TOPIC:

How is this possible?

Game nr: 14983
Player: MVictor
Population: 3996
Years: 3
Points: 0
Winner: Yes
Goal Reached: 2017-01-04 13:42:40
Total Play Time: 00 Hrs, 32 Min

Also 0 points from getting the quickest time to reach the goal? What's going on here?

Mathematically it's possible! How did he get there? Is the question of one kind

The points formula is based heavily on Company Value - the speed is secondary and there are a whole bunch of other factors too. It works really well in CV games where CV is always the same at the goal and so speed becomes a more important factor, but in CB games you can get really strange results.

I once went through a bunch of fast, medium and slow games and came up with a formulae that worked better for CB games (at least in my small sample set) and gave it to ST2 to test... nothing ever came of it, I suspect it's not that simple to customise the points system for each server, and not really worth the effort since the points are just for fun anyway.

If you look at the game in question he ended with a CV of $768 and no trains - I'm guessing he had some fun dismantling (ie blowing up!) his network after reaching the target in projected population.

In terms of speed it's normal for 4k - last year most of top 15 were under 30mins. If you use a good layout (double spiral), keep your rating at 1000 and never miss a month of cargo you should get to 4k in about 35mins. After lots of gameplay I came to the conclusion that scores under ~35 mins where when the player started late in the game and so could claim a town with 25+ houses instead of the usual 11-12 at the start of a new map.

@ Tobus : Let's not mix things here! And the reason for a late start appear to be good on what you mentioned 4K CB goal servers is because of the start year and the "soon" introduction of the SH125 loco, quite overpowered. That's the advantage! And that happens too on 8K CB goals, if Temperate climate... And I guess that's the ones you're talking about!! There's other 4K CB goal, Desert climate! I guess, and hope, that Tobus had that one tested too, before his words! And, I'll bet, similar issues don't happen! So, as understandable, we can't have a different points formula per Climate, Goal, Start year or Server. It would be unmaintainable!

Therefore, we use a ScoreMultiplier, per server, to keep things balanced! And, fun fact about our points formula: on CV servers there's a CompanyValue (obviously) that's replaced for the Population if the Goal is CB, for BBGoals if server #33 or Cargo if for #31. So, the Company Value is only used directly if the goal is CV. Other secondary values used on points calculation are, and I'll start for the most important (that many players ignore): Performance , playedFor (time played), valueToPlaytimeRelation (some math to check Company Value evolution with the time played), companyVehicles (this number is set to 100, if below, because of very short goals), playtimeRelation (comparison between played time and game length). Basically are this ones, the rest are kinda residual, like number of competitors, due the map sizes we use.

Tobus wrote: I once went through a bunch of fast, medium and slow games and came up with a formulae that worked better for CB games (at least in my small sample set) and gave it to ST2 to test... nothing ever came of it, I suspect it's not that simple to customise the points system for each server, and not really worth the effort since the points are just for fun anyway.

If I recall correctly, I told you too that we need a formula that work on all possible goals, only changing the main variable, for the reasons told above!

As a challenge, try make a game and reach/keep 1000 performance points! Afterall it's OpenTTD, you can't only focus on the server goal and obliterate other game mechanics. And I say this because many players use, on CB games, the close RV stations for passengers/mail, closed by road signs. It's a good tactic for the server goal, bad for the company value/performance and, consequently, points. You can't catch them all ^^

Anyway, the original post points an abnormal situation, gave some points (5) to compensate. Meanwhile, one of my ideas is to change Temperate regular CB's to 1980 as Start year. In the meantime, try server #14, it's 4K CB goal too. Enjoy the games

I wasn't trying to criticise you ST - you guys know the server code much better than me and if it's too hard/complex to implement a separate CB scoring system then that's that. I think the two-table system now is a pretty good compromise - if you play for points you can get on the "top 15" list, if you prefer to go for speed then you can get on the "fastest 15" list... and you can always just play for fun

A few things though:
- The extra houses/pop from starting late is a definite advantage. I proved this to myself by building a town to 23 houses/499 pop then doing a "!reset me", starting a new company and claiming the same town... I cut close to 10mins off my usual time by doing this (I only did it once to see how much difference it makes, it's cheating in my book). As you say, access to a better train would also give an advantage, but I just used my usual setup in this test.

- Performance is highly tied to Company Value (via vehicles, profit, income, money, loan etc.), and so is valueToPlaytimeRelation... I think this is why the points is so much more affected by $$ than by time, even with the tweaks for CB servers. It's very complicated and I don't think it's possible to ever get a single formula that works perfectly on all scenarios.

Please note that I'm not asking for any changes, just pointing out why, if you play CB for speed, you shouldn't expect the points to always make sense.