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Simutrans Extended => Simutrans-Extended paksets => Pak128.Britain-Ex => Topic started by: Vladki on April 27, 2019, 08:11:07 PM

Title: Met-bogie upgrades (and generally upgrades which are not 1:1)
Post by: Vladki on April 27, 2019, 08:11:07 PM
Hello,

I was quite confused when trying to upgrade met-bogie carriages. The upgrade to EMU (met-motor) is quite straightforward:
met-bogie-brake-front -> Metropolitan-Motor-Third-Front
met-bogie-third -> Metropolitan-Motor-Third-Middle
met-bogie-brake-rear -> Metropolitan-Motor-Third-Back
One can just click all available green carriages until the whole unit is upgraded.

However upgrade to push-pull is a problem. Front brake wan is easy:
met-bogie-brake-front -> met-bogie-push-pull-front
But the middle and rear, both can be upgraded to middle and rear push-pull e.g:

name=met-bogie-third
upgrade[0]=met-bogie-push-pull-rear
upgrade[1]=met-bogie-push-pull-centre

Is that intended? It makes the upgrade process very hard to do right. It is complicated by:
- the descriptive text, which does not say front/centre/rear, but brake carriage/carriage/driving carriage
- you cannot specify which vehicle should be upgraded
- the order of available vehicles changes when you upgrade/buy, which makes it easy to upgrade/buy wrong vehicle
- the push-pull unit can be at most 3 cars long.
It would be much easier if the upgrade is also only 1:1 as is when upgrading to EMU. I understand that it might be due to real world practice, but in game it does not make much sense. You can make only as many push-pull sets, as you have front-brake cars. Except for single car sets that do not need front brake. So either make it 1:1 or allow the centre cars to be upgraded to anything.

Also, is it possible to disable the reordering of available vehicles in depot? Now those that are bought move to the first position, which quite annoys me. You cant just click X-times on the same place to buy the same car.

Title: Re: Met-bogie upgrades (and generally upgrades which are not 1:1)
Post by: jamespetts on April 27, 2019, 10:10:12 PM
Thank you for your feedback. I did not realise that the greater flexibility in upgrading made things more difficult for players; I have now amended the Metropolitan bogie carriages so as only to have direct upgrades as you suggest.

As to re-ordering in depots, that would require substantial coding work - it would make more sense to re-consider the depot GUI at the same time as implementing the vehicle schedule/maintenance features.
Title: Re: Met-bogie upgrades (and generally upgrades which are not 1:1)
Post by: Vladki on May 02, 2019, 07:54:21 PM
One more bug about met-bogie-push-pull. It is painted with cab facing wrong way. Unfortunately simple swap N<->S, E<->W, etc... results in bad positioning. So it has to be re rendered.