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Seperate storage capacity for different good classes

Started by Leartin, November 10, 2017, 01:48:58 PM

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Leartin

Pretty sure I'm not the first one to have that idea, but I could not find prior discussions about it.

When you start playing Simutrans and come across extension buildings, you tend to think that you need to match the extension building to the good you want to transport, using tanks for oil etc. - of course that's not the case. But why not? Historically, it did not make sense - simply because there was only one value for the capacity of the station, and which types (post, pax, goods) could use it was just a toggle. Essentially, if you had a bus stop, pax would be happy to wait in a gas tank. Even with seperate capacity, it wouldn't have been very useful to have different types of storage, because you could only set the level of a station. All the stations for all kinds of goods would be pretty much the same.

But since both seperate capacities AND individual price/cost/capacity exist, it seems to be a logical step to have seperate capacity for each good type. You could have very cheap stations/extensions for bulk good or containers, but more expensive stations/extensions for cooled goods, since you would need to keep them cool. It also affects what you can do with the price tags and units if you care for balancing. If you tried to use the unit "40ft-container" for something, you could place as many of them in a station as you could place palets. Same is true for some more exotic 'goods' like cattle, prisoners, or deceased - can you really say a warehouse that can store a hundred palets would be fine being stuffed with a hundred cows? And putting criminals together with valuables might not be the smartest idea...

Ters

This might break a lot of games, possibly even entire pak sets, unless we also keep a generic category for compatibility. (I have used some goods platforms for passengers in pak64 because the only available passenger platform at some point doesn't look right for a big station.) However, mixing old style capacity and new style capacity in the same code can become messy.

And I wonder about balancing. I get the impression that no pak set has managed to balance according to what Simutrans has now. Are they ready to start balancing for this as well?

Leartin

There already is a setting to change between shared capacity and individual capacity, so a third option wouldn't be far fetched here.

Currently, any station can enable pax, post and goods. So with this addition, you could enable "bulk good" and "cooled goods"... (probably by naming one of the actual goods of the category, akin to how it works for vehicles). Having it enable "goods" could be the same as enabling them all. If you play in a different mode (completely shared capacity or shared goods capacity), every station that enables any kind of good will enable goods instead.

gauthier

QuoteThere already is a setting to change between shared capacity and individual capacity
Sorry I'm not answering your request but only asking a question: what is that individual capacity about ? I probably missed something  :-X

Leartin

Sorry, I did not remember the name.

# if enabled (default = 0 off) stops may have different capacities for passengers, mail, and  freight
separate_halt_capacities = 0


If it's on 0, you can use goods extensions to get a larger capacity for your pax. But if it's on 1, you need to build a pax station, since there are 3 different capacities for each station, for goods, pax and post.

Vladki

I was dreaming of more similar improvements.

1. Cargo platforms or extensions with cranes and similar equipment would not increase capacity, but reduce the loading time.

2. Passengers could get on/off the train only on passenger platforms, cargo on cargo platforms. Mail on both...





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DrSuperGood

Quote1. Cargo platforms or extensions with cranes and similar equipment would not increase capacity, but reduce the loading time.
This feature is likely more useful for experimental than standard as most standard paks operate without loading times and those that do have them pretty much constant throughout and short anyway.
Quote2. Passengers could get on/off the train only on passenger platforms, cargo on cargo platforms. Mail on both...
This does not make sense realistically. Although in modern times health and safety only allows people to get off at passenger platforms of appropriate lengths, nothing like that existed in the old days. A passenger train could stop off at a goods platform and everyone could jump out, just there would be no station amenities for logical reasons. Many early passenger services were nothing more than people jumping on the goods wagons and getting off where the train stopped at the good loading area.

Exception being if the good required special loading areas, eg bulk. Obviously such areas are generally not suitable for people to be around as they are specialized structures, especially in modern times.

One could introduce requirements to some modern vehicles that they can only load/unload at appropriate platforms to simulate health and safety. Like wise some goods wagons/trucks might only be able to load/unload at goods platforms to simulate the requirement of specialist loading structures, eg anything that involves bulk. However this mechanic should be opt in for pakset authors and applied on a vehicle bases.

Ters

The major reason why goods is no longer handled at platforms here in Norway is that trains no longer offer services for what Wikipedia calls break bulk cargo (more or less the boxed goods of pak64). Any platform is eligible for passenger use as far as I know. In fact, the old freight platforms might be more suited, if they were not so short (the longer ones have probable been removed), as they might be closer to be the correct height for step-free access.

Today, a platform is a requirement for passenger service. It was not so before, as DrSuperGood also writes. (It might even have been passenger service from the ground and goods from a small platform, the opposite of today.)

Leartin

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure my suggestion/intentions were understood before the topic derailed. May I try again?

Simutrans has a setting which allows to seperate goods from pax and mail in stations (and appearently is not as wide-spread as I thought).
# if enabled (default = 0 off) stops may have different capacities for passengers, mail, and  freight
separate_halt_capacities = 1


The intention of that setting is to make the pax/mail/goods division meaningful, since otherwise you only need one extension of each type. Eg. if you need space for additional 256 people waiting in a station, you would build a warehouse that accomodates 256 goods, and since the platforms are "for pax", it would still work. In the past, this wouldn't matter much, since extensions only had levels. Hence 256 people and 256 goods would have the same price and running cost via level. Now, you can have more expensive pax stations and less expensive goods stations, or however you want it to play out.

My suggestion is to allow "seperate_halt_capacities = 2", which would apply the same logic to different types of goods. Stations could, instead of enabling goods, name a specific good and enable storage only for that goods class, eg. "coal" for bulk storage, same as you do with vehicles. If you play with SHC=2, any station that enables "goods" in general is treated as if it enables each kind of good. If you play with SHC=0 or 1, any station that enables a specific type of good enables all goods instead.

DrSuperGood

QuoteMy suggestion is to allow "seperate_halt_capacities = 2", which would apply the same logic to different types of goods. Stations could, instead of enabling goods, name a specific good and enable storage only for that goods class, eg. "coal" for bulk storage, same as you do with vehicles. If you play with SHC=2, any station that enables "goods" in general is treated as if it enables each kind of good. If you play with SHC=0 or 1, any station that enables a specific type of good enables all goods instead.
This change would require that each stop has a mapping member to map good class codes to capacities, and possibly some magic good class definitions. Also all storage types would need a list of good class and capacities. Currently I think a fixed size array is used with hard coded offsets for the types.

The problem with adding a "mode 2" to the setting is that it further complicates the logic, similar to what happened with JIT2. Then it would be ages before paksets consider taking advantage of it.

If this was implemented it might be time to also define the capacity in that mode as an absolute maximum capacity, not per good type. This would mean that one cannot store 512 units of coal and stone in a 512 unit of bulk storage stop but could hold 256 coal and 256 stone.

Vladki

I like that.

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Ters

If realistic storage is a goal, it would, for a liquid storage tank extension, be just as odd to be able to store two different types of liquid at the same time as being able to store passengers. Depending on the design, a bulk stop might be just as unable to store both coal and stone at the same time (without a huge loading time penalty).

Leartin

Quote from: DrSuperGood on November 16, 2017, 06:27:10 PM
This change would require that each stop has a mapping member to map good class codes to capacities, and possibly some magic good class definitions. Also all storage types would need a list of good class and capacities. Currently I think a fixed size array is used with hard coded offsets for the types.
I don't know what a mapping member is. How is it done for convois, can't that be replicated for station?

Quote from: DrSuperGood on November 16, 2017, 06:27:10 PM
Then it would be ages before paksets consider taking advantage of it.
I really don't like the sentiment. Everything takes ages when it comes to Simutrans. If you were to add the feature, it would take months until a patch is properly reviewed and implemented, and then we'd have to wait for the next game release before a pakset using the feature could be released. What do you expect paksets to do? We can't take advantage of something that does not exist. If you want to state that you'd do it if the graphics existed, I'd take that as a promise and start work for all types of stations I want to exist in P192C with SHC2, so that the only thing required to have it in the pakset was the game code. Otherwise, it feels like an excuse.

Quote from: DrSuperGood on November 16, 2017, 06:27:10 PMIf this was implemented it might be time to also define the capacity in that mode as an absolute maximum capacity, not per good type. This would mean that one cannot store 512 units of coal and stone in a 512 unit of bulk storage stop but could hold 256 coal and 256 stone.
Currently, a warehouse with a storage capacity of 512 could have 512 coal and 512 stone. I take it you mean it should hold either 512 coal OR 512 stone OR any mix that there are, in total 512 units stored, not 1024 (or a few thousend if it's a hub for various goods).
I absolutely agree that this would be a welcome change, since the current model makes no sense in any way. But I don't think it should depend on SHC2. SHC2 is only meaningful in a pakset that provides destinct station extensions and/or platforms for different kinds of goods, and enough of them to be playable. An absolute maximum capacity (AMC) could be used in any pakset and even with SHC0 to provide extra challange. So it might be the other way around: AMC could be implemented without a worry if paksets will use it, since it's something the player can set without the paksets approval. But with AMC, SHC2 would make even more sense, AND it wouldn't be much harder on the player than SHC1 with AMC. Honestly, I thought SHC2 would be easier to do than AMC, since I thought it would be basically the same as SHC1, while AMC seems new.

Leartin

Quote from: Ters on November 17, 2017, 06:03:43 AM
If realistic storage is a goal, it would, for a liquid storage tank extension, be just as odd to be able to store two different types of liquid at the same time as being able to store passengers. Depending on the design, a bulk stop might be just as unable to store both coal and stone at the same time (without a huge loading time penalty).

Not so much realism as just consistency and logic, as well as gameplay. A Simutrans tank wagon can transport different liquids at once, but it can't transport coal. It's not realistic that the tank wagon can transport different liquids at once, but it's at least understandable that it can transport liquids, but not coal. It would be consistent if the same logic was applied to stations. As for gameplay - it would be dull if all vehicles could transport everything, and you would not have to think about what you need when sending them en route. The same is true for stations - building them is dull. Not the track layout, but adding extensions or choosing which plattform to use, because there is no variety whatsoever.

(Yes, doublepost. But I'm already banned for that anyway ;) and it seems more appropriate this way. )