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PakSets and Customization => Pak128.Britain => Topic started by: asaphxiix on December 02, 2012, 12:23:48 AM

Title: Multiple hold ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 02, 2012, 12:23:48 AM
are new early ships being considered for pax? For sail, we only have the goods ships that can run pax, They are cheap enough to run even with hardly any pax of them, and probably make explosive profit with 500 goods on them?

so the game needs early, smaller pax sails ships - schooners, clippers etc; and also it seems that steam ships are needed, at least later on, for the superliners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Halifax_%281768%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 02, 2012, 01:12:42 AM
Note: I think this is actually more relevant to the experimental pakset, due to the limitations imposed on waterway use there. In standard, you can just use the wherries.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 02, 2012, 01:20:19 AM
Hmm - but they're limited in capacity, aren't they? It'd still be good to have clippers and schooners even in Standard.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: ӔO on December 02, 2012, 01:24:01 AM
it would be nice to have a higher capacity wherry.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 02, 2012, 01:30:04 AM
yes yes and yes. Just saying that for experimental, this is more urgent (but not very urgent, since we are doing alright with the ships cuz they're so cheap).
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 02, 2012, 01:36:15 AM
Actually, we do have clippers - they are introduced in 1837.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 12:35:17 PM
There are clippers and schooners already in the pakset. One problem with early ships is that they generally carried goods and cargo together.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: AP on December 02, 2012, 03:45:49 PM
Quote from: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 12:35:17 PM
There are clippers and schooners already in the pakset. One problem with early ships is that they generally carried goods and cargo together.
The problem being experienced in the experimental map being played, is that there are hundreds of towns but only a few dozen industries on the whole map. So rather than being freight routes, with passengers as supplemental, players are trying to run primarily passenger lines, which historically didn't happen at that time.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 02, 2012, 03:58:33 PM
in pak uk standard, most ships are very very cheap (r.c=2). but it does have dedicated pax ships for small amounts that can run any sea.

From what I read, in the 19th century ocean and sea liners were running 'packet service' for mail and parcels with pax, so that calls for a pax/mail clipper, schooner and steamers too (For both river and sea) in experimental,. I guess earlier, pax went on merchant galleons, the likes of the East India, but there should be some other option as well, maybe a less profitable one. The situation now is that you can run these ships for great profit with 2% of capacity.

Also, catering could be interesting here, definitely an important part of sea voyages.

http://www.dennyhatch.com/jackcorbett/doc/afterword2.html - a bit about packets







Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 02, 2012, 04:08:44 PM
For reference, I will be reducing the comfort of all of these passenger addons from 100 to about 50 in the next release, which should impact upon profit somewhat. But, aside from that, do the costs need rebalancing? I'd be interested in any views.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 04:17:08 PM
In standard boats are not balanced - I'm waiting for a complete timeline as it will be easier for me to do it all in one go. Running costs and purchase costs are currently identical for all I think, which will not remain forever obviously! One other idea I had for boats was as follows, which will require a change and may break compatibility:
for generic ships from the past, have the ship itself coded as a locomotive (i.e. power but no capacity) and allow different goods to be added as "carriages" - I think under the current code there would be a limit of 4 "vehicles" total. That would allow people to add different combinations of goods together to represent the ship being fitted out with different holds. For graphical identification we could show each type of hold as a different symbol which would follow the ship around like a carriage follows a locomotive. For experimental, you could even have different classes of hold - more comfort but lower capacity for 1st class etc? Thoughts?
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 02, 2012, 04:22:06 PM
Hmm, this is an interesting idea. This would need to be made clear to the user - the words "hull only" or the like would need to appear in the ship's name, and then you would need to have "passenger hold (steerage)", "passenger hold (first class)", "mail hold", "bulk goods hold", etc. would need to be specified. I do like the logos idea. This might work.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 02, 2012, 04:30:16 PM
i like the idea. But for the graphics, maybe a better solution will be needed. Can a vehicle have no graphic representation?

about ships in experimental - I do think they need balancing, but that may leave player out of options without more vessels.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: wlindley on December 02, 2012, 05:37:37 PM
Quote from: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 04:17:08 PM
have the ship itself coded as a locomotive (i.e. power but no capacity) and allow different goods to be added as "carriages" - I think under the current code there would be a limit of 4 "vehicles" total.

Support!  So if you added just one Boxed Goods compartment to a ship that could hold several, that would force the ship to be lighter and faster?  Or you could max a ship's Bulk Goods capacity (and no passengers or mail) which would make it heavier and slower, ...or mix passengers, mail, boxed goods, and woods on one ship... I love it.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 06:04:38 PM
Vehicles don't have to have graphics - currently the case for the additional passenger and mail holds, but they are automatically added. I think I would prefer to have some kind of icon (which could be grey/colour depending on loaded/unloaded) to represent what each ship was configured for...
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: AP on December 02, 2012, 06:09:38 PM
Presumably the colours corresponding with the coloured bar charts at the stops?
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: greenling on December 02, 2012, 06:19:45 PM
Hello
I love the Idea to use more than one posible loading typ.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 02, 2012, 06:33:04 PM
Quote from: The Hood on December 02, 2012, 06:04:38 PM
Vehicles don't have to have graphics - currently the case for the additional passenger and mail holds, but they are automatically added. I think I would prefer to have some kind of icon (which could be grey/colour depending on loaded/unloaded) to represent what each ship was configured for...

This would be more transparent to the player, I think.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 15, 2012, 05:29:55 PM
Here's what I had in mind, as a proof of concept. You can see the hold icons following the ship around. Coloured icons represent (at least partially) full holds in the ship on the left; grey icons in the ship on the right indicate empty holds. These images are just the same as the generic cargo images so far. I'll use these for pax, bulk and mail but add new ones for cooled, piece and livestock goods. Bulk fluids and cars probably aren't affected by this as they will require specialist ships.

(http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/1263/clipperholds.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/338/clipperholds.jpg/)
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: greenling on December 15, 2012, 05:46:38 PM
The Hood
Those concept looks very good out. :thumbsup:
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: wlindley on December 15, 2012, 06:52:11 PM
Excellent!  Looking forward to this.

I do hope that, in Experimental at least, we can add "holds" for passengers with a choice of (high capacity, low comfort) versus (low capacity, high comfort).
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 15, 2012, 08:45:16 PM
cool!
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 15, 2012, 10:01:09 PM
I'll try and code all the large ships this way in the next week ahead of the 1.13 release. It's perfectly possible to add different types of passenger "holds" but I won't add them for standard as there is no meaningful use for them.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 16, 2012, 10:56:54 AM
Just to recap: I've now coded the following vessels with multiple holds:
- Clipper
- East Indiaman
- Blackwall Frigate
- Brig
- Schooner

I'm not convinced any of the others would benefit from this, but I'm open to suggestions.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: asaphxiix on December 16, 2012, 11:03:44 AM
nice! So it's one ship and three hold modules? With different sizes and classes for holds, up to 3? So each ships has its own holds, just one for each ship and cargo?

I could volunteer to import this into the experimental pak.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 16, 2012, 11:17:26 AM
Yes - for these 5 ships you first buy the "hull" which acts as a locomotive - propulsion but no cargo. You can then add up to 3 "holds" which can be the same or different. The "holds" are distinct for each ship type, so an east indiaman hold carries more than a brig hold. Ideally it should be balanced so you can compromise cargo for speed, but again that's probably one for experimental.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: greenling on December 16, 2012, 02:33:52 PM
The Hood
It that ok that i use your idea for my paksetdevlopment?
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 16, 2012, 07:44:17 PM
That is very nice! This works better than the current system, I think.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 16, 2012, 09:17:26 PM
It's now in SVN so feel free to test. Greenling, you are more then welcome to use a similar concept or even reuse graphics if you wish.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: sdog on December 17, 2012, 12:00:34 AM
that's quite a nice idea!
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: Bear789 on December 17, 2012, 10:43:07 AM
This is great!
Do you reckon it will work with ships already purchased in an old save?
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: greenling on December 17, 2012, 04:34:23 PM
Bear789
That it a good point there you speak on.
That have i really ferget.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: TygerFish on December 17, 2012, 06:33:51 PM
I ported the changes into experimental on my local machine and tested them out last night.  A few questions/observations:

Right now, each hull can have up to seven segments.  Is it possible to vary that number? It looked to me like it was fixed based on the fact that there are 7 types of cargo holds.  If possible, my thought would be to maybe vary that based on ship type (some ships have more decks than others?) or reduce it across the board (7 clicks is a lot to provision a ship... maybe some standardized layouts could help, but that could clutter things up again...)

The Brig and Schooner holds show a trail of icons behind the parent ship, the others do not.  Was that intentional, or am I missing something in my build?  I put that new .pak file in the Holds folder (still not sure how that works... is it some extra precompiled logic that's automatically included?), made sure the new image file was included, and updated my buildALL.mos file with the new line you put in SVN.

Do you plan to rework the other large ships (Windjammer, Handysize) similarly?  I'd think it would be useful and realistic to have a container ship carrying a variety of different goods.

Quote from: The Hood on December 16, 2012, 09:17:26 PM
It's now in SVN so feel free to test. Greenling, you are more then welcome to use a similar concept or even reuse graphics if you wish.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: greenling on December 17, 2012, 06:44:56 PM
tygerfish
by the Ship gives a limit from 4 moduls.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 17, 2012, 08:00:40 PM
7 must be an experimental limit. the max for a (non-train) convoy in standard is 4, i.e. hull + 3. I wasn't planning on reworking the other ships although it would be possible. Later on, ships become more specialised, and there is also the problem of freight images for the hull itself depending on cargo. Piece and cooled goods could easily be interchangeable using this model, but oil tankers should definitely be specialised. The others are somewhat a grey area.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: TygerFish on December 17, 2012, 08:17:25 PM
That's a good observation -- oil in actual barrels would have been a lot more mixable with other cargoes than modern dedicated liquid containers.  And the smaller ships (<100 units. like the new PS Industry) are too small to really capture a diverse set of cargo.  Given that argument, I could see Handysize and Clanline staying the way they are.

What about Windjammer, though?  Is 1880 late enough for specialized cargo manifests?  My intuition would be to include as the last hull/hold ship, although not with passenger holds.

Quote from: The Hood on December 17, 2012, 08:00:40 PM
7 must be an experimental limit. the max for a (non-train) convoy in standard is 4, i.e. hull + 3. I wasn't planning on reworking the other ships although it would be possible. Later on, ships become more specialised, and there is also the problem of freight images for the hull itself depending on cargo. Piece and cooled goods could easily be interchangeable using this model, but oil tankers should definitely be specialised. The others are somewhat a grey area.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: jamespetts on December 17, 2012, 11:24:23 PM
Hmm - this is an interesting point about Experimental's higher limit for the number of trailing vehicles that non-rail convoys might have. This was raised to accommodate road vehicles, but this would unbalance this hold system. Do I need to reduce it to four for ships; or do we need to do something complicated with the coupling constraints to restrict it manually?
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 01:08:46 AM
If the compartments are specialized for each ship, then it would make more sense to use coupling constraints. I would just divide it into the cargo hold and compartments

Ship - Cargo Hold - Compartment A (Pax 1st class) - Compartment B (Pax 2st class) Compartment C (Mail) - etc.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: sdog on December 18, 2012, 01:13:06 AM
I was under the impression the combinations were rather arbitrary. Carpenters just built whatever the cargo required. At their destination they'd reuse or sell the wood.
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: Milko on December 18, 2012, 09:21:29 AM
Hello

This technique can also be used for aircraft that I have made​​. Some models of aircraft are in fact "convertible". Cargo space is configurable convertible aircraft and space passengers can be eliminated and replaced with space for mail or various loads.

Giuseppe
Title: Re: early pax ships
Post by: The Hood on December 18, 2012, 09:25:40 AM
@jamespetts

I would suggest 3 holds is quite enough for ships and planes, but the other solution is halving the capacity of each hold.

@Milko,

Which vehicles would you suggest for this sort of modification in planes?
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: TygerFish on December 18, 2012, 12:57:33 PM
Quote from: jamespetts on December 17, 2012, 11:24:23 PM
Hmm - this is an interesting point about Experimental's higher limit for the number of trailing vehicles that non-rail convoys might have. This was raised to accommodate road vehicles, but this would unbalance this hold system. Do I need to reduce it to four for ships; or do we need to do something complicated with the coupling constraints to restrict it manually?
Which road vehicles currently take advantage of this in experimental?

I would say that if we're already making a change and if it wouldn't be too much more work, it could be handy to be able to set the maximum number of vehicles on a per-type basis.
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 02:40:20 PM
Quote from: The Hood on December 18, 2012, 09:25:40 AM
@jamespetts

I would suggest 3 holds is quite enough for ships and planes, but the other solution is halving the capacity of each hold.

@Milko,

Which vehicles would you suggest for this sort of modification in planes?

I think the only commercial jet with both passenger and cargo hold was 747-200M combi
otherwise, the majority of them are separated into classes, which would only be of interest to experimental.
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: wlindley on December 18, 2012, 05:08:27 PM
Quote from: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 02:40:20 PM
I think the only commercial jet with both passenger and cargo hold was 747-200M combi
otherwise, the majority of them are separated into classes, which would only be of interest to experimental.

That may be true on the main deck, but every almost jet aircraft's lower (baggage) deck can carry cargo containers called Unit Load Devices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_load_device).  The Wikipedia article describes the various ULD sizes and even gives capacities for a variety of craft.
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 07:45:55 PM
Ah, yes, but on commercial aircraft, the only cargo that is loaded onto passenger aircraft are checked in baggage from passengers and food. It can also include spare aircraft parts from the aircraft owner, but that is about it.

Mail, parcels and goods always get a different, dedicated cargo aircraft ride.

The 747 combi is unique in that it has both passenger and cargo holds divided by a partition.
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: wlindley on December 18, 2012, 08:36:23 PM
Quote from: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 07:45:55 PM
Ah, yes, but on commercial aircraft, the only cargo that is loaded onto passenger aircraft are checked in baggage from passengers and food... Mail, parcels and goods always get a different, dedicated cargo aircraft ride.

Are you sure? I have frequently seen mail loaded onto, or unloaded from, airplanes at the airport.  Do you have a source that says that the containers we see on passenger planes are not mail and air cargo?  Because if so, please explain how the dozen passenger carriers at my local airport ever handle air cargo -- on a phantom fleet of craft we never see?
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 08:45:53 PM
hmm, maybe it's different between different carriers and countries?
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: greenling on December 18, 2012, 08:51:15 PM
Sorry .
It possible to transport mail in a passenger aircraft.
I've seen in a documentary how mail was transported in a passenger cabin.
Edit:Is to equip all ships with the idea of The_hood?

Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: ӔO on December 18, 2012, 09:09:30 PM
ah, okay. Looks like I was confusing DGR CAO and checked in baggage.

Turns out that freight loaded onto PAX aircraft account for a majority of profits for airline operators.
Title: Re: Multiple hold ships
Post by: Milko on January 03, 2013, 01:16:14 PM
Quote from: The Hood on December 18, 2012, 09:25:40 AM
@Milko,
Which vehicles would you suggest for this sort of modification in planes?

Sorry for the delay.

Convertible planes are:
727, 747, ATR42, ATR72, BAE146 (all version).

Al the dat files contains the cargo space in tonnes, you may use the cargo space to determine the hold space based on the number of hold you want to do.

Giuseppe