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roads after banrupcy

Started by prissi, September 24, 2017, 12:44:50 AM

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prissi

Recently someone exploited the server retains roads by bankrupt companies. Because pak64.japan has very high maintenance costs, he just use a company to create an extensive road network and then waited for bankrupsy the use those roads with anoth company. Also those roads became public players, which is a bad idea, since those cannot be modfied.

I propose a switch in the game to a) remove all asserts when a comony default, b) retain only stuff recently used (like convoi traveled last month+this month>0). Also all those roads are made public property like city roads.

Ters

It is in my mind rather silly that companies own the roads in the first place. A third option would be for the public player to shift the maintenance cost onto the players through a road tax (toll). It is after all the people (natural or juridical) that pays for the public stuff. That would remove the benefit of not owning the roads. A more realistic solution (for my part of the world at least) would be to divide the total maintenance of public roads on the number of vehicles and charge the companies per vehicle, but that can possibly be exploited as well.

Leartin

#2
More complex, but:
What if any infrastructure left behind from a bankrupt player remains for while under a new kind of public player, and any player may buy parts of it for x% of the original building cost. That public player entity would destroy everything that comes in it's possession after y month. x and y would be a setting in simuconfig.

If players depend on each other, especially for pax transport, it would be nice to have a buffer time after a player goes bankrupt in which all required connections/ways can be saved, rather than having foreign rails disappear under your trains and all pax deciding it's not worth travelling if part of the connection is missing.


Let me rephrase that: When a player goes bankrupt, he will be locked out of his company. Perhaps add a string to the company name ("Liquidated: Company Name"). Since everything remains as-is for the moment, it will not cause a sudden collapse of the pax networks OR vehicles of other companies having no longer a route. Instead, players get a chance to change their own networks accordingly.

After Y months, the liquidated company will disappear. But until then, players may choose to buy the infrastructure to a reduced price compared to a new build (X%). Perhaps using the "buy building"-option that already exists, but with an additional "buy way" version that you can drag over ways ,like the way-deletion-tool. If you buy a way, you also buy way objects and/or stations on that way.

This could, of course, still be somewhat abused to get cheaper infrastructure, but since you have to buy it so it won't disappear, it would not help you with running costs. The more of an issue such cheaters are, the lower you can set the price reduction, until there is no difference between buying and building anymore - and by setting the liquidation period to zero months, you'd have essentially the same as you do now.

DrSuperGood

QuoteAlso those roads became public players, which is a bad idea, since those cannot be modfied.
Public player ways are meant to be able to be modified by all. If not then that must be a bug. The public player should own all ways that are not owned by companies, it is just silly that "null" is a valid owner.
QuoteAlso all those roads are made public property like city roads.
But city roads are owned by null so themselves are an exploit as no one pays for their maintenance.

I would suggest verbally warning the player, and punishing them if they continue to break your server rules. Since players connect directly to servers the server administrator can IP ban them to prevent them from immediately rejoining and hopefully entice them to give up playing on the server. All IP bans must be temporary as IP addresses may be from a shared pool, especially if IPv4.

One solution I proposed was to have all roads automatically made public ways unless explicitly told not to. A more complex toll mechanic, along the lines of that suggest by Ters, would then help cover the funding for these roads. Additionally the global population would contribute some of the upkeep representing private or small industry usage of the ways and the city roads. The Public Player could also have an auto trim approach to maintaining public ways where by ways which are never used are eventually demolished to help combat abuse. Of course some troll could just demolish all roads to break all road lines, a level of abuse that cannot happen currently with privately owned roads.