Topic: how to merge stations

[marcelbombka]

In simutrans, How to merge buses stations or bus station with train stations, Like OpenTTD you can use ctrl to do it.

[Leartin]

In Simutrans, whenever you build a station and none of the 8 bordering tiles has one of your stations, you create a new station. Otherwise, the newly buildt tile belongs to the station next to it.

If you build a bus stop directly next to a train station, they will be the same station. You do not need to merge anything.
If you want to have some space between them for whichever reason, you would have to trick the system by building a continous station and later deleting parts you don't want/need.

If you accidentially buildt two seperate stations, you cannot just merge them. However, if you hand over your station to the public player, and it is next to a public station, it will merge with that station. This is so players can expand public stops for interplayer transit, but it also means you can turn both of your stations public to merge them.


However, I don't know why it's not possible to merge stations (other than that nobody wrote code) so perhaps it's just something someone could nicely request

[prissi]

The code exists (there was even a patch), but it is considered "cheating" (since nothing stops you from merging different ends of the map) and hence would break online games. Maybe one can dig the discussion on that out.

[Ters]

nothing stops you from merging different ends of the map

That shouldn't be too hard to change so that the two stops must touch each other. Touching in 2D coordinates should be enough, including being directly above the other.

[Leartin]

That shouldn't be too hard to change so that the two stops must touch each other. Touching in 2D coordinates should be enough, including being directly above the other.

Fully agree - Just for when you expand your station by two tiles and don't start with the closer one.

Though just to avoid a minor annoyance: If you combine stops by making them public, the position of the label moves to where the label of your stop was, not where the public stop was labelled. This is already annoying, and if we get a tool to merge two of your own stations, it shouldn't mirror that behaviour (unless we get another tool to move labels that is)

[prissi]

The label goes to whatever tile is first. It kust depends on the order of the merging and could be easily reverted to retain the public one.

[Ters]

Or perhaps where you click last?

[Leartin]

Or perhaps where you click last?

I suppose if the existing code allowed to merge stations across the board, it requires the player to click twice. If touching is required, it could work with only one click, making the clicked station search for any other station touching it to merge into - that's how I would do it, since it mirrors how making public works - and in that case, the station you clicked on should simply lose it's label.

If two clicks are retained, I can see how the tool could work as "Merge Station at [Click1] with Station at [Click2], set Label at [Click2]." - This could be especially useful if it would allow to click on the same station twice just to change the labelling position.
I'd think it should also come with an adjustable merge distance via simuconfig, that tells how many tiles apart two stations may be to be merged. The number would probably always be rather small, since anything past ~8 could as well be infinite, but merging two stations with one tile distance between them can hardly be any more cheating than deleting parts of a station that make it noncontinuous. It's not really a problem of the merging tool, but something that requires a solution at some point - perhaps by simply having a "max station size" that you can only surpass with specific extension buildings, giving them more value?

[Ters]

Since there might be multiple stations bordering on each other, and since some player will eventually complain if they can't just merge two of them, I was assuming two clicks would be required. More so if you can merge stations within a certain radius, and not just those that are right up against each other. And I was also thinking about the possible application of clicking twice on the same station.

[Leartin]

[...]since some player will eventually complain[...]

Pff, these ridiculous players, never happy with what they get, such unthankful creatures 

When you place a station tile between two different stations, you can't choose which it belongs to. Hence if they wanted to have two touching-but-seperated stations, they would probably complain about the difficulty getting to the point, rather than accidentally merging them.
Of course, that's only true for touch-merge. If you allow for a radius, you absolutelly need the control of a second click.

[Emil Sawicki]

What to do with it? Stops are just 3 tiles away from each other.

[Andarix]

simuconf.tab

Code: [Select]

# maximum distance for merging non-adjacent stations
allow_merge_distant_halt=2