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Bridgewater-Brunel no. 1 - Great Britain sized map

Started by jamespetts, December 01, 2017, 02:51:34 AM

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jamespetts

The Bridgewater-Brunel no. 1 server (port 13353 on the Bridgewater-Brunel server) is now live and waiting for players. It is running the latest version of Simutrans-Extended (at the time of writing, 13.0) and Pak128.Britain-Ex (at the time of writing, 0.9.3)

Here is a screenshot of the map, which is 7736 x 3496 tiles (equating to 967 x 437km, or the size of Great Britain turned sideways):



Some other statistics follow.

Starting year: 1750
Towns: 696
Starting population: 1,130,635
Starting industries: 2,576

There is some interesting terrain, and plenty of scope for both land and sea based transportation. There are islands, mountain ranges, forests, rivers, valleys, lakes and large swathes of sea. This is a very large map - I believe the largest that has ever been played online on a public server, so I should be interested in whether players find the performance to be acceptable, or whether players would prefer to try a smaller map, perhaps one the size of England.

Some useful notes follow.

       
  • Remember to set a password: do this by going to the "players" dialogue and clicking the little green box
  • The game will be paused when no players are connected.
  • Please set a meaningful and realistic company name (e.g. Bricknell & Quintborough Canal Company or the Frostingpike and South-Eastern Railway)
  • Please do not run more than 1 company simultaneously, to allow others to join in (players may start new companies if their old ones become bankrupt, even before the bankrupt companies are deleted completely).
  • The road network at the start of the game is not comprehensive, but these roads are public rights of way: players may upgrade them, but everyone will be able to use them and they may not be deleted. A few roads between towns are owned by the public player ("The Board of Trade"): these have been built manually. More may be added in time.
  • Players are encouraged to build their own inter-city roads for all to use where these roads are lacking - tolls will be payable for using other players' roads.
  • Towns start either not connected at all or connected only with roads that wheeled vehicles cannot traverse (bridleways).
  • Anyone whose company is unused after 10 years will have their password automatically reset.
  • Anyone whose company has never built anything will have their password automatically reset after 2 years.
  • Pak128.Britain-Ex is not yet fully balanced, especially as to costs.
  • The game contains some new features (passenger and mail classes and logistics, discussed more fully here, that have not been fully tested in an online game or in live play before, so there may be some balance issues relating to this, too
  • Please report any bugs with the game or pakset or balance issues (other than balance issues relating only to costs, work on which has not even started) on the appropriate boards (one thread per bug, please), not in this thread.
  • As the game develops, it will become more demanding on computational resources. Slower computers might not be able to keep up.
  • Players may compete or co-operate as they please, but any action taken purely maliciously (i.e., for no other reason than to harm another player, rather than directly to advance the transport network of the player taking the action) is prohibited, and offending players may be banned.
Enjoy the game - I shall very much look forward to seeing what sort of transport networks emerge.
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asaphxiix

Hello!

Congratulations on the new major version. A wonderful event! I cannot wait to try all the new features.

'Player 3' on the game was created by mistake. It may be taken over by a new player (as it has not been active), or removed.





jamespetts

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fam621

Joining now james! But how do I join when the play online button does not show up?

jamespetts

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fam621


jamespetts

Quote from: fam621 on December 01, 2017, 10:40:31 PM
I cant join the server now for some reason

May I ask what happens when you try? I should note that, if one person tries to join whilst another player is in the process of joining, the server will be unresponsive to the player trying to join. At present, joining seems to take a few minutes, so there may be a few minutes during which the server is unresponsive to players trying to join. I will look into making the joining times (in reality, the time that it takes the server to load the saved game) shorter, but I am currently away from home.
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AP

Can anyone explain why industries are not producing? (e.g. colliary at 1041,1930 - it's fully connected).

asaphxiix

#8
For me, pricing isn't really working, as it doesn't seem to persist when I clone a vehicle, or even with 'replace all'.


Other than that, it's really fantastic to see how the game has matured, and how what was once dreams of how things could be is actually working pretty nicely.

asaphxiix

Quote from: AP on December 01, 2017, 11:20:24 PM
Can anyone explain why industries are not producing? (e.g. colliary at 1041,1930 - it's fully connected).

The coal merchant ordered 28 tons, and you have 28 tons en route. The factory won't produce any more until you deliver those.

AP

Quote from: asaphxiix on December 02, 2017, 01:09:46 AM
The coal merchant ordered 28 tons, and you have 28 tons en route. The factory won't produce any more until you deliver those.

Oh god,  is that behaviour still present?! Never mind it will take months to arrive...  hard to build a network with such intermittent flows?

asaphxiix

Quote from: AP on December 02, 2017, 08:49:12 AM
Oh god,  is that behaviour still present?! Never mind it will take months to arrive...  hard to build a network with such intermittent flows?

I believe these numbers aim to simulate reality... It's 1750, so you can't really expect bustling activity for every manufactory. It's possible that you are not really supposed to build a network off of random factories at this stage. Also, you can always look for ways to make money even with such meager supply rates, by using advanced shipping and logistics techniques (e.g. regional distribution centers, combining different cargo from different sources and destinations with pax and mail on a ship, etc.). You're not supposed to just find a connected plant and shop and build an empire off of that.


AP

If that is the intention, that single chains should not be profitable,  the starting capital is far too low,by an order of magnitude.

jamespetts

The system for taking account of goods in transit is necessary for industry supply to work properly. The idea is that an industry will not demand that more goods be put in transit if, having regard to the goods already in transit and when they are likely to arrive, the industry will be adequately stocked.

For example, if an industry demands 10 units of cargo per game month, and units of cargo take one half of a game month to arrive, then an industry will demand that more units be put into transit when it has 5 or fewer units left, assuming none are already in transit. If there are already 5 units in transit, the industry will only demand that more cargo be put in transit if there are fewer than 5 units in storage.

This system does not affect the overall demand of industry, or the profitability of lines (in the long term). What would happen without it (and what used to happen before it was implemented) was that an industry would keep demanding that goods be put in transit so long as its storage was not full. Lots of goods would then be put in transit, and, eventually, the first of them would arrive (all the time more and more being put in transit). When the input store would get full,  no more goods would be demanded. By this stage, there might be a huge amount at stops or on vehicles at various stages along the route. Goods would accumulate eventually in the desintation stop and transfer over to the input store whenever the input store became empty, such that the industry would demand no more goods for a very long time. This would have the result that the player's network would end up being used extremely intensively for a short period, and then not at all for a long period. This effect would become more pronounced the longer that the lead time between supplier and consumer was, and could become extreme in cases with a long lead time (e.g., industries with thousands of times the input store accumulating in the destination station, not demanding any goods for many, many years).

Thus, without the system of taking account goods in transit, industry flows would be much more, rather than less, intermittent.

As to the starting capital, this is not yet balanced: what I am aiming for is a system in which players need to borrow money to start, so can borrow the right amount to make any given sort of network work effectively, providing that they can keep up the interest and capital repayments. However, there is a long queue of higher priority balancing tasks (and UI improvements, such as allowing manually selected prices to be automatically cloned and propagated, as well as bug fixes) that need to be done first. Anyone who would like to work on coding the cost of capital feature would be welcome to do so, as  this would greatly speed the development to a more balanced state.
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AP

It is entirely realistic however that for some industries there would be a steady continuous stream of production.  The idea of only producing or dispatching isn't how they operate. Businesses place regular orders.

More significantly,  given the focus on real world balancing,  I'm coming to feel the industrial chains themselves are spawning unbalanced.  For example, given the population of the map, the amount of coal required to keep that population warm over the winter is considerably more than the amount being demanded.  If the coal merchants in fact represent several dozen such merchants,  concentrated for convenience, then the demand should be higher. If we're balancing on the basis of individual shops and merchants there should be many more of them. And if there is no way to profitability supply the merchant from across the map, then they shouldn't be placing their exclusive supply contract with that mine. It simply makes it impossible to fulfill the contract.

jamespetts

The system of taking into account goods in transit does not inherently prevent regular demand and supply of goods; it simply means that industries will not demand goods where the fulfilment of that demand is likely to result in the industry's input stores being more than full to capacity when they arrive.

In relation to industries being not balanced, firstly, there is no seasonal difference in the balance of industries (you refer to coal in the winter). Seasonal changes in demand are something that I have long considered implementing, but that would be a very major project and take many, many months; there are currently much higher priority tasks. More generally, I have tried where possible to base the production and demand figures for industries on real values, although they are not easy to find. If you can find some better data than I have been able to find, that would be very helpful for improving the balance.

In relation to the amount of coal needed to keep the population warm, there is no mechanism in the game (and it would be fantastically complicated to implement one) for individual city buildings to have a need for specific sorts of goods that can be supplied by consumer industries. Thus, there is currently no way of simulating the amount of coal required by some specific part of the population of any given town being met by coal merchants, as there is no guarantee that any coal merchants would be generated in any given town. The idea is, however, that the actual passenger demand level of any consumer industry will vary with the size of the town, and the actual amount of goods consumed by a consumer industry will vary with the actual number of passengers visiting it (often by walking, especially in the early years), which should at least approximately simulate the demand for goods being proportional to the size of the population in the functional vicinity of the consumer industry.

Edit: Incidentally, is the issue more about the total number of industries on the map? This would be easier in principle to fix, but would require restarting the map. Working out the best industry to town ratio is not easy: I specified 5 industries per town when I generated this map, albeit then manually added quite a number of small villages. Any testing to determine the optimal level of this ratio would be much appreciated.
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Vladki

Was there any change in the industry supply model related to the new release? I see above mentioned spikes in supplies while playing the demo game, but I play with older version (october 2017)

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk


jamespetts

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jamespetts

From what I can see from the server listing site, this appears to be down at present. I will not be able to look into this until I get back home to-morrow evening - I suspect that it may be related to the crash that has been reported with replacing convoys, but I will not be sure until I can test this properly.

Thank you for your patience in the meantime.
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asaphxiix

To me it seems there is more than enough industry. I have to say I really like the current map, it's really got much of everything you want and I like the real-size simulation of the size of the British Isles.

Sad that the server is down, I wish I could restart it myself!

fam621


asaphxiix

Quote from: fam621 on December 02, 2017, 09:31:19 PM
How do you join a mismatched server.
The server is down at the moment. I don't think the sandbox server is any good, it's an old version.

jamespetts

One can attempt to join a mismatched server by opening the load game dialogie, and typing net:[URL of the server] instead of the filename and pressing return or clicking OK, but there is a high chance that you will be disconnected very soon after joining a mismatched server (which is why it is marked as mismatched in the first place).
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DrSuperGood

QuoteThe system for taking account of goods in transit is necessary for industry supply to work properly. The idea is that an industry will not demand that more goods be put in transit if, having regard to the goods already in transit and when they are likely to arrive, the industry will be adequately stocked.
Except it is not factoring in the unknown wait time as the goods have and will never will depart.
QuoteFor example, if an industry demands 10 units of cargo per game month, and units of cargo take one half of a game month to arrive, then an industry will demand that more units be put into transit when it has 5 or fewer units left, assuming none are already in transit. If there are already 5 units in transit, the industry will only demand that more cargo be put in transit if there are fewer than 5 units in storage.
Except the transport buffer capacity is likely a lot larger than 10 units and the actual transit time might as well be infinite.

The main problem with industry currently is the illogical destinations. I decided to start from an island with fish. The idea being fishing for profit and delivering the food. The problem is that ships hold between 500 and 1500 units of food yet the industries work in 10-20 units per month.

No problem I will combine it with other industries from the island and.... Oh wait all industries on the island go to completely different locations that are at least 100km separated. No problem I will add passengers and mail for a bit of... Oh wait practically no mail is sent and passengers will only travel for 7 hours odd by ship instead of the 20+ needed to reach the destination market for the fish.

End result with fishing is one makes profit from fishing itself, but delivering the food is a loss as one needs 4-8 ships running at <1% capacity with at least 1 month intervals to even have a hope that the market will be continuously stocked and not some arbitrary total limit is reached.

The question we should all ask is why are we having to ship food 200 km away in 1750? That is a considerably more modern practice and was not even really possible back in the 1750s due to inability to refrigerate. The fresh fish would be landed and smoked/salted/fermented and sold at a markets near where it was landed, not 200km away. If everything was kept within 20-40km one could have a few ships moving around a variety of goods that are well utilized. This is why AP says the starting money is orders of magnitude to small, as to build an efficient network spanning 40,000 km^2 one needs a lot of money and days of human effort.

jamespetts

Quote from: DrSuperGood on December 02, 2017, 10:24:11 PM
Except it is not factoring in the unknown wait time as the goods have and will never will depart.

I am afraid that I am unable to parse that sentence. Can you elaborate? Why will the goods never depart?

I should note that an unknown waiting time is always assumed to be a specific, but small, waiting time.

QuoteExcept the transport buffer capacity is likely a lot larger than 10 units and the actual transit time might as well be infinite.

I am not sure that I follow this. Why exactly might the actual transit time as well be infinite?

QuoteThe main problem with industry currently is the illogical destinations. I decided to start from an island with fish. The idea being fishing for profit and delivering the food. The problem is that ships hold between 500 and 1500 units of food yet the industries work in 10-20 units per month.

No problem I will combine it with other industries from the island and.... Oh wait all industries on the island go to completely different locations that are at least 100km separated. No problem I will add passengers and mail for a bit of... Oh wait practically no mail is sent and passengers will only travel for 7 hours odd by ship instead of the 20+ needed to reach the destination market for the fish.

End result with fishing is one makes profit from fishing itself, but delivering the food is a loss as one needs 4-8 ships running at <1% capacity with at least 1 month intervals to even have a hope that the market will be continuously stocked and not some arbitrary total limit is reached.

The question we should all ask is why are we having to ship food 200 km away in 1750? That is a considerably more modern practice and was not even really possible back in the 1750s due to inability to refrigerate. The fresh fish would be landed and smoked/salted/fermented and sold at a markets near where it was landed, not 200km away. If everything was kept within 20-40km one could have a few ships moving around a variety of goods that are well utilized. This is why AP says the starting money is orders of magnitude to small, as to build an efficient network spanning 40,000 km^2 one needs a lot of money and days of human effort.

I have implemented a system in which industries can (and do) have a defined radius within which their connected industries must be built. Do I understand from this that this is not working in this case?

This might either be a bug in the system, or possibly the effect of an escape mechanism whereby, for example, a market, which consumes fish, which is a long way inland will try to connect to a supplier for fish within its radius, but will be unable either to find or spawn one, so will look outside its radius (I cannot remember enough about how this system works to recall whether this is the case or not, and I am currently away from home, so cannot investigate this now). Have you noticed a lot of industries that are a long way from their suppliers? This might need investigating as a bug report. This was working at least really quite recently.

As to the ships, the ships' storage is realistic so far as I can find (unless you are aware of any data to suggest that it is too large? Any better data than I have so far is always very welcome). Alternatively, is the pakset missing smaller ships/boats? If so, do you have any data about them? However, it was not usual to transport fish by sea (other than in the original fishing boats) in the 1750s. Until the canals came, only coastal towns had a supply of saltwater fish. Inland towns might have had a small supply of freshwater fish from rivers, lakes or wiers. This returns to the question of the spacing of industries as discussed above.
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DrSuperGood

#25
QuoteI am afraid that I am unable to parse that sentence. Can you elaborate? Why will the goods never depart?
QuoteI am not sure that I follow this. Why exactly might the actual transit time as well be infinite?
Because the industry will not order enough product to fill the ship up enough for it to ever depart. If the ship cannot ever depart the journey time might as well be infinite.

Line wise the ship has been set to only leave with a minimum load so as to make the journey vaguely profitable. Otherwise the amount it departs with might not be sufficient enough to cover the movement costs.
QuoteHave you noticed a lot of industries that are a long way from their suppliers?
Practically all of them on the map are like this. It is very difficult to find a journey that is not about 100-200km away. That said practically none are across the entire map so there is some locality. Maybe this is a balancing issue?
QuoteAs to the ships, the ships' storage is realistic so far as I can find (unless you are aware of any data to suggest that it is too large?
The problem is not that the haulage amounts are inaccurate. It is that the logistic structure of industries is inaccurate. It is near impossible to find enough goods in an area going to another sensible area to reasonably load a ship.

The only reason we can even use ships is because their running costs have not been balanced. They break even with as little as 10-20 units of cargo out of 500 or 1500 units capacity.
QuoteHowever, it was not usual to transport fish by sea (other than in the original fishing boats) in the 1750s. Until the canals came, only coastal towns had a supply of saltwater fish. Inland towns might have had a small supply of freshwater fish from rivers, lakes or wiers. This returns to the question of the spacing of industries as discussed above.
Well in the server map almost all fish landing places are connected to markets 100-200 km away. Even if there is a market in the same town or a market in a nearby town (10 or 20 km away) they still seem to connect to one very far away (100-200 km away). I checked quite a few of such factories, so maybe it worked correct in others I did not check. This is the only market connected to the factory. Shipping it by boat is the only way to deliver the fish to market as the market is on a completely different island reasonably far away.

I have attached an image of what most Fishing ports look like, such as the one I was using on the server. Assuming 1 km = 8 tiles then the as crow flys distance from Fishing Port to Market is ~170 km.

asaphxiix

Quote from: DrSuperGood on December 03, 2017, 04:23:21 AM
Because the industry will not order enough product to fill the ship up enough for it to ever depart. If the ship cannot ever depart the journey time might as well be infinite.

Ideally, you should be able to combine shipments from several places, also with pax and mail for the sea lanes at least. This way, the ship can depart, theoretically at least. I should add that I have yet to try this method. I'm sure it is quite hard, and thus very gratifying, and will surely require much capital that must be made first with pax and mail. While I personally find such challenge very appealing, I realize this may indeed deter players who are more industry-oriented.

Also, I never really liked the function of having to connect factories across the map quite randomly and arbitrarily, even if I try to make up a simulation in my head, e.g. that local facilities are connected implicitly, and it is only for lucrative contracts with distant suppliers and buyers that they require my help. Such a story does not settle well with having to secure an entire chain for one of its elements to work, and other game concepts. It would indeed be great if there were some logic and more game in interconnecting such facilities, e.g., areas for manufacturers of different goods, goods requiring less or more distance, etc. I'm sure these are not new suggestions, though, for both extended and standard, as the core of this system (having to supply seemingly-random routes) seems to stem the early base game and indeed, I believe I can remember it from the original Transport Tycoon.

jamespetts

Thank you for your feedback: the real issue appears to be industry chain distances: I shall have to look into this when I return home this evening.

Incidentally, what ships are you using for these operations? Ships such as the East Indiaman and even the Brig were generally used for ocean voyages. The schooner (I think that there is one in the pakset) would have been used for coasting (i.e., sailing with cargo between different ports on the same coast), which is what some of the industry will require if it is configured realistically.
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fam621


AP

Quote from: jamespetts on December 02, 2017, 11:33:47 AM

Edit: Incidentally, is the issue more about the total number of industries on the map? This would be easier in principle to fix, but would require restarting the map. Working out the best industry to town ratio is not easy: I specified 5 industries per town when I generated this map, albeit then manually added quite a number of small villages. Any testing to determine the optimal level of this ratio would be much appreciated.

It depends if we are of the view that 'one game industry' represents 'one real world industry',  or represents many? The map has a lot of industries,  but I'm not sure the sum output of them all is at the level it should be for the map size and population being simulated. There isn't "enough stuff" being produced to bother transporting.

In 1750 there is inevitably a heavy bias to agricultural industries, which seems reasonable.

Quote from: jamespetts on December 03, 2017, 09:27:47 AM
Incidentally, what ships are you using for these operations? Ships such as the East Indiaman and even the Brig were generally used for ocean voyages. The schooner (I think that there is one in the pakset) would have been used for coasting (i.e., sailing with cargo between different ports on the same coast), which is what some of the industru y will require if it is configured realistically.
I don't believe the schooner is available in 1750.

Quote
Quote from: jamespettsHave you noticed a lot of industries that are a long way from their suppliers?
Practically all of them on the map are like this. It is very difficult to find a journey that is not about 100-200km away. That said practically none are across the entire map so there is some locality.
If you look at the Bulk Goods like coal, most of them are a substantial way across the map (e.g. 75% of the Y axis). Possibly the rarity of the heavy industry chains influences that. In the past, such chains -especially the longer ones - were fairly reliable profit makers for players; but now the order volumes are so small and intermittent it isn't worth servicing them, let alone building infrastructure to do so.

zook2

Quote from: jamespetts on December 02, 2017, 10:39:18 PMInland towns might have had a small supply of freshwater fish from rivers, lakes or wiers. This returns to the question of the spacing of industries as discussed above.

Slightly off-topic, but I've seen a few fishing ports on inland lakes, that couldn't ever be connected to the sea without building large canal networks. Is there a function to recognize inaccessible bodies of water and prevent that?

Ves

Oooh, I cant wait to connect to the game!
Unfortunately though, I have been trying to connect all evening without succes. I try to connect via the loadingscreen but after a short while, a messages just pops up that it doesnt respond.
Is the server down for the moment?

asaphxiix

Yes it is. In parallel, I am working on setting up a new server with at least one additional game, expect further updates soon on that here and on a separate thread.


jamespetts

Thank you all for your feedback, and apologies for the server having been down. I am not sure what the problem was: the game had not crashed, but had rather frozen with the CPU at 98%, suggesting a possible infinite loop (rather than a thread deadlock). Unfortunately, I could not reproduce this from the saved game on the server, so I cannot identify and fix this issue.

I have restarted the server, however, so it is running again. Some progress may be lost - we are now in March 1751.

I have also identified and fixed the problem with industry distances to consumer - the fix will be available in to-morrow's nightly version. This raises an important question: would people like me to restart the map from scratch now with the correct industry distances before too much time is spent on this map? I note from the discussion above that the incorrect industry spacing has been causing serious balance issues; but I do not want to erase everyone's networks and start afresh without consulting those who have constructed those networks.

I also wonder whether we need to look into having more small sailing boats in the early era; does anyone have any information about whether any significant such boats are missing?

Quote from: APIt depends if we are of the view that 'one game industry' represents 'one real world industry',  or represents many? The map has a lot of industries,  but I'm not sure the sum output of them all is at the level it should be for the map size and population being simulated. There isn't "enough stuff" being produced to bother transporting.

In 1750 there is inevitably a heavy bias to agricultural industries, which seems reasonable.

The intention is for each industry to represent (approximately) the number of industries of the type that would in fact fit in the land area in question occupied by the industry (with each tile being 125 meters squared). This results in different industries in game representing different numbers of real-life industries, from 1 (for large industries such as steelworks, gasworks, etc.) to several (for industries such as shops and public houses), and see here for a discussion of the land area of agricultural industries through time.
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