[bug 8.2] construction cost calculation error

[ӔO]

When laying down tracks or roads, instead of costing the actual value displayed when hovering over the icon, the construction cost only costs what it does when it is destroyed/removed.

For instance, a road that costs 10.00 will only cost 2.50 to build and remove.

This does not affect signals, stations or station extensions.

[jamespetts]

Ahh, this isn't a bug: the costs shown are per kilometre, which, at default settings, is four tiles. You would expect the cost per tile, therefore, to be 1/4 the cost per kilometre.

[ӔO]

aha, then shouldn't the hover over display the cost per tile?

[jamespetts]

No - it states per km in the tooltip :-)

[ӔO]

hmm, okay, makes sense.

presumably it wouldn't be a bad idea where you can switch between per tile and per km as a base unit for cost calculations.

[jamespetts]

Hmm, that would require quite a bit of coding, and coder time is presently very limited! However, a good idea in principle, yes.

[ӔO]

I think I've found something odd relating to cost calculation.

Bridges will cost the full amount displayed, but elevated ways and normal ways will cost what the tile length is.
c400 rail will cost c400 for 4 tiles, but c400 bridge will cost c1600 for 4 tiles.

[jamespetts]

This is intentional, as bridges are almost never many kilometres long. If you look in the tooltip, you will see that it states that bridge costs are per tile.

[ӔO]

If you say so.

It just seems like bridges are disproportionately more expensive than tunnels or elevated ways since they do cost roughly 4 to 6 times more, then it's another 4 times the cost.

720 to lay down 4 tiles of 200km/h cssr hvy track.
3820 to lay down 4 tiles of 200km/h elevated way
17400 to lay down 4 tiles of 200km/h brick viaduct.

[jamespetts]

That's not so much a bug as a balance issue. Which pakset are you using?

[ӔO]

pak128. britain 0.6ex.

it's for all bridges, since they all have a price that would make them cost more over a ground way if it was 1tile=1km.

[jamespetts]

Do you find that the disparity in prices causes balance problems - i.e., do you find that you are more dissuaded from building bridges than a real life transport company would be?

[ӔO]

Short hops over rivers and gullies are not so bad, but I find myself using the elevated viaduct over rivers since it's cheaper over the long run and can be built on diagonals. Even factoring in the artificial slope costs, elevated way is cheaper than a bridge.

bridges only become necessary when trying to span water or span a deep valley. For a choice of building a bridge or tunnel over a body of water, a tunnel is far cheaper.

Either the elevated way and tunnel needs to cost more, or short bridges need to cost less. I would also say that all the brick viaducts are disproportionately cheaper than other bridges.

[jamespetts]

Ahh, the brick viaduct thing is a different issue. It appears that the sensible thing would be to use the same scale factor for bridges as used for other things (but retain the display of the cost as being per tile, as it makes no sense to measure bridge length in kilometres).