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How can I use ships designated with "MUST USE: Waterway"?

Started by T/C, September 29, 2013, 05:01:26 AM

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T/C

I'd like to use a wherry, but I can't create a shipyard on a waterway, and when I build a wherry in a shipyard that isn't on a waterway, I'm told that the wherry "cannot find a route". What's the solution for this?

-TC

jamespetts

#1
You need to build a single tile of "ship canal" off a river on which to build your shipyard: this should allow you to build the largest river going vessels available in the early era (later eras would require you to build your shipyard on a tile of "large ship canal").

Edit: As this question arises frequently, I have added it to the Simutrans-Experimental FAQ.
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jamespetts

I have also made some usability improvements in the 11.x branch related to this topic: in depots, vehicles with non-matching way constraints will not be shown, whilst vehicles overweight for the underlying way will be shown with grey under-bars and cannot be purchased. This should avoid people wasting money on buying vehicles that cannot be used from the depot in question, and also avoid confusion.
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T/C

That worked. Thank you. You may also want to mention that if the tile of "ship canal" is not built on flat ground, it cannot be used for a shipyard.

-TC

jamespetts

I have added reference to the need for the terrain to be flat: thank you for the suggestion.
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MCollett

Quote from: jamespetts on September 29, 2013, 01:45:18 PM
in depots, vehicles with non-matching way constraints will not be shown

I trust that they will still be shown if "Show all" is selected.

Best wishes,
Matthew

jamespetts

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Jando

In the future I believe a second type of shipyard might be what is needed, a shipyard that is much cheaper than the existing one but can only build ships for waterways.

I remember (from a 1930 game) that I didn't use any of the smaller canals because of the need to have a separate shipyard for every small bit of canal. Even if it's only a small barge canal for a grain mill 10 tiles away, needs a shipyard capable of building ocean liners. ...

jamespetts

That's an interesting idea: a new category of "boatyard" separate from shipyards that can only be built on waterways and that can only build vessels with some sort of (any) permissive way constraint (which, by virtue of having such a constraint, cannot go on open water). That should be relatively straightforward, although would require a new release. Is the purchase/maintenance of the current shipyards such as to make smaller canals unprofitable? What are others' experiences with this?
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Jando


dannyman

Shipyards are very expensive and many of the use cases I have seen are a small point-to-point on a canal, but then the canals don't connect except through the lake, now every small-time operation needs a shipyard.  A little canal boatyard guy that can maybe be built directly on the river (the build-a-canal step is confusing to learn) would make play more enjoyable.


What would be more "realistic" is if you could build vehicles without a depot, but if there is a depot that is routable from the first stop, you get a discount on the purchase price and as lower monthly operating cost.  A small company with only a few vehicles is buying from a third-party depot, but a larger operation will gladly eat the capital and ops cost of a depot to maintain their big fleet.  A big company with say a one-bus operation connecting to a railroad station in a remote town wouldn't spring for a depot, though ... you would haul the bus up on the train and then pay a local mechanic for service.


Easy to code?  No idea.  From a user perspective it is convenient if I can look at vehicle options, set up a route, &c without having to either build or choose the appropriate existing depot.  If I go through on a purchase then maybe a little dialog that you don't have a depot, so things are going to cost more until you build one accessible to the route ... (setting up a convoy prior to paying for the vehicles being another wish-list..)


Often when I start a game I have to build a few depots, and in experimental, a few more depots, so I can weight my options: horse vs steam tractor vs gasoline vs steam train vs diesel vs electric ..... that is a lot of depots to build just to go comparison shopping .... then I have to re-load the map and build just the depots I wanted ...

jamespetts

The adding a boatyard (as distinct from a shipyard) suggestion should be fairly easy to implement, and I am hoping to be able to do this for the next major release. However, difference in treatment between lakes and the sea and building vehicles without depots (which I am not convinced is particularly realistic in any event) would require major rewriting of significant parts of the code, the benefit of which would not outweigh the opportunity cost in relation to other features or enhancements (such as pakset improvements or bug fixes) at this juncture.

As to comparison shopping, you can view vehicles that cannot be purchased in the current depot using the "show all" button, negating the need to buy multiple types of depots. You can also open another instance of Simutrans to run as a sandbox game and place a depot in that if you do not want to buy any depots without seeing which is the best to use.
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zook2

I just commented on the same issue here:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=12763.0

Wouldn't it be a solution to be able to build two types of shipyards (and other depots): player-owned and "public"? Their function would be identical, but the "public" depots cost only a fraction of the "owned" depots and incur no upkeep. Their downside would be 20% higher purchase costs for vehicles. If it's possible without major code changes, flag all vehicles bought there as having a 10% higher maintenance cost as well.

That way British Rail could use it's own depots instead of outsourcing maintenance, but the Bumborough Movers Ltd. wouldn't have to maintain a garage for its fleet of five lorries (or an automobile factory).

jamespetts

That is an interesting idea, but one must be very clear about precisely what is being simulated and where the actual figures come from. A depot is in Simutrans not necessarily the place where the vehicles are built, but rather where they are delivered, stored when not in use and (hypothetically) maintained. The idea of investing in vehicle building infrastructure to reduce purchase costs is an interesting one, but I am not sure that the historical figures that I do have necessarily bear out the savings that you imagine: the figures for railway locomotives at least seem to suggest much more modest savings for locomotives built in their company's workshops than by outside contractors. At this juncture, I am not convinced that the benefit of having this conceptual separation would outweigh the opportunity cost of other features, etc. of implementing it.
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zook2

#15
But then the problem might be that trains, coaches, lorries, buses, sailboats and ocean steamers are treated the same by the game. You need to build and maintain a hugely expensive infrastructure for all of them, whereas in reality smaller companies wouldn't. Have you tried to play an 18th- or 19th-century game with the 11.x versions?

Moderator note: The following sections were added from what were previously separate posts so as to cause this post to conform to the rules relating to double posting.

BTW, it would make using shipyards much more newbie-friendly if there was an indication saying this ship "Can NOT use open ocean tiles" instead of just listing which waterways it can use.

And while we're at it: what effect does having multiple berths or other modules have on a ship?

jamespetts

Firstly, rather tedious I know, but may I ask that you edit your posts to add further content rather than post multiple consecutive posts (unless there is at least about 24 hours between each)? We do need to try to conform to the forum rules on double posting.

As to the content, the question really is what the cost of each item of infrastructure needs to be. I do wonder, on reflection whether, instead of having separate boatyards and shipyards, it might just be simpler to reduce the cost of the shipyard rather substantially: if the hypothesis is that the shipyards are where the ships are stored and maintained, not where they are built, then the cost need not be so high (and some element of the infrastructure cost can instead go into the fixed monthly cost (as yet unused in Pak128.Britain-Ex) for the individual vehicles).

The suggestion about making clear which boats cannot travel on open seas and lakes (sadly, there is no way to distinguish between the sea and lakes in the game) seems to me to be  a good one, and I shall try to remember to implement that when I return home.

As to the effect of having multiple berths, I assume here that you are referring to the holds. The idea of having multiple holds is to customise the cargo that a ship may carry: you can fit out your ships to carry bulk goods or piece goods or long goods or some combination of all of them, for example.
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zook2

Thanks! What I meant is that I can equip a ship with five passenger modules at no extra cost - does that increase loading time or maintenance cost?

jamespetts

It should not affect either - if you are equipping ships with fewer than their maximum number of modules, you are effectively leaving empty space in your ships and not getting the most out of them.
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jamespetts

Quote from: zook2 on December 27, 2013, 12:12:57 PMBTW, it would make using shipyards much more newbie-friendly if there was an indication saying this ship "Can NOT use open ocean tiles" instead of just listing which waterways it can use.

Hmm - I am wondering again about this. Is "MUST USE: Waterway" unclear? I worry that adding a separate message somewhere stating "Cannot be used in open water" or similar would be confusing, especially when the "MUST USE: Waterway" always appears at the same time. A waterway is defined as "(Civil Engineering) a river, canal, or other navigable channel used as a means of travel or transport". Does anything need to be added to this?
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ӔO

For the end user, it is probably easier if the various levels of water ways were given a single category or level, which is easily comparable to each other, rather than having several lines of synonyms that they must compare against.

eg. river category 0 (lightest) to 10 (heaviest)
ship navigable: 4 to 6
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jamespetts

Hmm - I am not sure that I understand here. There is only one permissive waterway constraint, which is simply "waterway". The other constraints are prohibitive constraints for different types of canals. The permissive constraint is to simulate the inability of river boats to navigate the seas. The prohibitive constraints are to simulate width ("beam") restrictions in different sorts of canals and other waterways. I am not sure to what the numbers to which you refer are intended to relate.
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ӔO

Ahh, I see.

So there are Small, Medium, Large + Narrow, Barge and Tub Waterways, and then Ocean (not denoted)?


I think the confusion arises from not having Ocean denoted.

---

Might it be better to use "Restricted to:", instead of "MUST USE:"?
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jamespetts

Ahh, but waterways in general are denoted with "MUST USE:". I am not sure why "Restricted to: Waterway" would be clearer than "MUST USE: Waterway": if a vessel must use a waterway, then, by definition, it cannot traverse the open ocean. "MUST USE:" seems to me clearer than "Restricted to:".
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ӔO

Or alternatively a check list?

Waterway: Yes
Ocean: No

Small River: No
Medium River: Yes
Large River: Yes
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jamespetts

Hmm, this strikes me as unwieldy (it would have to list that every ordinary train could not use city tramways, for example, and list every type of canal that every large ship cannot use), and there is the issue of space in the depot/replace window; but why would this be clearer than "MUST USE: Waterway"?
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zook2

Ahh, sorry about the confusion, I never even noticed the "Must use" line . In my game (11.3, Windows, 1280 x 800 resolution) it's displayed in the left column, under "Max speed", but outside the depot window (so it's usually black text on a green grass background).

But even if I had noticed, I would have assumed that a "waterway" means any "wet" tile.

jamespetts

Hmm - I should look into correcting the size of the depot window.
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Junna

When replacing a ship, the replacement depot dialogue will be too enormous to allow you to see much of it, and it becomes very difficult to use, as well.

jamespetts

Ahh, the solution on which I am working currently is making more efficient use of the existing depot window size, so this should not be a difficulty.
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