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Different types of depots

Started by jamespetts, March 03, 2010, 11:58:41 AM

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jamespetts

One idea that might be useful is to allow pakset authors to restrict what types of powered vehicle can be built at a depot by the power type. So, for example, one could have a shipyard that only builds sailing ships, or a stables (road depot that only "builds" horses) and so forth. If, in conjunction with that, it was possible to set the cost for each type of depot individually, that would have the potential greatly to enhance the economic refinement of the handling of depots in the game, requiring players to upgrade depots (often at some cost) as more modern forms of transport become available.
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wlindley

Yes!  Then a steam-era railway depot could look different from a diesel-era one... and perhaps also make early games easier to play in Experimental, as the 'horse garage' could be cheaper to maintain?

Spike

Sounds good to me, too, and should be fairly easy to implement :)

jamespetts

WLindley,

that was indeed the idea - to have very cheap depots for horse-drawn things and more expensive ones for steam (and later types), too. One would not necessarily have exactly one depot for one type of transport: later rail depots, for example, could share diesel and electric, while much cheaper electric only depots should also be available.

Question for the -Standard developers: is this of enough interest to be included in -Standard that it would be helpful if I write a patch, or do people think that this is more something that should be confined to -Experimental?
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prissi

This should be already possible by using entry/fade out dates. Even different costs are possible by using different levels (as done for the pak64 air depot).

jamespetts

Quote from: prissi on March 03, 2010, 09:05:26 PM
This should be already possible by using entry/fade out dates. Even different costs are possible by using different levels (as done for the pak64 air depot).

Using intro/retirement dates has a very different effect, as, once a depot is built, it can build any type of vehicle. So, if a player builds a "coaching stables" in the 1750s, costing a small amount to build and maintain, it can still be active and useful turning out the latest 'buses and trolleybuses in the 2010s. What I propose is different. What I propose is that a pakset author could specify a depot to be able to build, for example, only "biological" vehicles. Thus, when one builds a "coaching stables", one would see and be able to build only horses and unpowered vehicles (all depots would be able to build unpowered vehicles), even after steam road vehicles had been invented. One would have to build a separate depot (at considerably higher cost) to be able to build steam and later diesel road vehicles.

Thank you, though, for the information about level: I was not aware that it applied to depots. This is useful to know, and means that no code changes are required for different depots to have different prices.
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prissi

But in real life, if depot were maintained as long as this, then there were also built all kinds of vehicles. We have tram depots catering buses, and roundtable house for the latest elloks (which have been just upgraded over the year internally. A depot is not much more than a storage shed. Those survive amazingly long. (The house, where I grown up had the stables converted into three garages for cars ... )

jamespetts

This would suggest that some sort of "upgrade" function be permitted, as it does seem daft to have a building that appears to be, is described as and has the maintenance costs of a stables being used to produce 21st century hydrogen powered 'buses...
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itec

one thing i would like to see with train depots is for them to be built like stations in the way that a 10 carriage long train will only appear if the depot to house it is long enough, it just seems strange to me watching massive trains pop out of a single tile.

ӔO

I like the idea. One thing that makes gaining a profit hard in the earlier years is that the infrastructure costs too much to maintain.
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The Hood

Quote from: itec on March 04, 2010, 03:57:52 AM
one thing i would like to see with train depots is for them to be built like stations in the way that a 10 carriage long train will only appear if the depot to house it is long enough, it just seems strange to me watching massive trains pop out of a single tile.

Definitely support this, although I suspect it isn't very practical.  I just like the eye-candy aspect of it all, and the fact that railway depots are major features with lots of track is quite hard to replicate in simutrans (although take a look at TTD and you can make nice looking depot yard areas there).  It would also be good to link total depot capacity to number of vehicles in operation as a proxy for maintenance (without requiring vehicles to return to depot for maintenance as that is too micro-managementy).

Quote from: AEO on March 04, 2010, 04:35:54 AM
I like the idea. One thing that makes gaining a profit hard in the earlier years is that the infrastructure costs too much to maintain.
Definitely keen for variable maintenance costs for depots and stations over time, although i think jamespetts implemented this in experimental after this came up a few months ago?

jamespetts

Quote from: The Hood on March 04, 2010, 08:26:42 AM
Definitely keen for variable maintenance costs for depots and stations over time, although i think jamespetts implemented this in experimental after this came up a few months ago?

I made no changes to depots (which can already be cost-tuned, as Prissi pointed out, through the use of "level"), but stations can now have price and capacity set independently of "level", over-riding anything specified using the "level" setting.
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Spike

Maybe it's time to put this in STE, if the classic variant is not supposed to change this way.

AP

I concur with The Hood and James, and agree with their reasoning.