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Early year minor annoyances (mostly intro dates)

Started by R1dO, July 19, 2019, 08:16:54 PM

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R1dO

Although i'm having fun with my current (pak64) game i also noticed some minor "annoyances". Thought it would be good to share those, since i'm not sure if it is by design.
It is a game started in 1880 and it is currently around 1910 (most "annoyances" were discovered during this play). I know such an early start is not really recommend, but i'm having fun ;)

Air-transport:
* The first tier of buildings (hangar, strip, etc) and the first vehicle (blimp) have an introduction date (1901-01) before the taxiway (1901-07) which is needed to start constructing them.

Rail electrification:
* The first vehicle (JaCo BB1280) is introduced in 1900-11. It cannot be seen in the depot at that moment since the first electrification is available in 1901-01

Bridges:
* Wooden road bridge has a maintenance cost of 1000. Construction cost however is only 110, judging from other bridges i suspect 11000 was meant.
* In the dat-file there is ClassicRoad bridge. This one does not show up ingame since the retire year (1919) is lower than the introduction year (1920).
* Both the "Modern road bridge" and the "Brick rail viaduct" have an unlimited length (max_length=0) while most other bridges are limited to about 7 tiles, is this by design to help players?
  - It just feels odd you can cross oceans with them (not tested for any water depth limitations though).

Slightly related:
On the map there are quite some large bodies of water, this made me realize i was missing the ability to transport bulk goods via water (especially since there is already a oil barge), If interested the addon (with sources) i've posted on the parent board can be used (although it might need some balancing w.r.t. the rest of the pak).

Hope this is of some use.

DrSuperGood

Quote from: R1dO on July 19, 2019, 08:16:54 PM* In the dat-file there is ClassicRoad bridge. This one does not show up ingame since the retire year (1919) is lower than the introduction year (1920).
This way/bridge type was likely phased out. It is not intended for players to ever build but still exists for backwards compatibility with old save games where it did exist.
Quote from: R1dO on July 19, 2019, 08:16:54 PM* Both the "Modern road bridge" and the "Brick rail viaduct" have an unlimited length (max_length=0) while most other bridges are limited to about 7 tiles, is this by design to help players?  - It just feels odd you can cross oceans with them (not tested for any water depth limitations though).
Bridges with support columns are meant to have an unlimited length as they act as elevated ways rather than bridges with a bridge span. In real life there is no limit to how long such stretches can be, with China having several 100km stretches where rails beds are not on the ground.

I think the complaint you want to make is that one should not be able to build such bridges over deep water. Specifically the support column height must be limited so water that is too deep will not allow such bridges built over it. Extended has this behaviour already, with only span based bridges being allowed over deep water.

R1dO

Thank you for your feedback.

That kind of explanation is exactly what i was looking for.

Ters

I actually wrote a tool that pointed out a lot of oddities in introduction and retirement dates years ago. It didn't check vehicles against roads, but there were several mismatches between tractors and trailers. A few got fixed, others didn't. Some dates are mismatched in pak64 itself to open up for add-ons that (might) match them.

In practice, I find pak64 pretty unplayable before 1910 or so, although how unplayable might depend on how much earlier one starts. I started in 1860. The earlier one starts, the more passengers one might stimulate, and the horse drawn carriage is too long and slow compared to the capacity. The cities get swamped with them, with grid locks as often as every few minutes. The only solution is to tear down half the city to build railroads, but then there is suddenly too few passengers, because you removed the buildings that generated them. Alternatively, build an unrealistic subway with regular steam trains. (pak64 doesn't have realistic subway trains at any point.)
There is also some problems in the other end, as vehicles retire without replacements from around year 2000. Everything after that was the unknown future when pak64 was mostly made.
Quote from: R1dO on July 19, 2019, 08:16:54 PMWooden road bridge has a maintenance cost of 1000. Construction cost however is only 110, judging from other bridges i suspect 11000 was meant.
Maybe the difficult part is keeping ants, termites and fungus from eating up the bridge?

Quote from: R1dO on July 19, 2019, 08:16:54 PMIt just feels odd you can cross oceans with them (not tested for any water depth limitations though).
Water depth limitations has been discussed. However, adding such a restriction means that there will then suddenly be no way of crossing big, deep bodies of water except expensive landscaping. Or equally unrealistically long underwater tunnels, at least early in the timeline. The economics in Simutrans makes simply going around unprofitable, except by doing some slight "cheats". And, pak64 at least, doesn't have a good coverage of ships, at least early on. Ships are also too slow for cargo with JIT1 (the default supply-demand algorithm) in my opinion.

DrSuperGood

Quote from: Ters on July 19, 2019, 09:35:11 PMHowever, adding such a restriction means that there will then suddenly be no way of crossing big, deep bodies of water except expensive landscaping.
If only land scaping was expensive... To put it in perspective in the average pak64 server if I use exploits I could have enough money to terraform the entire map in a matter of hours.

Having large bodies of water as impassable, like in Simutrans Extended, I personally view as a gameplay enhancement. It adds challenge as one cannot just use your infinite money to terraform the entire planet to suit your needs. This is why Fifty/50 and many other servers banned such bridges and water terraformation.

Ters

Players of Simutrans is so diverse, that some rules are up to the players themselves to make and uphold. I generally avoid unrealistic bridges, but sometimes, there is no choice if I am to connect the most important areas in the map. Realistically, there would be a ferry service, but I find something like this virtually impossible to set up so that it doesn't require micromanagement. It tends to become either a bottleneck or lose money. The two extra transfers may cause the routing to consider a detour through some branch lines around the water to be an alternative, despite being just as unrealistic.

And, yes, after playing for perhaps about a decade in pak64, you have so much money that you don't need the public player option to play god anymore. Altering the terrain is still quite forbiddingly expensive in the start. If it was more expensive, one might not be able to get started at all.