A different way to handle ships

[Bear789]

Hi! I've been playing the game for a lot of time, but I registered only today. I wanted to share a couple of thought I had. I know about the one suggestion per topic rule, so I'll made a couple of different topcs.

First, I'd like to start with ships. In real life there are multipurpose cargo ships, while in Simutrans only one type of cargo per ship is allowed. There are workarounds, for example Pak Britain has invisible trailers to simulate this, especially in early vassels, but it's not the perfect solution: you'll end up opening passengers routes when you want only cargo routes and vice versa, and it messes up waiting and minimum load settings.
I understand that you can't let the player choose which "trailer" add, because that will require to actually have a trailer with graphics, which would be weird. So my suggestion is to add cargo modules to the ships: each ship has a maximum storage capacity, and there are cargo modules that are a fraction of that capacity and can carry a single kind of good, including mail and passengers. Players can compose the ship's cargo hold by adding modules, and pak mantainers can choose which kind of module can be added to a ship and which one can't.

[Ters]

It doesn't sound to different from an idea had in relation to intermodal freight, but it is far more challenging to code than it is to explain.

[ӔO]

another option, would be to have export freight ports that pack goods and import ports that unpack goods coded as factories. Then you can set cargo type for containers.

[Ters]

That would break the traditional industry chain, though.