't drive the route at their assigned times (even if I change the timetable), and my stops are full of angry people! The buses in the depot are all at 100% and should be ready to go... I even bought a few more to see if that would work, but no. I consider this enough of a showstopper that I´ve temporarily stopped playing the campaign."
Like lightrail said, this is most likely because the line is not closed. The depot must be the last click when adding stops so the buses find their way back.

"2. When I load the first campaign mission, it says I´m 20% done with the first objective. But then as the game progresses a few minutes it drops to 6%. I don´t understand why?? I think I've covered at least 25% of the city with my lines..."
Have you looked at the coverage graph in the data panel? We wanted to make the coverage quite realistic, so it's not actually how much of the city is geographically covered by lines, but rather how many of the trips inside the city are made with your company's vehicles. So you need to have lines that meet the citizens needs. The percentage can go down because the game system calculates the routes that are actually used, but it will likely rise up again at some time of day when the routes are the most used.

"3. I know there's been a mod posted for this by a user to allow for more traffic, but I would really like to understand why most roads are so empty on the standard game setting. It seems to me like you went through all this trouble to build huge varieties of roads, from one-way to three-lane and expressways and even bus lanes, and then hardly anyone is using them. I think looking at the traffic overlay, I've seen a small traffic jam maybe once. The city just seems empty, and not at all "in motion"! Please note that I do understand that adding more traffic would take up more computer power and some computers may not be able to handle that. So maybe this should be a setting in the Options panel? Or maybe you could make it so I can't follow ALL cars and people around town, but just certain ones, and simulate the rest of the traffic? Either way, having almost-empty cities takes some of the fun out of the game for me personally - the cities seem like they've been overrun with zombies five years ago, and that just doesn't look realistic. Plus, I miss some of the fun I had in CiM1 with trying to work around traffic jams, something you actually tried to help with in CiM2 by adding waypoints. (But waypoints seem completely unnecessary for me right now, because there are no traffic jams to dodge.) I know that CiM1 had issues with too much traffic, but it seems for CiM2 the opposite is true. Please, please fix?? :)"
When you start a game, the city is created and it takes a while for the citizens to start finding their way around. When you play the game, the cities get more lively. The large map size means there are bottlenecks in cities, that could eventually clog the whole road system, so there is a moderate amount of cars in each city to avoid this. With the map editor you can choose how many of the citizens own cars, so you can make much busier cities. You can also check the custom maps section on the forums if someone is sharing a busy map :)

"4. Although definitely not a showstopper, I too am interested to see why things like train lines and airports have been removed from the game. For me, in CiM1, they were very reliable starting points in that I knew that they would always attract a decent number of passengers to get my lines started. Additionally, some kind of connection to the "outer world", although abstract, would just add to the realism of the game."
These are all good ideas and we will keep them in store! Right now we are concentrating on making all the fixes as fast as we can, but we would like to add more to the game later on.
 
No "Store" Button on my CiM2 Menu

Hi There,

I have a copy of the Cities in Motion 2 Mac version,
I can't find the "STORE" Button on the menu.:(
In some video tutorial,
I saw the "STORE" is between "LOAD GAME" and "MAP EDITOR"
Am i missing something ??