In a network game, if you inadvertantly delete a tile of cityroad in a city shared with other players, you are currently unable to rebuild it. If you rebuild with your own road, and the game settings disallow the sharing of infrastructure (as they legitimately might), this prevents other players routes from using that tile they may have previously relied upon. Only the Public player /moderator can rebuild the city road, often many hours later. Meanwhile substantial disruption to the urban routes has occurred.
I suggest there should be a way for any player to build city road. But I'm not certain what other implications this might have, so thought I'd start the discussion.
Maybe you should think the other way round: Forbid the destruction of a city road by a non-public player?
Oh no. That's eminently useful. Essential, even. The computer generates so many redundant or crazy road tiles, the players need to be able to rationalise them, make routes in for railways/canals etc.
Did you try making public your own way? If not allowed, it should be considered.
Other ideas:
Undo also for delete (very useful in any context)
A count of public road tiles a player deleted, the same amount could be rebuilt by the same player and would prevent exploits like building own network using public roads.
Other player can very well go over your road; only building of stops there is forbidden. But then, deleting this road was done on purpose, or? If you would not set up a route there, why would you otherwise delete a road then?
I rather think the problem is accidental removal of roads (e.g. while deleting a stop).
Quote from: prissi on November 29, 2012, 08:52:14 PMIf you would not set up a route there, why would you otherwise delete a road then?
Because I was trying to delete things either side of it to build an embankment with a raised way on it, but clicked the wrong tile, removing a section of road I wasn't using myself, but which another player was. But once I'd deleted it, I couldn't put it back.
Having own roads private is good for online play if you wish to discourage congestion. I don't believe there is currently a way to just make one tile of player road public but not the rest (although I could be wrong!)?
Quote from: Fabio on November 29, 2012, 08:56:40 PM
I rather think the problem is accidental removal of roads (e.g. while deleting a stop).
Correct. Hence "indadvertantly" in my first post.
Quote from: AP on November 29, 2012, 08:56:53 PM
Having own roads private is good for online play if you wish to discourage congestion. I don't believe there is currently a way to just make one tile of player road public but not the rest (although I could be wrong!)?
You can make a tile of your road public by using the make station public tool. Anyway, the city will take over your road quickly. This may not be true in experimental, though.
if private city stops are free for use inside cities (which has quite a bit of sense), I don't see a reason why roads should be different. Did you see a different behavior? A workaround for this is of course granting access to other player, even by agreeing to use only for this purpose.
I think Combuijs idea is nice. Because a public road may be in use by any player, deleting it may be bad for other players.
But this should be set somewhere. Delete public roads are good for single games or friend servers.
Note that (1) the inability to drive on other players' roads; and (2) private stops being free for all to use inside cities are both Experimental exclusive features. But in Experimental there is much discussion about the utility of being able to delete city and inter-city roads not built by players: there are arguments on both sides. I have recently changed the map generation function to switch inter-city roads from public owned to unowned, like city roads, to allow them to be deleted by players, as I was getting lots of requests by players to delete segments of road.
If we can trust the players not to be disruptive, a server rule requiring connexions to be reinstated if roads are deleted might be better.
I also wonder whether there is something to be said for allowing players to use private roads as well as private stops inside city boundaries; or even allowing players to share all sorts of roads (but not other ways such as canals and railways) without enabling the access function, relying on the private road sign to separate traffic as in Standard? There might be something to be said for treating roads in particular in this way: I notice the odd routing that people have problems with when a player puts down private roads. I should be interested in views.
The AI will not really work nicely without reusing other players road. That was why the forbidding of using other players road was never done for standard.
I would be in favour of allowing players to build and delete public roads or upgrade roads that have not been changed as time progresses.
It's easier to rework badly laid out cities this way. I would just make it cost 10~20x what it would normally cost for the player to build a similar road of their own, because there is no maintenance for the player on public roads. The road should be the same one the public player gets, the city road that changes over time.
If abuse is a real problem, then maybe put a limit to how many tiles of public road a player can place down in a month?
I have some games there it a road on the wrong place and i must the road remove.