Add-ons for pak 128

[chalkplayer]

Hi all,
I am new to the forum, but have been playing Simutrans for about 1.5 years.
Can you add items from pakset128 Britain or Germany into the 'regular" oak 128?
Thanks,
chalk

[Leartin]

Yes, BUT...

...while the tile size is the same, the size of vehicles is not. The scale will not fit perfectly.
...the style is quite different, so often it simply does not look good.
...costs are different, so everything you add might be too cheap/costy
...some objects are dependant on others, eg. a vehicle which transports a certain good


It's often done, it does work, but it's not recommanded

[DrSuperGood]

They need to fix existing convoys like aircraft before new ones are added. Currently air in standard pak128 is completely broken generating far too much money for the effort it takes to use.

[Flemmbrav]

@chalkplayer
pak128german trains are using same (vehicle & track) sice them our pak192comic ones, they'll be to large,
others are working fine to me, but you should to copy (but don't replace) the good.*.paks, it could be possible to be a reason for a loading error.


@DrSuperGood
is your aircraft problem a special "addon" problem?
or are you talking about the main (vanilla) pakset? (sounds a bit like)
i guess leartin said it right, every object can be to cheap/expeancive, airplanes won't be allone with that.

[DrSuperGood]

is your aircraft problem a special "addon" problem?
or are you talking about the main (vanilla) pakset? (sounds a bit like)
i guess leartin said it right, every object can be to cheap/expeancive, airplanes won't be allone with that.

The current release of standard pak128 (standard default, not Britain or anything) has unbalanced aircraft. Server administrators have reached the stage that food and goods aircrafts are out right banned and even passenger aircraft make crazy money (sure they would be banned as well if people realised it). For example the concord, an aircraft that obsoletes, still makes the most profit of all passenger aircraft even end game (out side of realism there is no reason it should obsolete as it still is the best).

The amount of profit the concord makes is similar to high speed trains except a tiny airport costs a fraction of the maintenance that an enormous high speed line does. A single food factory chain can make several million profit a year with a few planes and takes 10 minutes or less to set up (flour which needs farm products is the longest to set up as it still needs rail or road). In reality it should not be possible to make profit at all shipping food and goods in a single direction, you should need at least 60% utilization with those to break even let alone make profit. Air freight should be viable, but not the most profitable and very situation (like in real life where most of our food and packaged goods comes shipped in containers on boats). The first pak128 game of Fifty this summer was a good demo for this where I have a massive goods empire mostly using planes which gave me huge profit for how little time I spent on it (only was overtaken end game by someone who had half the map's cities serviced).

Yes they do cost 1-2 million each. However on a well serviced line they will pay for themselves in under a year. This is nowhere near what can be achieved with trains which have similar costs (high speed engines are also 1-2M each) but enormous infrastructure costs (making a high speed connection between cities can cost several millions, especially if some terraformation is required). I am not sure how it happened or even why they were balanced so (maybe for before speed bonus?) but the fact is they cost far too little in running cost and have comparatively free maintenance and footprint compared with similar freight or truck services.

Adding new convoys to the default is kind of pointless unless what is already in it is balanced. As it is pak128 has far too many end game choices of which most should obsolete at some stage (they are physically surpassed by other convoy types). From a gaming perspective offering users "fake choice" shows poor game design and balance. If something never gets used it might as well not be there.

[gauthier]

Pak128 has many problems but no one reports them so it's hard to fix them quickly. If I hadn't read this thread, I (me or any pak128 team member) would never have cared about it since I don't use planes at all ... anyway I will take a look at them before the next release. I don't know about other paksets economy but in pak128 I, personally, find speedbonuses farly exagerated.

About adding objects from other paksets : I agree with Leartin, it's mostly impossible. Anyway, it's still possible to make addons reproducing the objects you want (I mean make an addon from the real object which inspired the object in the other pakset), although you would have to do it yourself as nobody is having much free time.

[DrSuperGood]

Pak128 has many problems but no one reports them so it's hard to fix them quickly. If I hadn't read this thread, I (me or any pak128 team member) would never have cared about it since I don't use planes at all ... anyway I will take a look at them before the next release. I don't know about other paksets economy but in pak128 I, personally, find speedbonuses farly exagerated.

People already did, in January...

Cargo planes (cooled goods and packed goods) should need greater than 50% utilization (shipping in both directions) to make profit. Passenger aircraft should need very high utilization (90%?) to make profit. Both should be viable for convenience but not the most profitable way to make money since spending 5 minutes to make an airport should not be better than 1-2 hours making a long distance high speed railway.

Passenger and mail airplanes are balanced to be running 85% of their capacity at any time, as well suggests prissi.
Cargo planes are balanced to be running at 50% their capacity though. That's why it's easier to make them rentable if you manage to make them return back with some kind of cargo loaded.

Cargo planes make tones of profit even shipping in a single direction (timeline enabled so no they do not have a crazy speed bonus). Passenger planes are actually kind-of balanced with exception of the Concord which makes the most profit even long after it retires due to its crazy speed (sure it holds few people, but nothing a few of them cannot sort).

Shipping something like glass bottles (for bottling plant) by cargo plane should not be viable. Electronics and food yes but even they should need pretty high utilization in both directions. I literally made it to top player for 90% of a server just by using planes with some trains for goods I could not air ship. Everything makes tons of profit even shipping in a single directions (planes with >1 million profit a year). I am pretty sure one of the planes is bugged (it has a noticeably lower cost than all similar aircraft, even ones released later than it).

[Zeno]

The regular pak128 hasn't been balanced for the last 6 or 7 years. The only work that has been done is trying to equalize the economies between vehicles by doing some maths, but no real balancing was never done.
Anyway, check out the nightly, where the bonuses are sightly smaller thus reducing the inconveniences described in the above posts.

People already did, in January...

Actually it's been reported repeatedly for the last 3 or 4 years, but never heard of someone that offered to fix it.

[chalkplayer]

Thank you everybody for the responses.
I have found that the add-ons from SNFOS  are working really well with pak128.
It will be good for me to play separate games with pkak128.britain and pak128.germany.

thanks again!

Yes, BUT...

...while the tile size is the same, the size of vehicles is not. The scale will not fit perfectly.
...the style is quite different, so often it simply does not look good.
...costs are different, so everything you add might be too cheap/costy
...some objects are dependant on others, eg. a vehicle which transports a certain good


It's often done, it does work, but it's not recommanded