Topic: Holds for airplanes , change to holds for ships

[Milko]

Hello

I wanted to achieve aircraft able to carry more product types simultaneously. I wanted to make this thing using the "holds" as was done for the ships of the pak128britain (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10989.msg106463 # msg106463). From what I understand, for aircraft, you can not add these "holds", simutrans always limited to 1 the number of components of an aircraft.
It is possible to overcome this limitation?

Further request, you can define the component of head already the maximum number of "holds" that follow?

I'm watching what happens to ships, known to add the "holds" increases the length of the ship. I think that would be best for ships (and planes) that the length of the ship does not increase with increasing of the "holds" while leaving the effective length parameter that serves to distance the symbols in the queue to the ship.


Giuseppe

[prissi]

I think the automatic adding of holds is possible, i.e. an airplane for pas and mail (until four), also I have to look again at the code.

Manually, this is not possible, since it will fail very bad with the game physics and price structure; real planes were only used for piece goods and special freights. (coal planes ... ugh). Rather redraw planes with different goods.

[greenling]

Hello both
I think that's the holds system the airplanes make better in the useing of goods.
It make possible to create airplanes with mixed loading of goods.
That's do save money.

[kierongreen]

The part of the code which limits length of aircraft is in simdepot.h:

Code: [Select]

/**
 * Depots for aircrafts
 */
class airdepot_t : public depot_t
{
...
unsigned get_max_convoi_length() const { return 1; }
...
};

I don't think there'd be any huge problem extending this to 4?

[Milko]

Hello

I don't think there'd be any huge problem extending this to 4?

Interesting.

To this extent I think also important to consider that the length of the hull and holds is used to add symbols for passengers, mail or goods; these symbols are added back to the hull "as if they were cars." In this way you can see what the aircraft can carry and what is already loaded or not, this allows you to visually assess the degree of filling of the aircraft when they are parked. The parameter length in the dat file so it is important precisely because it allows you to add symbols in the queue and to separate them properly.

It is therefore important that the length parameter allows to space the symbols but that even if a plane is longer than a single space to be loaded / unloaded completely when it is stationary at the airport (the dock is lenght one space?)

If I'm not mistaken this thing already works for ships but I never test. Someone could confirm (pak 128 birtain standard) that ships work correctly?

Giuseppe

[The Hood]

Works fine for ships. Should simply be a case of changing the max vehicles in convoy from 1 to (say) 4. Not sure why this would break game physics and price structure if sensible choices were made by pakset designers - ships in pak128.Britain will be balanced to have all the power and most of the cost and running cost, with the holds merely giving different options for payload (for planes this would be pax, mail, piece and cooled, not coal etc!)

[prissi]

Passengers with speedbonus require a completly different running costs than mail or fireight. The only way to cure this would be a base plane with all the running costs for the hold; but then freight planes and postal planes had usually anyway different liveries. Furthermore, a base plane without anything will be a constant source of questions ...

Moreover, due to the way the braking and everything else is calculated, all those extensions needs to add a certain weight, so that the total weight is nearly the same. Otherwise max speed and many other stuff will be very different. Or people will be disappointed, that their plane only carries 11t of coal ...

[kierongreen]

This can be for pakset maintainers to decide though. Nothing will force pak64 to adopt such a system for example. For paksets that want, for example a plane to take passengers and mail they can force the mail hold to be added to a base passenger plane then balance the overall costs.

[jamespetts]

This extension seems like a good idea to me - or else what happens, for example, to the Zeppelin recently made by Giuseppe? It seems absurd to have a separate passenger and mail version.

[The Hood]

The other option is to allow single vehicles to have more than one goods type at once e.g.

freight[0]=Passagiere
payload[0]=100
freight[1]=Post
payload[1]=50

however I think the original proposal is better. Clearly most pakset maintainers wouldn't introduce coal holds for planes which never carry coal...

[jamespetts]

The original proposal would certainly require a much more minor change to the code than that suggestion...

[kierongreen]

Allowing vehicles to carry more than one type of goods could be handy in itself though.

[The Hood]

It would also be more intuitive from a player's point of view - this aircraft carries x pax and y mail, rather than finding that out after you've just bought it...

[kierongreen]

Indeed

[TurfIt]

The other option is to allow single vehicles to have more than one goods type at once ...
however I think the original proposal is better.

I disagree. A single vehicle defined with more than one goods category is the only sensible 'correct' solution IMHO. It's nice that people have found a workaround to the single goods limitiation by adding invisible trailers to vehicles, but it's really an ugly hack. And, as prissi points out virtually impossible to balance for.

[prissi]

In case of a plane with mail and pax, one could made the invisible trailer mandantory. As such, it will be always built together. Moreover, the trailer will be always invisible, since the image of a plane is its shadow. Some further (small) changes are required to make this work.

Considering the number of open construction sites already within current simutrans, it is certainly not first priority to open another one.

[walsjona]

Being able to change the cargo an aircraft can carry rather than it being hard coded I think is far better and more realistic. Old but airworthy pax aircraft are often repurposed for airfreight and there were even some Air carriers (not sure if this is still the case) that actively changed their aircraft between freight and pax haulage on a daily basis depending on demand. While livery is perhaps a concern and probably better handled in experimental it's not really a problem. Cargo planes often appear to have different liveries simply because in general air carriers tend to focus on either pax or freight in the much the same way as any transport company.Those that do do both will usually use the same livery for both services anyway, so in standard a simple livery using player colours would most likely work fine rather than having separate ones for cargo and pax.  Addtionaly while there are specific freight varients of popular passenger aircraft the modification aren't really relevant to simutrans. Besides the aircraft itself is mearly a shell, its up to the owner(player) to decide what to do with it.

Jonny

[kierongreen]

Another thing to consider is how different loads are handled. For example a goods van might well be able to take piece goods and mail, but the more piece goods that were carried, the less mail could be and vice versa. On the other hand a brake compartment in a otherwise passenger carriage would be able to take a certain amount of mail and/or piece goods - but neither would affect the passenger capacity of the carriage.

[Milko]

Hello

I agree with what was said by walsjona, the planes 'combi' are a typical case of aircraft with variable configuration according to the need of the path. They are equipped with movable bulkheads. The ability to compose (with flexibility) the configuration of the aircraft in the store seems to me the most correct. The maintainer can also pak choose if the trailer should be visible or invisible (as has been done for example for ships pak britain). I also do not see any problems for balancing, each trailer can be associated with a weight value and maintenance cost; clearly the maintainer of the pak has to pay attention to what he does.

Edit:
Holds and ships (pak 128 britain): an issue http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=12462.msg123235#msg123235

Giuseppe