Topic: Question regarding mothballed ways in the menus

[Ves]

I cant remember if/when this was discussed, but are the mothballed ways supposed to be visible in the building menus?
I would think that it would be wise to exclude them from the building menus as they will create confusion to the player as to what to do with it.  Method to "upgrade" to mothballed waytype can anyway be acheived with shift-dragging the remover tool over the way.

Also its difficult to explain in the helptext why they are there :-)

[Junna]

Eh, they are supposed to be there. I only use this method to mothball tracks.

[jamespetts]

Mothballed ways are intended to be in the menus: the idea is that a player can downgrade to a mothballed way (for free) and immediately stop paying maintenance on it, which is not what happens if a player SHIFT-drags the removal tool, which will only mothball the way at the time of the next need to renew, regular maintenance being paid until then.

Mothballed ways could be described in the help text thus:

"Some ways that appear in the menu will be 'mothballed' types. These ways cannot be used by vehicles, but cost nothing to maintain. They are intended to represent a transport company mothballing infrastructure for possible use in the future (after being renewed with a non-mothballed way type) without having to keep it in repair in the present. Mothballed ways can only be built as a downgrade (CTRL+drag) of existing ways: new ways cannot be built as mothballed."

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

if a player SHIFT-drags the removal tool, which will only mothball the way at the time of the next need to renew, regular maintenance being paid until then.

Just curious, feel free to ignore if everyone already knows (the little Simutrans I play isn't Experimental - although I love keeping up with all the awesome stuff that happens with Experimental, mind); but if the way is mothballed with a train on it, would it get stuck? Just passing curiosity from me - please don't expend much energy on an answer.

[Ves]

Aha ok, I see! After a quick test, however, its only possible to downgrade the way to "mothballed" when CTRL-dragging the mothballed way over an existing piece of way. I understand the safety mechanism to prevent accidentally downgrading ways, but as there are no waytypes more bad than the mothballed waytype, it does not make sence to have to press CTRL.
I will arrange your description to fit in what I already wrote!

Just curious, feel free to ignore if everyone already knows (the little Simutrans I play isn't Experimental - although I love keeping up with all the awesome stuff that happens with Experimental, mind); but if the way is mothballed with a train on it, would it get stuck? Just passing curiosity from me - please don't expend much energy on an answer.

It once happened in my test game that a train got stuck on the line on a mothballed way (I disabled the auto upgrade to test) and I remember having some struggle to get it going again. However, it should be possible to "upgrade" the way again underneath the train in order for it to continue!

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Ouch! I was wondering. hehe. d'oh.

[jamespetts]

The idea of a vehicle becoming stuck on a mothballed way if a way be changed to be mothballed when a vehicle is on it seems to be the sort of thing that a player should expect to happen in that case: it would be very difficult indeed to prevent this from happening reliably.