Allow other players to build 'city roads'.

[benjad]

Hi all, throwing this one out for brainstorming.

Frequently when playing online, I like to shape city growth by laying down roads (to prevent sprawl).  This becomes a problem for other players, because the road is owned by me.  It is quite a pain to lay a road, then use the public tool tile by tile to make it public.

So, a few ideas crossed my brain.

1. Could the 'build city road' tool be added to a player toolbar, that would do both functions (build road, and turn it public -- all at player cost).

or

2. Could a modifier key be used to make waybuilding public.   Eg [alt] + drag to build public way. 

[Ters]

Even if you could build city roads, it would still be owned by you. It seems what you want is the ability to build roads you don't own.

[Vonjo]

You can activate an empty player slot, build the roads with it, then bankrupt it. The roads will not be deleted, but will become unowned.

[Ters]

That's a rather cumbersome workaround. I'd like it if the make public tool was draggable. (BTW, I think my first sentence in my first post is a bit wrong. The city roads aren't built as owned by the public player that builds them, but are completely unowned.)

I'd also like to be able to build my own roads in style of a city road, so that there aren't gaps in the pavement and varying speed limits whenever i rebuild some streets. This is proably relatively easily doable by changing some toolbar definition file.

[Fabio]

In Pak 128 the same roads used for city roads are available to players as well, just they're not unowned.

[Ters]

Looking at the code, city roads will automatically become unowned. It also seems that building them is un-undoable. Moving the city road tool from the map editing tool bar should therefore be enough, but it is possible that building city roads won't cost you anything, which isn't good.

[greenling]

Hello
I think that's better it simutrans to ban, to overtake roads from player.

[benjad]

A few thoughts,

1. Creating another player in online play for terraforming/waybuilding is cheating.  So, that is not a preferred method.  It should cost the player to make the modifications they desire.

2.  It is important that some roads are public/unowned.  This allows rail lines to cross at level, to allow other connections to be made along the way. In cities, it allows stops, tram lines, etc. 

I was just playtesting the nightly server, and ran into that same issue.  Someone built a road inside the city.  I was unable to put a bus stop there, because it was owned... even though it was inside the city limit, and taken over by the city. 

Either suggestion I made would work, though click to drag public may have some other benefits to it.  (Make a large stretch of autobahn public). 

[Fabio]

More radical would be allowing stops on every roads within city limits no matter the owner.

[jamespetts]

1. Could the 'build city road' tool be added to a player toolbar, that would do both functions (build road, and turn it public -- all at player cost).

This is more or less what Experimental does - all roads (of any type) built in city boundaries are automatically adopted by the public player.

[Ters]

Someone built a road inside the city.  I was unable to put a bus stop there, because it was owned... even though it was inside the city limit, and taken over by the city. 

Then it can't possibly have been properly taken over by the city. Are you sure the query window was orange?

More radical would be allowing stops on every roads within city limits no matter the owner.

No. Roads inside loading areas (from the choose sign to the loading bays, inclusively) should be player owned and off-limits to everybody, preferrably including the city. (The latter because I hate it when the city creates additional entries to my loading areas, bypassing the choose sign and screwing everything up.)

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Cities taking over my private roads (and connecting to them) has long been one of my worst complains about Simutrans.

[Ters]

Maybe one should be able to build roads of different ownership levels:

   
• Private roads, which only owner can connect to and use
• Owned roads, which only owner can connect to, but everybody can drive on (with road toll perhaps)
• Open roads, which are free for all, except removal
• Public/unowned roads, where even removal is allowed

[ӔO]

^ That sounds good.
But I think one would still have to work out how to distinguish the differences in UI and on screen.

maybe private roads can get player coloured fences on their sides?
maybe owned roads can get player coloured lines on their sides?

[Ters]

That's a downside: four times as many road building tools to overwhelm new players with complexity.

Another problem is balancing it so that players construct the right kind of roads for the right occasion. Perhaps not so big a problem as it could have been, since Simutrans as far as I know has to cope with all roads beyond urban areas being private, but there is still the problem that not even cities can come to the aid of other players in providing access to a road network built by others.