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Container Ship

Started by stevenlim84, July 31, 2009, 01:21:53 AM

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stevenlim84

Dear All,

I think the container ships in PAK 128 is too small to handle large amount of freights.

From the information provided by wikipedia, a container ship can ship up to 15,000 TEU (equal to 7,500X40' container). Since 40'GP has more strict weight limitation, I take it to calculate. 40'GP weight limit usually is 26.5ton. Sometimes it is 20 ton depends on the regulation from the port. According to PAK 128 goods list, the heaviest crate goods is glass. 1 crate of glass is 1,300 kg. That is one 40' container can place 15.4 crate of glass according to the weight limit 20 ton per 40'GP. Let's round it to 15 crate for  better calculation. Then 1 container ship can ship at least 15X7,500=112,500 crates of glass.

In simutrans world, 1 crate of glass should use same space as 1 crate of books/electronics etc since the weight of each kind of goods is different. Therefore, the container ship capacity in PAK 128 should rise from 500 crate (Europa) to 112,500 crates (new suggested container ship).

But if the ship have such large capacity, it is hard to have factories to fill up such large number of crates. If we really need to increase the capacity of container ships, we need to consider to increase the production rate and storage of current PAK128 factories.

Please feel free to discuss my suggestions. Thanks!

Severous

HI

Ive used ships in the few games I've played.  I seem to end up with quite a few more than is realistic...but then I will be exploiting routing to keep cargo on ships longer than is necessary.



However.  A change in ship capacity on the scale you outline would surely need changes in many other areas of the game to re-balance the higher cargo amount?  Think of one of those monsters docking.  Port would need large amounts of storage to avoid becoming overfull (which stops production in some configurations). Transport or running costs would need to adjust.

Is there a way a player can adjust the capacity of a vehicle in Simutrans?  So stevenlim84 could edit his version and give it a go?
Regards
Sev.

Maragil

Quote from: Severous on July 31, 2009, 05:56:00 AM
Is there a way a player can adjust the capacity of a vehicle in Simutrans?  So stevenlim84 could edit his version and give it a go?

Nope, unless some of the ships were openSource- if so, I believe that you can get the .dat files etc. from the Nightly Pak Page (openPak 128) Then, if you wait a bit you will be able to consult the wiki on how to edit .dat files,enabling you to increase capacity. Otherwise, pm VS for source codes.

However, one should consider the fact that a single ship is 1km>. And really slow. Really, really, really slow. UNDERWATER TRAINS PEOPLE!!!

H./

vilvoh

Quote from: Maragil on July 31, 2009, 08:15:30 AM
However, one should consider the fact that a single ship is 1km>.

Are you talking about a real life scale or Simutrans scale? in Simutrans, the scale for buildings is different from the scale for vehicles. see this thread for more details...


Escala Real...a blog about Simutrans in Spanish...

Spike

I don't know if the ship is still in current Simutrans pak64, but once there was a ferry with 1500 passengers capacity. At least back in those days, it took quite a while to distribute all passengers when the ferry had docked somewhere, and it rather caused problems at times.

I think, if someone studied the pak file structure, one can alter the capacity right in the pak file, but this is most likely intermediate hacker level.

Severous

Pak64..800 passenger liner is the largest. (there is a 850 passenger aircraft)

Pak128..has a 1490 passenger liner. 750 oil tanker ship

PakGerman..1500 Passenger ferry..and a 680 boxed goods freight ship

All a far cry from the number stevelim talks of. 

I think the current numbers are ok personally.  Although I could imagine a scenario where you had to load a waiting 50,000 ton bulk cargo ship with iron ore inside 2months.  Not use the big ship as a viable means of transport within the game..just as a scenario objective.
Regards
Sev.

Zeno

I completely agree with Severous. More capacity doesn't mean more efficience (usually the contrary!).

Btw was currently working on some new big sized ships, like a in-game 1200 tons capacity bulk carrier, but I'm a bit stucked with vehicle size matters. I already drew a super tanker for 1800 tons of oil and a 2300 good boxes container ship (a replica of the Emma Maersk - 14000 TEU), which you can find somewhere in the Pak128-Addons forum.

Anyway I think the current capacities for the existent ships in pak128 are working quite well and I can't see any reason to change them; so new vehicles are welcome :)

stevenlim84

Dear Zeno,

Thanks for your reply.

I have downloaded Emma Mearsk. But it is only 1400 crates. This make me confused why such large ship only transport so little goods.

Zeno

Well, it's a functional approach. It's true is very low capacity for such a big ship, but it's difficult to handle big loads in simutrans because it would have to wait too much to get full, you know...

ariarinen

Quote from: Zeno on August 01, 2009, 10:52:00 AM
Well, it's a functional approach. It's true is very low capacity for such a big ship, but it's difficult to handle big loads in simutrans because it would have to wait too much to get full, you know...
Not necessary, its all about how you setup your lines. The way I have my network setup I got about 4 mega container ports and the 40 Emma Mearsk struggles to keep up with demand.       

Zeno

Quote from: ariarinen on August 01, 2009, 12:06:47 PM
The way I have my network setup I got about 4 mega container ports and the 40 Emma Mearsk struggles to keep up with demand.       
Eeeek!!! We'll need a pak512 (or bigger!) to make oversized vehicles ;D
Anyway, I don't think about that goods amounts are found in usual simutrans games but in custom scenarios...

ariarinen

Quote from: Zeno on August 01, 2009, 06:10:41 PM
Anyway, I don't think about that goods amounts are found in usual simutrans games but in custom scenarios...
Yes it might be so, I'm playing a huge map and all industries are customized to be in clusters and I'm now a monopoly when all AI went bust, so that can explain why I get the amounts of goods  that I get  8) and monopoly why the ships are struggling  ::)    

I don't see them as oversize, the standard ships are so small that they would be used for shorter local trips or shallow waters. While these bigger ships would be used for super harbor to super harbor far a part.

And why waste money on those small ships when you can do much more with these big ones  :D
 

AP

I remember reading that vehicles don't cost anything whilst waiting - so there is no immediate cost incurred if a ship is loaded gradually, over several months with multiple trainloads of cargo arriving and filling her up. It only costs when she sails.

Asside from having a costly asset just sitting there, of course.

Zeno

Oh yes, it's true. In Simutrans a stopped vehicle doesn't have any cost (which has been discussed quite a lot of times). Btw there is not any extra cost for having a big ship waiting for a long time to be loaded, so you can have a ship loading for a whole year without it giving a huge loss; if your factory can afford such a time without materials :)

stevenlim84

I agree with Zeno. But the problem I faced is the factory buld by factory builder function is now 64 times than the desired value. That is if I build a printing work with production rate 100 unit/month, the actual result is 6400 unit /month. This make my own factory chain have huge transport demand. I need to use 100 conatiner ship (each capacity 200 crate) for transporting some of the goods is a fairly short distance. This make me very difficult to control.

So, can I have any tools to edit the capacity of standard ships for my own game? I need to solve the transportation problem or I need to start a new game which is a great loss of my effort.

Zeno

I'm sorry at the moment you can't.

Only when the source code for the "open pak128" is released (don't ask me when it will be, but I can grant it's in the to-do list) you will be able to modify it in your own way. When it happens you only will need to edit the dat files and compile them with makeobj.

stevenlim84

After checking, I found that there is some problem in scale in Simutrans.

The capacity of trucks or freight trains are similar to real situation. However, ship capacity is really far below reality. I am not sure if it is planned to do so.

I live besides the busiest port in the World. Each day there are tens of container ship coming for loading and unloading. But if you compare with container car, the number of ships is much smaller than it. So, I suggest that we can have large container ships. The only thing is to increase the port space and factory production rate. I think this will make simutrans to be similar to real situation completely but not partially.

Zeno

Quote from: stevenlim84 on August 12, 2009, 02:08:52 AM
However, ship capacity is really far below reality. I am not sure if it is planned to do so.
Ships and planes are not so out of scale as they can carry normal amounts related to factory production terms; a normal ship in Simutrans can carry almost a month's factory production, wich I find a fairly normal capacity. Anyway, the vehicles are just as they are, and if ships are ever replaced/modified their capacities may be changed, but that's not a short-term project for sure.

Quote from: stevenlim84 on August 12, 2009, 02:08:52 AM
So, I suggest that we can have large container ships.
By now, as it has been said before, you can either buy more ships or draw new ones yourself; maybe you could give it a try :)

wipi35

Reading the discussions in this topic I like to mention a problem I frequently had with ship-transport over a long distance.

Suppose that the cargo of one ship is consumed in 1 timeunit and the travellingtime from source to consumer is 15 timeunits. To guarantee a continuous operation, 30 ships are needed, all travelling at the same distance. It is inevitable that sooner or later the max input level is exceeded, so the supplier stops delivering. From now on arriving ships will wait for their 100% load. In the meantime abt 15 ships are underway so this situation holds on till the last ship has delivered its cargo, and the factory has used his surplus.  At the moment the supplier starts delivering again all ships were waiting and they are all fully loaded in a very short time. So in fact there is virtually one ship with an enormous capacity. But the regular and continuous supply I started with will never be realized again.

Zeno

Yes wipi, that's a real problem in simutrans, but I can't see the way to avoid it. Since ships are all them very slow, when they travel long distances this behaviour quickly appears.

Anyway, disabling the just_in_time switch would avoid this behaviour, but you might not like to play ST in that way :-\

stevenlim84

Thanks for your reply, Zeno.

A little bit out of topic, if the factory and consumer storage is propotional to its production rate/demand, the problem will be solved. But really it is hard to make it in the code of simutrans. Is that right?

The suggetion of large ship is due to the management problem of a dozen of small ships. In my save game, maybe there are more than 50 ships waiting at the port. They will gone when the production/consumption is normal. But it is a problem when you check the content of a ship. Because it will open 50 windows since they are parked together. Maybe it is good sport for my finger to close all those windows. But it is really not good to enjoy the game.

I hope simutrans will encourage people to use ships since the transportation cost per unit should be the lowest for ocean transportation.

Spike

In times before there were lines I used to schedule stops for individual ships on different squares, to avoid them piling up.

Since lines exist, one wants to assign ships to lines and so they all get the same stop location, so the old trick is now very uncomfortable. But maybe one of the current developers has an idea how to solve it.

I liked the use of ships always.

The Hood

It has always struck me as odd how multiple ships can pile up on top of each other - surely it would be best to prevent this from happening in the code, and forcing ships to queue (as happens with road/rail vehicles) when the stop is full?

Spike

At least with ships assigned to lines this seems to be a good idea. I hope the developers will find a CPU friendly way to do this.

Combuijs

Maybe consider all docks of one station in a kind of automatic choose-signal for ships? This change however will have a huge impact on existing savegames. And still ships will go through each other outside docks.
Bob Marley: No woman, no cry

Programmer: No user, no bugs



gerw

Maybe we could limit the number of ships on each tile: On each tile and in each direction (NWSE) only one ship. Then single tile canals will still work and ships won't pile up.

whoami

This is better than the trivial approach, but situations with deadlocks would still be possible (like they already are with trains and road vehicles). To control the ships properly, people would like to have ship signals and/or schedules with more details/options.

Rebelfish

Quote from: Severous on July 31, 2009, 05:56:00 AM
However.  A change in ship capacity on the scale you outline would surely need changes in many other areas of the game to re-balance the higher cargo amount?  Think of one of those monsters docking.  Port would need large amounts of storage to avoid becoming overfull (which stops production in some configurations).

That is precisely how shipping works.  Look at Long Beach or Newark or Rotterdam or Hamburg: there are acres and acres of warehouses and cranes in place to unload and store the goods until they are distributed.