Hi everyone,
I just wanna to submit an idea...
If freight value increases or decreases over time, with a "market price" window, will it make the gameplay more interessant ?
Do you mean that the price for a certain goods will not be the same in the year 2000 as it was in 1950, or that you will get payed less the longer time you spend getting the goods from producer to consumer?
The former makes balancing the pak sets much harder. Especially since this should also affect the prices of everything.
The latter is hampered by that fact that Simutrans can't track every piece of goods due to the insane memory usage that would lead to. It only tracks the amount. Speed bonus is however an approximation to this effect, although it doesn't take into account the time the goods speeds in storage at a station, or (if I remember correctly) the actual speed of the vehicles (only the theoretical maximum speed).
Experimental actually track all goods, so the overhead is manageable. And the speedbonus takes into account your efforts at fast delivery (but not taking into account waiting times at stations to fill the train with goods etc.)
However, making this incentive too strong will award short trains running directly start to endpoint, which is rather a boring scenario for a transport management game ...
Quote from: prissi on September 14, 2018, 12:27:27 AMExperimental actually track all goods, so the overhead is manageable.
Haven't they sacrificed the ability to run on old, low-end computers and huge maps to do that kind of complex stuff?
Quote from: prissi on September 14, 2018, 12:27:27 AMHowever, making this incentive too strong will award short trains running directly start to endpoint, which is rather a boring scenario for a transport management game ...
It should in theory be possible to somewhat compensate for that, by make construction expensive on uneven and occupied terrain, and forcing you to run several lines along the same route to cover the maintenance costs of the infrastructure. That also means more work getting things balanced right. In addition, the game likely needs to have some understanding that the price of getting something somewhere in not simply a function of the linear (or Manhattan) distance, which is far from trivial as well.
Making infrastructure maintenance too high for a direct point to point connections means that you cannot start a game with such a line. But at least the first factory needs a single point to point connection ...
For goods to have an actual value that varies over time in a way that is not pre-determined, industry would need to be more deeply simulated. Although a commonly requested feature by many, it is basically making an entirely different game within Simutrans.
Quote from: prissi on September 14, 2018, 09:16:48 AM
Making infrastructure maintenance too high for a direct point to point connections means that you cannot start a game with such a line. But at least the first factory needs a single point to point connection ...
One or two types of goods should be profitable enough for a direct line. Beyond that, one would have to create two lines simultaneous. Perhaps, connecting factories in two nearby cities as well as a passenger line between the cities. Factories in Simutrans like to spawn in the middle of nowhere, however, which would make this difficult.