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Separate freight capacities of freight stops by type

Started by Mariculous, August 09, 2022, 10:51:14 AM

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Mariculous

A quick brainstorming on the discord has revealed a demand for splitting freight capacities by freight type on stops.
From a real-world perspective this totally makes sense. You cannot, for example, store fluids in bulk holds.

Also, a short discussion on discord following the brainstorming has concluded that there is a demand for such a feature.

Visually, there are a few different freight expansion buildings available in pak128.britain-ex, but the difference is purely eye-candy.


This feature request is in preparation of a live coding event. Please do not start working on it. Feel free to discuss.

jamespetts

This is probably a worthwhile thing, but a number of things need to be borne in mind:

(1) this may be more complex than it first appears due to the need to modify the path explorer to check whether any given stop has capacity for the right type of freight;
(2) careful consideration in Pak128.Britain-Ex will be needed as to what to do if there are any freight types that do not have separate capacities at present;
(3) careful consideration will be needed as to how not to break existing saved games where players have worked on the assumption that extension type does not matter for freight;
(4) careful consideration will be needed as to how to handle paksets that do not have these separate capacities, probably by having a default that freight extensions will serve all types of freight unless specified otherwise;
(5) consideration will need to be given as to whether to break this down by individual type of freight (e.g. grain, iron ore, coal, etc.) or whether just category (e.g. bulk goods); and
(6) careful consideration will be needed as to how to modify the UI (especially the loading graphs) to take full account of this.

With all the modifications needed to various systems throughout the game (path explorer, UI, pakset reading/writing, etc.), I suspect that making this work fully would take orders of magnitude longer than the few hours available at a live coding event, although you might work on part of the feature during the event and then complete the rest on another occasion.

It would be splendid to see work on Simutrans-Extended done at a live coding event, however - hopefully, it will encourage more people to get involved in Simutrans (although perhaps in light of the complexity and number of systems that need to be modified and very carefully tested for even a small change such as this, as set out above, it might perhaps attract only the keenest of transport enthusiasts).
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Mariculous

(1) Don't worry, I don't expect this feature to be finished on that event but it is a good feature to work on as some parts of this are not too complex and and can be observed ingame without the full feature being implemented.

(2) What do you mean by this? The plan for this feature is to allow pakset designers to specify multiple supported freight types to station buildings. If none are given, it will default to "all" for backwards compatibility.
So in pak128.britain-ex, a bulk storage can only hold bulk, oil tanks can only store oil and the livegoods store can only store livegoods. The shed can store all the remaining good types, at least until more specific grapics are painted which is beyond the scope of this feature.

(3) This is indeed a difficult point especially as unlike most other paksets, pak128.britain-ex does not have a release concept to introduce breaking changes so I suspect some kind of legacy mode is required to keep these working with new nightlies of the pakset.

(4) These will keep working as they did before until they specify specific types of goods.

(5) As freight cars break this down by category, I will go for the same approach on storage buildings. If requirements to transport these different types of freight are the same, then requirements to store them should be considered the same as well.

jamespetts

Excellent, thank you for the clarification. In relation to (2), would the goods shed have to be specified to take each remaining type that does not have its own dedicated storage facility individually? That might be the best way of doing it, I suppose.

I should be very interested to see this live coding event!
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

Mariculous

Exactly, none given means "all freight types accepted".
If any type is given, all of the listed goods are accepted.

So the shed dat would specify all remaining types.

Matthew

If the general public can watch, could you please give us the date, so that we can put it into our diaries?
(Signature being tested) If you enjoy playing Simutrans, then you might also enjoy watching Japan Railway Journal
Available in English and simplified Chinese
如果您喜欢玩Simutrans的话,那么说不定就想看《日本铁路之旅》(英语也有简体中文字幕)。

jimishol

In my newly efforts to play on new map, I have heavy think on scheduling before i actually create a station. I started at year 1750. I use heavily the pause function too (after days of planning and gaming, only a game month has passed). As i can hardly find profitable lines (only fishing and two pax lines created so far) i am somehow forced to use scheduled lines to have a chance for positive profit. Heavy scheduling, so as for it to be exact and avoid car stuck, lead to the creation of separate stops for each line that extends from node (station). So, my game style not only uses separate stations for each type of good but, moreover, separate stations for each line that connects to node, even if the same type of good travels through them.
Separate freight capacities of freight stops by type, would be of no use to my game style and would add an unnecessary complexity. At my start of gaming, I thought and played as if bulk, livestock and other freights were different. When it was clarified that these were eye candies, my role play thinking easily accepted that stations simulates the situation where different necessary type of them has constructed for the needs of any transportation they serve.

Let me note what my game style really needs.
I have a node that accepts fishes (1 line) and delivers to 2 markets (2 lines). Initially my node contained a stop that unified 3 simple stops of pax, mail and freight of storage 10. This node was planned to serve only transportation of foods lines. Nearby another node with other station served only pax and mail lines.
By checking the future in turbo mode, I noticed that the food service node was overcrowded by unhappy, no route found, passengers that have no chance to leave the node, as no pax line served that node. From a role playing view, it was not my fault at all but they were stupid enough to choose to wait at a station that was not served by any passenger's line. It seemed that their stupidity harmed the nearby existing node that served pax and mail only. I upgraded my general stops to the more expensive specific bulk storage stations and things got much better for both the foods node and the nearby pax and mail node.
My suggestion is pax and mail path finding routine not to include nodes that are not served by a line that includes vehicles specialized to pax and mail respectively. If the same routine is used for freight too, i would suggest the same. The for a specific type of good path finding routine not to include nodes that are not served by a line that includes vehicles specialized to that specific type of good.

Mariculous