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Player choice of goods loaded

Started by grampybear, November 17, 2012, 06:41:28 PM

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grampybear

I would like to see players have a choice of what goods are loaded onto vehicle. Perhaps this could be done in the vehicle schedule menu area under min load have a drop down that list  goods available at that loading stop for the type of vehicle chosen, etc; bulk items-sand,stone,coal are all hauled by same type vehicle, player would then make a choice of which good he wanted load. This becomes very helpful when several similar goods are stored in the same area and going to the same factory, etc; sand and coal to glas factory which requires equal amounts of both but never arrive that way. Thank you

Fabio

This could be solved with the hierarchic goods system someone suggests in the 1st/2nd class thread.
You could have bulk cars hauling all bulk wares and coal cars hauling only coal.

prissi

I do not see how this will help, and it will confuse the routing.

Ters

I don't see how it would confuse the routing any more than the present categories. But getting this right without overwhelming the average player (not extension request poster) and pak set maker, is a challenge indeed.

AP

There is sometimes a gameplay isssue, where you have routes with multiple goods of the same category - e.g. stone, coal, and sand, all moving around the same line. If not carefully balanced using special tricks (e.g. 6 car trains and 3-car platforms in some cases) industries can receive incorrect ratios of goods.

I could see a place for a button in the line-creation menu, along with the load % and wait times, to open a pop up which restricts what can be loaded/unloaded at any/each stop. Or by extension (sorry!), even force unload certain items.

That way, it would only be one benign button for players to ignore much of the time, until they reach a gameplay level where they need it.

It might also have advantages with passenger traffic, e.g. set-down only at certain stops, or force unload, if correctly considered.

prissi

The routing is based on categories. How would the routing know at at a certain stop only sand but not coal should be loaded? That would require routing per goods, not per category. (Not too difficult, but a lot more effort.)

grampybear

The routing should stay the same, only a choice of goods within the vehicle category to be loaded. Now the loading process is random 

Sarlock

What could work is setting a desired % load consist... ie: 20% coal, 80% iron.  If there isn't a sufficient amount of either good at the station then it will still fill itself with whatever is left.  From a routing perspective, would that really impact it?  Sending a bulk car to a station that provides coal and iron but only picking up the iron (setting coal to 100% and iron to 0%) should still trigger the factory to produce coal as well, it will just store up at the station and not actually be transported anywhere.

I can see some difficulties with this implementation in that the game would need to know which goods types can be transported by each vehicle's consist.  If you change the cars on a train, you change what it can haul and impact its settings.  It might affect a lot of different things.
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grampybear

Loaded Vehicles already display what they are carrying, my thought is that at the point a vehicle is connected to a loading stop the choice is made. Cat of vehicle is still bulk but now it is bulk-sand. The choice is for that vehicle assigned to that stop only, if the vehicle returnes to a depot the cat returns to bulk. An extra thought- this would greatly ease the creation of distribution hubs for goods suppling many similar factories.

Ters

The way hierarchical goods categories could help here is that it would support both cars that only carry coal, as well as cars that can carry all kids of bulk. With the current system, a car for any bulk will also accept all others.

There are other ways of solving this feature request, but in the end, they all mean more options in an already crowded depot window, or turning convoy creation into a two-phase process (assemble and configure).

prissi

No, the choice must be either stop-wise (e.g. this stop does enables coal but not sand). Vehicle-wise will require a complete overhaul. Than of course instead of good categories just the definitions in the vehicles could be used.

It has the downside that any added goods (which are e.g. bulk or piece goods) would not be supported by those vehicles.

greenling

I Think we need a Work around of the good paks and the vehicle for those idea.
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Ters

Quote from: prissi on November 18, 2012, 06:16:52 PM
No, the choice must be either stop-wise (e.g. this stop does enables coal but not sand). Vehicle-wise will require a complete overhaul. Than of course instead of good categories just the definitions in the vehicles could be used.

It has the downside that any added goods (which are e.g. bulk or piece goods) would not be supported by those vehicles.

I'm not sure what you try to say here. Nor do I see the need for a complete overhaul of anything just to move the information about which freight a vehicle can carry from vehikel_besch_t to vehikel_t. But then that's a part of the code I haven't been looking into before.

In any case, if I know the vocal majority right, enabling only one of the goods on an entire station won't please them.

prissi

The routing is based in catg, not on goods. That needs to change. But as you said, my main objection is rather the confusion caused that some bulk vehicles may take all, and other not.

Ters

Quote from: prissi on November 18, 2012, 09:14:54 PM
The routing is based in catg, not on goods. That needs to change. But as you said, my main objection is rather the confusion caused that some bulk vehicles may take all, and other not.

I see that there are a lot of foo->get_catg_index() == bar->get_catg_index() and the like that needs to be replaced with something like is_compatible(foo, bar). The list of waiting goods at a station is also tied to this category index for grouping, which is also an obstacle to a free hierarchy, unless grouping is lost altogether. My enthusiasm for my own suggestion has cooled a bit after looking at the code.