Boats, barges and ships

[The Hood]

OK, despite earlier technical muppetry, I can now present the first pak128.Britain boats - some horse-drawn barges.  These are avaible 1750-1950, and at 20t capacity represent a real improvement on road and rail transport early in the game (as would be realistic).  This should make that part of the game a bit more interesting!

They will be in the next release, but if you can't wait, I'm putting them in SVN now...

Incidentally, the second screenshot illustrates why simutrans needs to differentiate between canals/rivers and open water, unless horses really can walk on water 

[sanna]

These look fantastic, and will definitely improve gameplay of pak128.Britain in the early years!

[The Hood]

Incidentally, during testing of the barges I found the early industries to produce way too slowly for them to be economical.  Seeing as jamespetts balanced the production of these before I did the barges, this will need to change, how did you do the balancing James?  Have you got time to revisit it?

[jamespetts]

The Hood,

barges looking rather excellent! I cannot remember now exactly how I balanced the industries - I think that I sampled one or two by trial and error and did it heuristically. How much too slow are the early industries, exactly? And is 20t a realistic capacity (I don't know much about early canal barges, so I don't know whether the figure is correct or not)? If we can work out a factorial difference (e.g., industry type X needs to produce Y times faster), then that can be applied to the industries duly, although care must be taken not to make road transport of goods entirely pointless; there need to be some industries (farms, for instance, at the producing end, and individual shops at the consuming end) that deal in small enough quantities to make road the preferred option, whereas other industries (such as collieries, steelworks, etc.) would benefit from higher capacity transport.

[The Hood]

I can't find any actual data, but by comparison with other types of barge, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Pudding, I think 20t is about right.  Anyone that can give a better value is welcome though.  Generally speaking, canals should be the ideal method of transportation pre-railways, but should be expensive to build.  This should mean road transport is used for connections off the trunk canal/river route.

Edit: looking at some others, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersey_Flat suggests much larger tonnages could be carried...

[jamespetts]

Hm, in which case I shall have to look into the industry production rates. I shan't be able to do it immediately, though: I'm about to go on holiday until the week-end, and after that, I have to finish work on Simutrans-Experimental 7.0 before I can turn again to pakset work. Thank you for looking into that.

[The Hood]

On the subject of boats I should also say I know very little... if anyone wants to suggest anything (preferably with pictures and stats) then please post here.  We will need everything from canal barges of 1750 to supertankers of 2000... but only if it has been used in Britain please.

[neroden]

Incidentally, the second screenshot illustrates why simutrans needs to differentiate between canals/rivers and open water, unless horses really can walk on water 

Well, that depends on whether you bought the standard horses, or the "miracle horses", right? 

[jamespetts]

Well, that depends on whether you bought the standard horses, or the "miracle horses", right? 

Ahh, you're confusing Pak128.Britain with Pak192.Fantasy...

[sdog]

a possible solution to this could be following:

make canal and open water different way types. not allowing ships to pass canals and not allowing barges on open water. in open water canals can also be built (marked by buoyes), allowing barges to use exactly those ways. maybe a requirement to build them adjacent to the shore is possible.

[The Hood]

A second addition to the pak128.Britain boats - the Norfolk wherry.  Available in freight, mail, and passenger versions from 1750-1920.

[jamespetts]

Very nice!

[The Hood]

Here is the larger Thames Sailing Barge.  It's intended for open waters and only the largest rivers, as despite the name, they were sea-going vessels as well as operating on the Thames, mostly plying coastal routes but were also known to cross the channel to Europe from time to time.

[TheMacpau]

The awesomeness continues, I'm seriously looking forward to the next pak update.

[jamespetts]

Excellent!

[The Hood]

I've been doing some more research into ship types for what I'm going to draw, and I'm pretty much there with sailing boats and passenger liners.  I'm having difficulty with freight ships from the beginning of the steamship onwards.  So two questions really:

1) How much variety do people actually want for ships?  I know in the other paks ship variety is significantly less than other modes and they tend to have longer periods of availability.  Are people generally happy with that?

2) Does anyone have any suggestions/photos on what freight ships I should draw? Especially for the period 1850-1950?

[TheMacpau]

I'm not sure how you want to play this pack with regards to the capacities of the ships

1) The introduction of canal tunnels, and the early introduction of them as a means of early industry grounding, will mean the players going for a long timeperiod games will probably have a lot of left over infrastructure. Giving it a bit of a leg up compared to rail, if you make it too competitive. The question is do you want to phase out the shipping as a means of bulk transport in favour of rail? Or do you go for the potentially tricky to implement high capacity and low cost shipping we have today, and attempt to represent the relative costs of first/last mile transportation as opposed to containerised oceanic shipping.

I'd guess if you were going for the first you play for a smaller range of ships with slow increases in capacity and speed, if your playing the latter you go for rather larger increases in volume's and probably larger range of shipping as a consequence.

2) I think some liberty ships might be a good idea here for the 1940's, I know they were American built to an adapted British design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship
Some Good sailing clipppers would also be rather sexy, and rather key for a british Pak methinks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutty_Sark

How are you planning on restricting the shipping types for this Pak, given that there isn't really a nationality to modern shipping design?

[The Hood]

I think the general plan is to drop out the lowest capacity ships like barges, wherries etc later in the game.  There will be a few higher capacity barges and then your seagoing ships later on.  I'm currently planning on including some pretty large international ships.  As you say, they will end up looking fairly similar to ships from other paks, but fitting the pak128.Britain graphical style and pak-balance.  Most (but not all) boats will end up being pretty generic designs - as far as I know most ships in the world are not part of "classes" in the same way trains, trams, buses and planes are, but given how much ships usually get used in the game I don't think that will be a problem.  And of course if anyone is really upset about that plan, shout now, or draw your own later...

[TheMacpau]

I'm a fan of the big international ship idea, I've always been a bit confused when I had to have 100's of ships to service even small crossings in game. Maybe after the Sail ships like clippers and fishing schooners which will obviously have a unique look, the pak should move to more generic classes of ship (they do exist) like panamax suezmax etc. with changes in colours to make identification easy, with years just progressing the capacity and speed. Also If the way restrictions of canal passage could even be included for the canal going ships you could have the challange of balancing the ultralarge crude carriers that have to go round the coastal routes like the capes, against the panamax and suezmax type ships that could do canal shortcuts.

[The Hood]

Canals in pak128.Britain are intended for narrowboat style boats.  Ocean-going ship canals will have to be dug by altering the landscape (but in standard, there are no restrictions anyway, so you could drive a supertanker down a small canal no problem...)

Anyway, here's the list of planned sailing era boats:
- Humber Keel (coastal/inland)
- Dogger (fishing boat)
- Fifie (fishing boat)
- Brig (sea/ocean going, medium capacity)
- East Indiaman (ocean-going, high capacity; 1750-1830)
- Blackwall Frigate (ocean-going, high capacity; 1830-1890)
- Windjammer (ocean-going, high capacity; 1890-1940)
- Clipper (ocean-going, fast high capacity; 1830-1870)

About panamax, suezmax - that may be one solution.  I wouldn't call those "classes" in the same way as a class of trains though, they are more of a size limit, but it will probably do for our purposes.

[TheMacpau]

I guess thats where a little ingame honesty will be required from me using way points to avoid the supertanker on aquaduct disparity.

I think thats a good set of ships, the fifie will look very good in the pak colours, though I'll admit I'm interested to see how you render the busy looking ships like the clipper and windjammer with many masts and rigging ingame, maybe a little adaption of the truth, reducing mast numbers or sail arrangements so they look cleaner. I'm not an artist though and I've been impressed with the work so far so I'll leave that to you. Do you have a plan for the non-sail powered cargo carriers?

[The Hood]

Do you have a plan for the non-sail powered cargo carriers?

No, hence my post at the top of this page asking for ideas

[TheMacpau]

Ok well I shall offer some webpages of ideas that occur to me as I find them, I'll just re-edit this list to avoid board spamming.

Liberty ships as mentioned above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship
Or the sucessor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_ship

Refrigerated Cargo ship 1942-1963
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Brisbane_Star

WW1 Wartime merchant shipping in dazzle paint might be fun like this american one sold to british.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wilhelmina_%28ID-2168%29
or this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_West_Nohno
or this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_West_Ekonk_%28ID-3313%29

Apparently the earliest Container ships were converted versions of these WW2 Tankers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_tanker

WW2 Oilers in series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_class_tanker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_class_oiler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_class_oiler
and onto...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_class_tanker

Steam Fishing trawler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Eva_%28steam_drifter%29
Diesel Fishing trawler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Corsair

The post WW2 container ships and Tankers all look rather similar from what I can tell, but I'm not a merchant shipping buff, maybe thats when you use the panamax suezmax designations for what is otherwise a large number of unique but also very similar ships. Since you don't appear to get the large production runs of single design ships of the wars.

If you are feeling controversial you could consider whalers, since they were a huge industry in the past.

Thats just some food for thought with regards to what things might look like. Hope it helps :-D

[prissi]

BTW. you can solve the ussues with horse draw barges, but making them "electric" and privede the towing patch as electrification ... THen you can avoid barge with magical horses easily.

[jamespetts]

That would be extremely counter-intuitive to users for a horse to be "electric" rather than biological. In Experimental, way constraints are used.

[The Hood]

That's an interesting idea prissi, but I think it might look a bit strange with the interaction of towpath graphics and rivers, aqueducts, tunnels, etc., and as jamespetts says, it is slightly counter-intuitive. 

To be honest, I'm more concerned about magical supertankers that can squeeze down narrow canals.  They drastically increase the capacity you can move per boat, so they make canals much more useful later on than they should be.  And of course the fact that all simu-boats are magical because they can pass straight through each other, effectively allowing infinite capacity on a canal/sea tile, or has that anomaly been fixed now?

Finally, thanks MacPau for your ideas.  I'll see how it pans out when I get to that stage in the timeline...

[Dwachs]

@The hood: no this anomalie has not been fixed. And it is unlikely that this will be fixed in the near future.

[druid]

Right further to my problems in getting these ships when drawn ready for the game. I have tried many thing but still cannot get it right. If someone is willing to take the 3d drawings when they are done and get them ready for the game i would be extremly happy. Just tell me what file extension to use and i'll get them converted and uploaded as I do them. The current file is .skp.
 

[The Hood]

I can import them into blender and generate a consistent style with the current images if you can get them to me in google earth (.kmz) or .dae format.

[druid]

Hi mate Here is the first boat it is the narrowboat President as a .dae file and some data on the boat itself. You said you could render them and set it up for the game as I find it a problem to get right. If it all goes okay more boats to follow.
thanx

[The Hood]

Awesome, I've managed to get it into blender and with a bit of re-scaling and adjusting the colours it fits right in! I've not had time to render it properly and get it in game yet though (hence no pictures), and I doubt I'll have that much time over the next week or so, but if you keep the models coming I can sort them out eventually.

PS I merged the topic as it follows on the discussion in this thread.

[The Hood]

Managed to find a bit of time today to finish off the Humber Keel (a sailing barge descended from the Viking longboats apparently, maybe you can tell in the pictures?) and also I've got Druid's narrowboat into the game, re-scaled and with a few finishing touches like different cargo pictures so it fits with the other boats. Here's some screenies:

[druid]

Right
I have uploaded 3 ships I created for pak britain as .dae into files.simutrans.us for the hood to render and place in game (as I can't seem to do that, so I'll stick to drawing them).

Boats so far with background information;

British cargo narrowboat for canals,
Clyde sea going passenger/cargo paddle steamer,
Clan Line cargo steamer,

what other boats do we need and I'll get onto them.
 

[The Hood]

Thanks druid!  I'll take a look at the cargo steamer and clyde steamer when I get chance (actually I started work on the clyde steamer but I didn't get much time so no pictures yet!  But it looks good).  

Here's one list I had come up with of older ships that need doing:
- Dogger (fishing boat)
- Fifie (fishing boat)
- Brig (sea/ocean going, medium capacity)
- East Indiaman (ocean-going, high capacity; 1750-1830)
- Blackwall Frigate (ocean-going, high capacity; 1830-1890)
- Windjammer (ocean-going, high capacity; 1890-1940)
- Clipper (ocean-going, fast high capacity; 1830-1870)

But feel free to look in the rest of this topic for ideas and draw whatever you want.  The only limit is that it must have been used in Britain!

Thanks for helping with this!

PS at some stage can you send the model of the big tanker ship you drew and I can convert that too?

[druid]

not a problem mate will do as soon as I can, but need some data to accompany it first.