National Transit v0.1.6 — Full Update Notes

This update centres on making the economy realistic and a rewritten population / urbanisation model, plus a lot of map-control and UI improvements. Wherever a change affects gameplay rules or how you do something, there’s a bit of extra explanation below.

Population & Urbanisation (major rules change)

The population model has been rewritten — from “only ever grows” to a realistic mix of natural increase + migration. This directly changes how you develop:

People move — and places can lose them. Each place’s growth rate depends on its attractiveness relative to the national average (road connectivity, jobs, GDP per capita). Places below average — poor, isolated, jobless — suffer net out-migration and shrink; attractive places pull people in. Early on, when nothing is connected yet, towns grow steadily on natural increase rather than wasting away for no reason.
A small settlement can become a big city. Assign a development policy and connect the town to your network, and it triggers a rapid in-migration surge — a town of a few thousand can grow to several hundred thousand in about 30 years, then naturally taper off and plateau. There are five development policies, from smallest to largest target size: Rural Revitalization Zone, Tourism Resort Zone, New Town Development, Coastal Trade Zone, Special Economic Zone. Note: without roads it barely grows — the policy must go hand-in-hand with infrastructure.
Growth is dynamic. Connect a previously-isolated town and its growth rate rises the very next month (it can flip from losing people to gaining them); the number updates live in the detail/list views.
Policies now genuinely add population (the newer small-town policies previously had a bug where their population bonus was ignored — fixed).
Wealthy cities growing more slowly by nature is expected (a realistic demographic transition) — they sustain themselves through migration, and mega-cities gradually plateau due to agglomeration diseconomies.

New displays: the province list, the settlement list, and the settlement detail window all gained a Population Growth column/row, colour-coded ±, sortable — so you can see at a glance what’s growing and what’s bleeding people.

Economy & Tolls (major rules change)

Tolls and maintenance have been brought in line with reality. If tolls felt inflated and upkeep felt too cheap, this version is a systematic fix:

Tolls are billed on real through-traffic, not just endpoint demand, and on the road’s realistic peak-limited throughput (no longer assuming 24/7 full capacity). Net effect: a busy expressway’s toll income drops from ~21× its maintenance to about 5×, and payback stretches from 3–4 years to ~13–23 years — while the per-vehicle fare stays realistic (≈ $16 for a 200 km trip).
Pricing is self-limiting (a Laffer curve): you can set tolls freely, but price too high and traffic diverts or trips stop happening, so there’s a “sweet spot” — cranking it to the max actually earns less.
Maintenance rates lowered to a realistic range; multi-lane cost is now sub-linear (building 8/10-lane roads is no longer absurdly expensive).
Depreciation now counts against a line’s profit (no cash is deducted, but a line that’s cash-positive while consuming its asset shows a truer, lower net).
A major overhaul every 5 years: each road overhauls on its own build-date schedule (they stagger), and upkeep is noticeably higher in that overhaul year — essentially spending the accrued depreciation to renew the asset.
Rail/water income is now correctly labelled “Fare.”

New displays: road/rail lists and info popups now show maintenance / depreciation / revenue / net per segment and per whole line, all sortable.

Policies

Added a set of small-town development policies (Special Economic Zone, Coastal Trade Zone, New Town Development, Tourism Resort Zone, Rural Revitalization Zone) for growing towns into cities (see the Population section).
All policy names and descriptions are now localised; the “Assign Policy” button moved to the top of the panel.

Map & Controls (how you play)

+ / − zoom now centres on the cursor (like the mouse wheel); if the cursor isn’t over the map, it zooms about the screen centre.
A located city gets a highlight ring (~2 s) so you don’t lose it after jumping to it.
Click a place name to locate it: in the road popup’s “Flow Sources” and in the demand detail’s A→B / B→A rows, clicking a city name jumps the map to that city.
The saturation overlay now defaults to “Peak” (real rush-hour congestion), with a new Average / Peak switch (a floating control that no longer resizes the toolbar). The info popup’s saturation is also split into Average / Peak rows, each classified and coloured independently.
Map loading is ~4× faster, with a percentage + step-by-step loading screen.
More natural coastlines and cleaner territory rendering.

UI & Lists (how you play)

List panels are resizable (width and height) with a custom, remembered size; height scales with screen size; wider by default (1100px).
The province list gained a Population Density (per km²/mi²) column.
A km ↔ mi unit toggle in Settings — all distances, areas, speeds and fares follow it.
The demand list’s pager is pinned to the bottom of the window (it no longer scrolls with the list).
Airport and policy info moved into the settlement detail window (no longer stacked after the map label).
Building an airport now shows a toast notification; airport-grade keys use F/R/H internally.
The road info popup is anchored to the left so it doesn’t cover a city you’ve just centred.

Building & Actions

Demolish roads / rail / waterways straight from the info popup; roads are easier to select.
Founding a settlement now reliably snaps to an existing road, with a connection preview.
Drag-to-connect now offers a “Waterway [W]” option where it’s buildable.
You can promote a city to a province-level unit (a city-province).
Place-name labels are only editable while the “Place Names” panel is open, to avoid accidental edits.

Fixes

Fixed a crash when opening the “Take Loan” panel at zero borrowing capacity.
Fixed the info popup occasionally getting stuck open (orphaned duplicates).
Space reliably advances the month from panels and detail popups.
Fixed the saturation overlay not returning after closing a build/upgrade panel.
Fixed rail names being lost after a re-route/rename, province borders not re-highlighting on load, a missing “Rail Fare” label, and the demand pager not refreshing on page change.

Saves & Compatibility

The “show province borders/names” toggle is now remembered per-save (different saves can differ).
Old saves migrate automatically: existing roads adopt the new lane-cost model (and thus lower upkeep).