Terraforming

[zook2]

"In Simutrans-Experimental, it is not possible to raise land - even indirectly by raising its neighbours - when it is more than 1 tile below sea level."

I get the "Cannot terraform in deep water" message when I try to raise land in deep water. However, I can still just use the "Restore natural slope" tool on the water tile and turn it into land, as long as it's adjacent to another land tile. I'm not sure if that's intended for Experimental.

[jamespetts]

The "restore natural slope" only turns a land tile into water tile as long as it has already been modified with an artificial slope, which modification is restricted in the same way as raising/lowering land in general. By those means, it should not be possible to terraform in deep water using the restore slope tool.

[zook2]

I just mean that especially on maps with lots of open water, the game would be more challenging if the player could not expand e.g. coastal railway stations into the sea at will.

[jamespetts]

Ahh, I see, you are asking for the feature to be changed? I'm not sure that it is entirely unrealistic to allow players to raise the land on shallow water, is it?

[zook2]

Sorry, my mistake. I see now that it actually is impossible to terraform outside the most shallow level. I didn't realize that before.

[Carl]

Just to hijack this topic a little to mention a problem that was present a few versions ago (perhaps it has been fixed now):

When terraforming coastal land, it's easy to make a mistake and end up lowering shallow water to deep water. But of course the rule being discussed here means that this mistake cannot be corrected, and this affects the land terraforming that can be done in the area. I'm not sure what can be done about this, but it would be good to investigate either some way to make these mistakes harder to make, or ways to rectify them if they are made.

Perhaps the public player should be able to terraform in deep water?

[jamespetts]

Following a user request a while ago, the public player is now able to terraform in deep water. Perhaps, however, ordinary players ought not to be able to lower land so as to make it into deep water?

[Carl]

That sounds fair. I had forgotten about the change you mention - apologies!