News:

The Forum Rules and Guidelines
Our forum has Rules and Guidelines. Please, be kind and read them ;).

Multiple hold ships

Started by asaphxiix, December 02, 2012, 12:23:48 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

asaphxiix

are new early ships being considered for pax? For sail, we only have the goods ships that can run pax, They are cheap enough to run even with hardly any pax of them, and probably make explosive profit with 500 goods on them?

so the game needs early, smaller pax sails ships - schooners, clippers etc; and also it seems that steam ships are needed, at least later on, for the superliners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Halifax_%281768%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper

asaphxiix

Note: I think this is actually more relevant to the experimental pakset, due to the limitations imposed on waterway use there. In standard, you can just use the wherries.

jamespetts

Hmm - but they're limited in capacity, aren't they? It'd still be good to have clippers and schooners even in Standard.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

ӔO

it would be nice to have a higher capacity wherry.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

asaphxiix

yes yes and yes. Just saying that for experimental, this is more urgent (but not very urgent, since we are doing alright with the ships cuz they're so cheap).

jamespetts

Actually, we do have clippers - they are introduced in 1837.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

The Hood

There are clippers and schooners already in the pakset. One problem with early ships is that they generally carried goods and cargo together.

AP

Quote from: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 12:35:17 PM
There are clippers and schooners already in the pakset. One problem with early ships is that they generally carried goods and cargo together.
The problem being experienced in the experimental map being played, is that there are hundreds of towns but only a few dozen industries on the whole map. So rather than being freight routes, with passengers as supplemental, players are trying to run primarily passenger lines, which historically didn't happen at that time.

asaphxiix

in pak uk standard, most ships are very very cheap (r.c=2). but it does have dedicated pax ships for small amounts that can run any sea.

From what I read, in the 19th century ocean and sea liners were running 'packet service' for mail and parcels with pax, so that calls for a pax/mail clipper, schooner and steamers too (For both river and sea) in experimental,. I guess earlier, pax went on merchant galleons, the likes of the East India, but there should be some other option as well, maybe a less profitable one. The situation now is that you can run these ships for great profit with 2% of capacity.

Also, catering could be interesting here, definitely an important part of sea voyages.

http://www.dennyhatch.com/jackcorbett/doc/afterword2.html - a bit about packets








jamespetts

For reference, I will be reducing the comfort of all of these passenger addons from 100 to about 50 in the next release, which should impact upon profit somewhat. But, aside from that, do the costs need rebalancing? I'd be interested in any views.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

The Hood

In standard boats are not balanced - I'm waiting for a complete timeline as it will be easier for me to do it all in one go. Running costs and purchase costs are currently identical for all I think, which will not remain forever obviously! One other idea I had for boats was as follows, which will require a change and may break compatibility:
for generic ships from the past, have the ship itself coded as a locomotive (i.e. power but no capacity) and allow different goods to be added as "carriages" - I think under the current code there would be a limit of 4 "vehicles" total. That would allow people to add different combinations of goods together to represent the ship being fitted out with different holds. For graphical identification we could show each type of hold as a different symbol which would follow the ship around like a carriage follows a locomotive. For experimental, you could even have different classes of hold - more comfort but lower capacity for 1st class etc? Thoughts?

jamespetts

Hmm, this is an interesting idea. This would need to be made clear to the user - the words "hull only" or the like would need to appear in the ship's name, and then you would need to have "passenger hold (steerage)", "passenger hold (first class)", "mail hold", "bulk goods hold", etc. would need to be specified. I do like the logos idea. This might work.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

asaphxiix

i like the idea. But for the graphics, maybe a better solution will be needed. Can a vehicle have no graphic representation?

about ships in experimental - I do think they need balancing, but that may leave player out of options without more vessels.

wlindley

Quote from: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 04:17:08 PM
have the ship itself coded as a locomotive (i.e. power but no capacity) and allow different goods to be added as "carriages" - I think under the current code there would be a limit of 4 "vehicles" total.

Support!  So if you added just one Boxed Goods compartment to a ship that could hold several, that would force the ship to be lighter and faster?  Or you could max a ship's Bulk Goods capacity (and no passengers or mail) which would make it heavier and slower, ...or mix passengers, mail, boxed goods, and woods on one ship... I love it.

The Hood

Vehicles don't have to have graphics - currently the case for the additional passenger and mail holds, but they are automatically added. I think I would prefer to have some kind of icon (which could be grey/colour depending on loaded/unloaded) to represent what each ship was configured for...

AP

Presumably the colours corresponding with the coloured bar charts at the stops?

greenling

Hello
I love the Idea to use more than one posible loading typ.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

jamespetts

Quote from: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 06:04:38 PM
Vehicles don't have to have graphics - currently the case for the additional passenger and mail holds, but they are automatically added. I think I would prefer to have some kind of icon (which could be grey/colour depending on loaded/unloaded) to represent what each ship was configured for...

This would be more transparent to the player, I think.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

The Hood

Here's what I had in mind, as a proof of concept. You can see the hold icons following the ship around. Coloured icons represent (at least partially) full holds in the ship on the left; grey icons in the ship on the right indicate empty holds. These images are just the same as the generic cargo images so far. I'll use these for pax, bulk and mail but add new ones for cooled, piece and livestock goods. Bulk fluids and cars probably aren't affected by this as they will require specialist ships.


greenling

The Hood
Those concept looks very good out. :thumbsup:
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

wlindley

Excellent!  Looking forward to this.

I do hope that, in Experimental at least, we can add "holds" for passengers with a choice of (high capacity, low comfort) versus (low capacity, high comfort).


The Hood

I'll try and code all the large ships this way in the next week ahead of the 1.13 release. It's perfectly possible to add different types of passenger "holds" but I won't add them for standard as there is no meaningful use for them.

The Hood

Just to recap: I've now coded the following vessels with multiple holds:
- Clipper
- East Indiaman
- Blackwall Frigate
- Brig
- Schooner

I'm not convinced any of the others would benefit from this, but I'm open to suggestions.

asaphxiix

nice! So it's one ship and three hold modules? With different sizes and classes for holds, up to 3? So each ships has its own holds, just one for each ship and cargo?

I could volunteer to import this into the experimental pak.

The Hood

Yes - for these 5 ships you first buy the "hull" which acts as a locomotive - propulsion but no cargo. You can then add up to 3 "holds" which can be the same or different. The "holds" are distinct for each ship type, so an east indiaman hold carries more than a brig hold. Ideally it should be balanced so you can compromise cargo for speed, but again that's probably one for experimental.

greenling

The Hood
It that ok that i use your idea for my paksetdevlopment?
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

jamespetts

That is very nice! This works better than the current system, I think.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

The Hood

It's now in SVN so feel free to test. Greenling, you are more then welcome to use a similar concept or even reuse graphics if you wish.

sdog

that's quite a nice idea!

Bear789

This is great!
Do you reckon it will work with ships already purchased in an old save?

greenling

Bear789
That it a good point there you speak on.
That have i really ferget.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

TygerFish

I ported the changes into experimental on my local machine and tested them out last night.  A few questions/observations:

Right now, each hull can have up to seven segments.  Is it possible to vary that number? It looked to me like it was fixed based on the fact that there are 7 types of cargo holds.  If possible, my thought would be to maybe vary that based on ship type (some ships have more decks than others?) or reduce it across the board (7 clicks is a lot to provision a ship... maybe some standardized layouts could help, but that could clutter things up again...)

The Brig and Schooner holds show a trail of icons behind the parent ship, the others do not.  Was that intentional, or am I missing something in my build?  I put that new .pak file in the Holds folder (still not sure how that works... is it some extra precompiled logic that's automatically included?), made sure the new image file was included, and updated my buildALL.mos file with the new line you put in SVN.

Do you plan to rework the other large ships (Windjammer, Handysize) similarly?  I'd think it would be useful and realistic to have a container ship carrying a variety of different goods.

Quote from: The Hood on December 16, 2012, 09:17:26 PM
It's now in SVN so feel free to test. Greenling, you are more then welcome to use a similar concept or even reuse graphics if you wish.

greenling

tygerfish
by the Ship gives a limit from 4 moduls.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

The Hood

7 must be an experimental limit. the max for a (non-train) convoy in standard is 4, i.e. hull + 3. I wasn't planning on reworking the other ships although it would be possible. Later on, ships become more specialised, and there is also the problem of freight images for the hull itself depending on cargo. Piece and cooled goods could easily be interchangeable using this model, but oil tankers should definitely be specialised. The others are somewhat a grey area.

TygerFish

That's a good observation -- oil in actual barrels would have been a lot more mixable with other cargoes than modern dedicated liquid containers.  And the smaller ships (<100 units. like the new PS Industry) are too small to really capture a diverse set of cargo.  Given that argument, I could see Handysize and Clanline staying the way they are.

What about Windjammer, though?  Is 1880 late enough for specialized cargo manifests?  My intuition would be to include as the last hull/hold ship, although not with passenger holds.

Quote from: The Hood on December 17, 2012, 08:00:40 PM
7 must be an experimental limit. the max for a (non-train) convoy in standard is 4, i.e. hull + 3. I wasn't planning on reworking the other ships although it would be possible. Later on, ships become more specialised, and there is also the problem of freight images for the hull itself depending on cargo. Piece and cooled goods could easily be interchangeable using this model, but oil tankers should definitely be specialised. The others are somewhat a grey area.

jamespetts

Hmm - this is an interesting point about Experimental's higher limit for the number of trailing vehicles that non-rail convoys might have. This was raised to accommodate road vehicles, but this would unbalance this hold system. Do I need to reduce it to four for ships; or do we need to do something complicated with the coupling constraints to restrict it manually?
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

ӔO

If the compartments are specialized for each ship, then it would make more sense to use coupling constraints. I would just divide it into the cargo hold and compartments

Ship - Cargo Hold - Compartment A (Pax 1st class) - Compartment B (Pax 2st class) Compartment C (Mail) - etc.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

sdog

I was under the impression the combinations were rather arbitrary. Carpenters just built whatever the cargo required. At their destination they'd reuse or sell the wood.

Milko

Hello

This technique can also be used for aircraft that I have made​​. Some models of aircraft are in fact "convertible". Cargo space is configurable convertible aircraft and space passengers can be eliminated and replaced with space for mail or various loads.

Giuseppe

The Hood

@jamespetts

I would suggest 3 holds is quite enough for ships and planes, but the other solution is halving the capacity of each hold.

@Milko,

Which vehicles would you suggest for this sort of modification in planes?

TygerFish

Quote from: jamespetts on December 17, 2012, 11:24:23 PM
Hmm - this is an interesting point about Experimental's higher limit for the number of trailing vehicles that non-rail convoys might have. This was raised to accommodate road vehicles, but this would unbalance this hold system. Do I need to reduce it to four for ships; or do we need to do something complicated with the coupling constraints to restrict it manually?
Which road vehicles currently take advantage of this in experimental?

I would say that if we're already making a change and if it wouldn't be too much more work, it could be handy to be able to set the maximum number of vehicles on a per-type basis.

ӔO

Quote from: The Hood on December 18, 2012, 09:25:40 AM
@jamespetts

I would suggest 3 holds is quite enough for ships and planes, but the other solution is halving the capacity of each hold.

@Milko,

Which vehicles would you suggest for this sort of modification in planes?

I think the only commercial jet with both passenger and cargo hold was 747-200M combi
otherwise, the majority of them are separated into classes, which would only be of interest to experimental.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

wlindley

Quote from: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 02:40:20 PM
I think the only commercial jet with both passenger and cargo hold was 747-200M combi
otherwise, the majority of them are separated into classes, which would only be of interest to experimental.

That may be true on the main deck, but every almost jet aircraft's lower (baggage) deck can carry cargo containers called Unit Load Devices.  The Wikipedia article describes the various ULD sizes and even gives capacities for a variety of craft.

ӔO

Ah, yes, but on commercial aircraft, the only cargo that is loaded onto passenger aircraft are checked in baggage from passengers and food. It can also include spare aircraft parts from the aircraft owner, but that is about it.

Mail, parcels and goods always get a different, dedicated cargo aircraft ride.

The 747 combi is unique in that it has both passenger and cargo holds divided by a partition.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

wlindley

Quote from: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 07:45:55 PM
Ah, yes, but on commercial aircraft, the only cargo that is loaded onto passenger aircraft are checked in baggage from passengers and food... Mail, parcels and goods always get a different, dedicated cargo aircraft ride.

Are you sure? I have frequently seen mail loaded onto, or unloaded from, airplanes at the airport.  Do you have a source that says that the containers we see on passenger planes are not mail and air cargo?  Because if so, please explain how the dozen passenger carriers at my local airport ever handle air cargo -- on a phantom fleet of craft we never see?

ӔO

hmm, maybe it's different between different carriers and countries?
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

greenling

#47
Sorry .
It possible to transport mail in a passenger aircraft.
I've seen in a documentary how mail was transported in a passenger cabin.
Edit:Is to equip all ships with the idea of The_hood?

Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

ӔO

ah, okay. Looks like I was confusing DGR CAO and checked in baggage.

Turns out that freight loaded onto PAX aircraft account for a majority of profits for airline operators.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

Milko

Quote from: The Hood on December 18, 2012, 09:25:40 AM
@Milko,
Which vehicles would you suggest for this sort of modification in planes?

Sorry for the delay.

Convertible planes are:
727, 747, ATR42, ATR72, BAE146 (all version).

Al the dat files contains the cargo space in tonnes, you may use the cargo space to determine the hold space based on the number of hold you want to do.

Giuseppe