Public ways change, impacts usability of created Rivers

[wlindley]

With the new change in Experimental 10.7 that players cannot alter ways created by the Public Player (grey ownership), the following is broken:

   
• begin with a blank landscape
• draw rivers using the public player tools
• switch back to a human player
• attempt to build a shipyard or quay on a river you just drew:  FAIL (Cannot build a depot here; No suitable ground).

Simple solution would be that rivers drawn with the map editing tools should have Unowned status (orange ownership).
This is not a problem in Standard, as public player ways may be modified by any player.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - I've looked into this, and this is not as easy as might be assumed, as rivers are only distinguished in the game when they are built automatically on map generation - thereafter, the only thing that distinguishes them is that they are in the public player menu, not the canal menu, but that is set by the pakset, so would be very hard to detect in game. This would take more time to achieve than is currently available, I'm sorry...

[wlindley]

The change in 10.7 also prevents building bus or tram stops, on roads built with public player -- edited cities become unusable.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - it wasn't really intended that players would "edit" towns with the public player...

[sdog]

Hmm - it wasn't really intended that players would "edit" towns with the public player...

it's often necessary
the city generation growth often gets stuck and needs some 'guidance'

[jamespetts]

Hmm - I did look briefly into having ways addable as unowned, but it is not immediately easy, so this is not a very high priority, I'm afraid. Sdog - can you give an example? The next major release of Experimental will have Standard's shiny new city generation/growth algorithm, which might help here.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Hmm - it wasn't really intended that players would "edit" towns with the public player...

Erm... at least in Standard, I do think that was part of the idea of setting up these tools... Else why would they be programmed? Or maybe I'm missing something - sorry if so.

[sdog]

cities of get locked by terrain, buildings blocking all streets out or rivers, they can't cross. sometimes a little help is needed to give them a push. i also tend to prepare the stage before a game, beautify the cities slightly.

Then there is the very uggly thing happening when vilages are connected by diagonal inter-city roads and start to grow. The grid pattern of simutrans cities doesn't get along well with those diagonals, the result is extremely ugly. i usualy fix that by removing the diagonal road.

last but not least there are both scenarios and also server admins who might want to make large manual changes to set up a particular task or provide a level playing field. (just look at what moblet is doing in one game on the server timothy hosts)

[prissi]

Cities, at least in standard, build now bridges for crossing such rivers.

[AP]

Un-demolish-able diagonal roads are a problem for rail players too. You can't build level crossings without the ability to demolish a short section of public road (which means bridges instead, which costs a significant amount and also interferes with attempts to achieve a good gradient profile on a railway).

[wlindley]

   
• Create a new map.
• Attempt to build a bus stop anywhere between two cities -- Fail.

Roads between cities are created with the "grey" public player not the orange "unowned" status.  Thus, you cannot build bus stops to serve factories or attractions between cities, without creating "side" stations. 

Most frustrating.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - I wonder whether a good workaround would be to allow players to build private stops on public roads and waterways?

[wlindley]

Hmm - I wonder whether a good workaround would be to allow players to build private stops on public roads and waterways?

So then you could remove the stop later, but not the way itself?  That would work quite nicely. 

I imagine another binary flag "Allow Building" in addition to "Allow Access" would be the simplest way to implement.  The public player would have that flag set for all players.  If the player list dialogue permitted toggling the flag, it would lead to the potential of having a company that only builds Ways where some other players may build stations.  Also, in multiplayer, the public player administrator could deny some companies the ability to build stations on public ways.

[AP]

So then you could remove the stop later, but not the way itself? 

Neat indeed.

Am still a bit worried about diagonal roads though. Level crossings are rather important.