Getting started in Bridgewater-Brunel - questions

[mds-02]

Hello,

Background: I have been a very casual player of Simutrans Extended for a couple years on and off, never doing much advanced beyond setting up passenger/mail transit via ships and road vehicles, and some cargo handling (orchards to markets!). I have done some games in later timelines with some rail, but have kept it very simple. I come from having more experience in games like A-Train, so really have no clue about signaling, and have not really gotten a clear sense of anything except the use of a token block segment of rail to get a train at full speed.

I am hoping to participate in the online game, but a few questions have gotten in my way, and I can't find much discussion of the super basic things I am wondering about. I hope this thread might help gather some of that information (or at least be findable by future players).

Questions I have had:

Basics - player setup
1) In joining the server, what do I need to do as a new player to start?
1) Answer I received - In the player menu, go to an open slot and create a new human player and name it an appropriate company name. (I was told this, but haven't done it yet) I was also recommended that I might be able to take over an abandoned company?

2) How do I find out if a company is abandoned and available to be taken over? Who and where should I ask?

3) How are companies determined to be abandoned? In other words, how often are you expected to log in to maintain your slot?

Multiplayer and stations
4) I understand that since passengers can walk, I effectively can add passenger lines of my own and build nearby stops to existing player's stops to have passengers able to travel from throughout the network to whatever I have added. Is there any equivalent process for mail or cargo? As a humble beginning, I would like to provide mail service out to areas that have not been yet served via cheap mail carriers, but know that such a service only works well with a strong network. Is it just about access to ways and stops - e.g. my mail carrier needs to drop the mail directly at a stop served by the rest of the network and that only happens with the permission being granted by the other player?

5) Suppose a player has connected service for a type of good, with a station of some kind somewhere in the line where goods are transferred between convoys. Could I possibly create a 'public drop' kind of warehouse stop that is within service of that stop, supply that stop with a good, and that good could then be carried off by whatever cargo service provided by the other player, as if it were their own goods? (I am imagining this stop/warehouse being treated as a producer that anyone could pick up from)

6) How should one go about requesting access to stops, when I don't really see other players on when I am connected? Is there another asynchronous channel for communication that I am missing?

Thank you for your support!

[Huitsi]

Here are some (partial) answers.

2) How do I find out if a company is abandoned and available to be taken over? Who and where should I ask?

3) How are companies determined to be abandoned? In other words, how often are you expected to log in to maintain your slot?

Having no password set indicates an abandoned company, since the password gets reset after a while of inactivity (10 in-game years according to https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,22999.msg207113.html#msg207113). Weekly logins should easily suffice to keep your company locked.

The player list used to show if a company was behind a password or not. I guess currently you just have to select them, choose (for example) the bulldozer and see if you get prompted for a password.

4) [--] Is it just about access to ways and stops - e.g. my mail carrier needs to drop the mail directly at a stop served by the rest of the network and that only happens with the permission being granted by the other player?

AFAIK you need to share a stop, either with a granted permission or the by stop being on a public right of way, that is, a public road/street or a river.

6) How should one go about requesting access to stops, when I don't really see other players on when I am connected? Is there another asynchronous channel for communication that I am missing?

I, at least, always check chat when joining. You can also prefix messages with "@<player or company name>" for visibility. Another option is leaving a marker (under speacial tools) where the camera starts at ("spawn", currently Worm Isle).

[Matthew]

Hello,

Background: I have been a very casual player of Simutrans Extended for a couple years on and off, never doing much advanced beyond setting up passenger/mail transit via ships and road vehicles, and some cargo handling (orchards to markets!).

Hello and welcome to the Simutrans Extended corner of the forum! It's great to hear that you enjoy the game too.

so really have no clue about signaling, and have not really gotten a clear sense of anything except the use of a token block segment of rail to get a train at full speed.

The in-game help system has some really great advice about signalling, especially the Top Tips page. There are also some great YouTube tutorials on the Simutrans Films playlist, made by James Petts who actually wrote most of the signalling system.

1) Answer I received - In the player menu, go to an open slot and create a new human player and name it an appropriate company name. (I was told this, but haven't done it yet) I was also recommended that I might be able to take over an abandoned company?

If you are asking is that correct, then yes it is.

Huitsi has already provided great answers to your later questions, I think, but I have a personal request for one of them.

2) How do I find out if a company is abandoned and available to be taken over? Who and where should I ask?

3) How are companies determined to be abandoned? In other words, how often are you expected to log in to maintain your slot?

I was running a company called Morsalmond Navigation. I haven't been able to log in for months because my desktop PC is broken, so it's totally within the rules for you to take it over (and maybe someone else already has!). Having said that, I do dream of resuming it some day, so I would request that you pick some other company if you're undecided. But I reiterate that the rules definitely allow you to take it over if you really want to.

6) How should one go about requesting access to stops, when I don't really see other players on when I am connected? Is there another asynchronous channel for communication that I am missing?

Thank you for your support!

Huitsi is right that the official communications channel is the in-game chat and I think everybody uses spawn signs too. There's also a bridgewater-brunel-server channel in the Simutrans Discord server, which is very convenient if you want to share screenshots (e.g. so you can draw lines showing where a new road will go). But not everybody uses Discord (Huitsi being an example) so I always think of it as a supplement, not a substitute.

[mds-02]

Thank you for the responses, they are very helpful.

Regarding public stations, the fact that a station on a public way is by default public is a new understanding for me. I will do a bit of exploration of those possibilities.

The only remaining question is #5 which surrounds the possibility of allowing 'passive' pickups from a station. I figure direct coordination and giving access to the station holding goods to the player carrying the goods to their destination is the main way forward. On the map am just seeing lots of cow farms and slaughter houses that are inactive, but can see that getting things all the way to the market simply has not been feasible. I'm wondering about getting things partway and passing them off between networks.

One follow up question is:
If a producer has more than one station in range with service to a consumer, how do the goods get divvied up, since goods are produced at a specific pace?

Thank you both for your warm welcome. I'll see if I can find some time to get started this week. (And definitely will be starting a new company, so no worries!)

[Huitsi]

I must confess I'm having trouble understanding question #5. Goods will transfer at stations (within limit, 12 hops on the B-B IIRC), even between diffrent companies. There does however need to be some way to the destination for them to show up on the first stop.

I'm afraid I can't help with the follow up question.

[mds-02]

Goods will transfer at stations (within limit, 12 hops on the B-B IIRC), even between diffrent companies.

Ok, I think I had this understanding.

I was imagining a second stop (presuming no shared access), and wondering if that second stop could act like a producer (have goods taken from it by another stop). This idea is made moot by your following point:

There does however need to be some way to the destination for them to show up on the first stop.

This then resolves it, I think, because in the case of what I'm imagining, there wouldn't really be a way for the producer to detect the existence of the connection, as the goods would just see the line terminating at this 'supplying' station.

I could imagine a real world situation where a train company acts like a wholesaler in this way (buy goods and hold them at a warehouse), and then have other companies transfer the goods to final consumers. Likely outside the scope of the economics simulation desired, however.

Thanks for the input.