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A Port for modern times

Started by wlindley, December 27, 2009, 02:01:14 AM

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wlindley

To compensate for the loss of domestic industries in the postwar period, there has been some discussion about a Port.  I created a little .dat file that creates increasingly productive ports for the goods types that are progressively "offshored," as shown below:



Here's the pak file for testing

Right now it just uses the Fishing Port's graphics.  Any ideas what we could better use?  I know there was discussion that larger-than-one-square buildings would be difficult (not supported?) for industries located on the water's edge.

Thoughts?


Junna

Why not ports also for the export of raw materials? I'd like to see that.

wlindley

Well, you could certainly take the .dat file provided above and modify "Input" to "Output" -- be sure to copy the names of goods exactly (capitalization counts, and some of them are in German).  Also you probably don't want both inputs and outputs for a port, as that would "require" the Input goods before the Outputs were created.

I didn't do that because Britain traditionally did not export raw materials.  Although... perhaps coal in the early days?

Anyone?

Junna

I was always unable to find out how one edits paks after reading something about makeobj only creating paks and cannot edit them, so how would I edit the pak?  ???

MoTw

You don't have to edit the .pak file. Just follow the link to the .dat file (wlindley, first post) and edit it. Then you can get the .png and pak it.
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jamespetts

WLindley,

excellent idea! The graphics can be changed later - I'm sure that you can find some pictures of ports/docks on the internet, though. I suggest that later versions look like container ports.

Incidentally, the UK was importing things before 1960, although in rather smaller quantities. Perhaps there could be a 1860 version with a much lower distributionweight and much lower production, superceded by a version, perhaps not in 1960, but 1955?

(Incidentally, I suggest that the later ports also produce coal and iron ore).
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mjhn

I like this idea, but I think that there should be more than one style of port, partly to stop them getting too complex, and partly to reflect the fact that, in reality most ports have some specialisation. Possibly a good distinction would be:
Container/Ro-ro: imports consumer products such as china and furniture
Bulk products: Imports loads such as coal or iron ore
Oil: imports crude oil (much more common in Britain than import of refined products)
Woods: imports wood (possibly also steel)
Cars: may import (or export) cars - Britain exports almost as many cars as it imports. this will be a problem for simutrans, as this is the one product in which the same ship may take the same product in both directions.

In earlier times there may be major exports of steel and coal as well.

jamespetts

I like the specialisation idea, although I suspect that some of the suggested types can be combined to some extent.

A similar idea to ports was the international airport: a very large land-based attraction (early types would be city based, later types (1950s and onwards) would be non-city based) with a low distributionweight and very high level.
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Junna

Quote from: MoTw on December 27, 2009, 09:00:39 AM
You don't have to edit the .pak file. Just follow the link to the .dat file (wlindley, first post) and edit it. Then you can get the .png and pak it.

But that still leaves the png missing? ;O

wlindley

the .png right now is the standard fishing-port from the pak128.Britain svn (Subversion repository)

The Hood

This is interesting.  I would suggest doing things differently though (seeing how we have lots of nice boats on the way): Include import/export ports as a sea industry in the same way as existing oil rigs.  This way we can use the existing port graphics as stations (As intended) and also use boats.  In this case, graphics for the off-shore import/export area wouldn't have to be anything special, maybe just a flag or something?

jamespetts

Quote from: The Hood on January 02, 2010, 04:02:22 PM
This is interesting.  I would suggest doing things differently though (seeing how we have lots of nice boats on the way): Include import/export ports as a sea industry in the same way as existing oil rigs.  This way we can use the existing port graphics as stations (As intended) and also use boats.  In this case, graphics for the off-shore import/export area wouldn't have to be anything special, maybe just a flag or something?

Hmm, an interesting thought. Pity that there's no way to force these to appear only on the edge of the map.

One issue is that the profit from the runs is based on distance: if the distance is artificially low, players actually running the boats would end up with an unrealistically low capital outlay to profit ratio for very large cargo ships. I suspect that doing things this way may lead to irreconcilable balance issues, and might also be a little counter-intuitive; the original idea may well work better overall.
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The Hood

#12
Quote from: jamespetts on January 02, 2010, 05:10:41 PM
Pity that there's no way to force these to appear only on the edge of the map.
Extension request?  Personally I'd still prefer offshore imports/exports.

Another idea (which would require a more major re-write of game code) would be to allow ships (or any vehicle for that matter) off the map to travel to a distant port (which could have a fixed distance of x tiles plus distance travelled on the map).  Maybe there could be 4 such ports (one for each edge of the map).  One for experimental I wonder?

ӔO

Quote from: mjhn on December 27, 2009, 09:18:05 PM
I like this idea, but I think that there should be more than one style of port, partly to stop them getting too complex, and partly to reflect the fact that, in reality most ports have some specialisation. Possibly a good distinction would be:
Container/Ro-ro: imports consumer products such as china and furniture
Bulk products: Imports loads such as coal or iron ore
Oil: imports crude oil (much more common in Britain than import of refined products)
Woods: imports wood (possibly also steel)
Cars: may import (or export) cars - Britain exports almost as many cars as it imports. this will be a problem for simutrans, as this is the one product in which the same ship may take the same product in both directions.

In earlier times there may be major exports of steel and coal as well.

could probably split the goods type to "domestic car" and "import car" to avoid having goods going in a loop.

IMO, the import/export ships going to international waters/off map should be handled by the game. The goods being replenished monthly in factories is a decently accurate representation of how goods are sent and delivered by cargo ships in real life. i.e. massive load imported all at once, then exported all at once when the cargo ship is being loaded.
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jamespetts

Quote from: AEO on January 03, 2010, 02:42:27 PM
could probably split the goods type to "domestic car" and "import car" to avoid having goods going in a loop.

Take care when adding new types of goods: it will break all existing saved games.
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