Multiple hold ships

[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.

[ӔO]

it would be nice to have a higher capacity wherry.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[jamespetts]

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.

[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.

[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).

[asaphxiix]

cool!

[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?

[jamespetts]

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

[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.

[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.

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.

[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.