feature request - two levels for buing obsolete vehicles

[Vladki]

Sometimes vehicles that go out of production, are superior to their replacements, and players want to buy older proven and reliable stuff.
But allowing buing very obsolete vehicles would be too much. So would it be possible to allow only those that are "out of production" but not obsolete yet?
Perhaps just using the current switch:
0 - can buy if not retired
1 - can buy if not obsolete
2 - can buy forever

[jamespetts]

I can see that there may be some merit to this, although this is not currently a priority for me. If you would like to add this feature, do feel free to do so, and I can happily incorporate it.

[Ranran(retired)]

Sometimes vehicles that go out of production, are superior to their replacements, and players want to buy older proven and reliable stuff.
But allowing buing very obsolete vehicles would be too much. So would it be possible to allow only those that are "out of production" but not obsolete yet?

How is it different from the existing feature? (´・ω・｀)

Code Select Expand

allow_buying_obsolete_vehicles=2
This option allows to purchase vehicles that are out of production (royal blue bars), but obsolete (navy blue bars) vehicles cannot be purchased.

This feature has been available since the royal blue bar was added.
There is no description in either simuconf.tab so editing it will help.

[Mariculous]

These features that nobody knows of

[Ranran(retired)]

These features that nobody knows of

The allow_buying_obsolete_vehicles option in simuconf.tab is expanded.
(In the case of pak128.britain-ex, you need to edit the pakset folder's one.)

allow_buying_obsolete_vehicles = 2
In this case, "Show obsolete" checkbox will not be displayed, but outdated vehicles can be purchased.
If it is 1, you can purchase all as before.

(´・ω・｀)NO WAY! そんな～

[Vladki]

Wow ok, just hit me with the clue-bat...

[Mariculous]

So, could you please set this value and restart the server?

[jamespetts]

Ranran - thank you for reminding me of this. I have now added a comment documenting this in the pakset simuconf.tab.

Edit: And also the main simuconf.tab.

[DrSuperGood]

Sometimes vehicles that go out of production, are superior to their replacements, and players want to buy older proven and reliable stuff.

If the pakset is properly made this should not happen.

[Ranran(retired)]

Even if pakset author forcibly extend the production period and fill in the blank period, I think one of the obsolete system's issue is that if the period until the successor model available is too long, the existing model gradually approaches the obsolete deadline for a long period until the successor model appears.
This means that the deadline may be approaching just before the successor model appears. Nevertheless it is not discounted.
The aging of vehicles is based on the year they become available, not the year they were built.
For example, real-world autos are not (full) remodeled every year, but their value depends on the year of manufacture. I mean, there are many years in which we cannot buy a latest years model in the game.
And we can't know in the game how close it is to death and suddenly get a ruthless sentence. (´・ω・｀)

[CK]

Maybe allow for the possibility of a price increase of vehicles that are formally out of production but still can be bought using that feature. IRL a limited production run for special orders can be possible but it costs a lot of money due to the lack of economies of scale.

If the pakset is properly made this should not happen.

It is true for the class 43 in Pak128.Britain-ex, which goes out of production in the late 1980s but only gets properly replaced by the class 67 + a rake of Mk4 coaches in 1999 and/or the Voyager family in 2002/3, although this is obviously the wrong board for it.

[Mariculous]

If the pakset is properly made this should not happen.

From a gameplay standpoint, I do partly agree with it.
If the pakset is designed to be realistic and there was a bad time in history for whetever the reason, it may be realistic that successors are worse.

I won't judge if such a pakset design is a good design as this would be purely opinion based.

[DrSuperGood]

If the pakset is designed to be realistic and there was a bad time in history for whetever the reason, it may be realistic that successors are worse.

Technology has not gone backwards, especially since the 1800s odd. The only reason a newer design would be worse than an older design is because under modern requirements the older design is now considerably worse than it used to be when it was first introduced. If this was not the case, then the old design would still be manufactured.

If technology has gone backwards then it would no longer be possible or viable to manufacture the old design anyway.

[Mariculous]

Technology has not gone backward, that's true, but there happened things in history that do not happen ingame that required a mass-production of vehicles at low costs.
For the real word situation that vehicle may be "better" but the situation is different, so ingame it's still worse.

A bad service is still better than no service.
Usually wars or huge disasters cause such situations.

E.g. there had been built above 7000 DRB Class 52 in 9 years besides other classes, for sure. That was only possible because these trains were as simple as possible, however still worse than their predecessors except for costs.

Such trains don't really make sense ingame but as ingame vehicles technical data is tied to their real-word variants, such situations will appear in any non-fictional pakset.

[DrSuperGood]

A bad service is still better than no service.Usually wars or huge disasters cause such situations.

Except then the new solution is good because it costs less or is available when other solutions are not.

The only time I can think of that a worse solution would be chosen is due to corruption, where it is more about who gets the money that what is being brought.

however still worse than their predecessors except for costs.

Exactly. Cost is a big factor. A new solution that costs less would be better than an old solution that is prohibitively expensive. I do not think pak128 Britain currently reflects this, especially when there are so many ways to become buried under money.

[Mariculous]

The point is there are some extreme situations in the real world that don't happen ingame, thus while a vehicle is some kind of "better" in the real world, it's still worse ingame.
I don't need slow trains that can't compete with faster but older vehicles just because it is cheaper to purchase.
In the real world, a service with such a slow train is still better than no service, but ingame there IS service. There is no reason to destroy all goodold vehicles just because there was a war in the real world in that time.

[DrSuperGood]

I don't need slow trains that can't compete with faster but older vehicles just because it is cheaper to purchase.

You do if the old ones become prohibitively expensive to purchase or run.

There is no reason to destroy all goodold vehicles just because there was a war in the real world in that time.

There kind of is for historical accuracy. Riding through WW1/WW2 should be difficult for the player to keep the theme of pak128 Britain.

If this is not the intended case nothing stops one having the vehicles not require before or during the war. Just because a vehicle stopped being used in real life does not mean that it makes sense for it to become unavailable within the game at that time. Again this is an individual pakset balancing issue.

[Mariculous]

You do if the old ones become prohibitively expensive to purchase or run.

Which is again true but that won't happen ingame.

To make these new cheap vehicles superior to their predecessors, while being technically worse, it would require a suddent requirement for very many new vehicles while older vehicles are not purchaseable.
I don't think there is a proper game mechanic to achieve this.
How would you simulate the sudden requirement for many new vehicles and decay of old ond new vehicles ingame?

[Qayyum]

I am of the opinion that obsolete vehicles should only be available from 2020, but what do me know?

[Vladki]

You do if the old ones become prohibitively expensive to purchase or run.

Which is again true but that won't happen ingame.

The running and maintenance costs increase for obsolete vehicles, so they eventually become less cost-efficient than new ones.

I am of the opinion that obsolete vehicles should only be available from 2020, but what do me know?

If a pakset is based on real world vehicles, all vehicles available for purchase at 2020 should not be obsoleted at all.
But there might be a futuristic pakset where obsolescene of imaginary future vehicles makes sense.

[Mariculous]

The running and maintenance costs increase for obsolete vehicles, so they eventually become less cost-efficient than new ones.

Absolutely, but that would require any elder vehicles to become obsolete and raising running costs due to obsoletion much quicker, when these new ones get introduced, so all players are forced to replace their with worse ones, however, this is also not pretty realistic.
The reason for these new cheap vehicles was not suddenly high running costs of the previous ones.
The main reason was the requirement for very many additional vehicles for war industry infrastructure. Destruction of existing vehicles also played a role.

In that case, for sure inexpensive vehicles are extremely important, but that situation won't happen ingame.

However, that's a long discussion around the following statement:

If the pakset is properly made this [...Sometimes vehicles that go out of production, are superior to their replacements...] should not happen.

I don't think the discussion changed anything about the point that new vehicles being sometimes worse than their predecessor is not neccessarily the fault of an inproper pakset. (But maybe the cause of sticking too closely tied to reality in cases that are not part of the simulation)
Some situations ingame are simply different to real-world ones and in that case one has to make any compromise of which all will have downsides in some regard.

We could more-or-less less properly simulate this kind of requirements, if we had the overhaul feature and a timeline-based overhaul_cost_factor and overhaul_frequency_factor. Overhauling a nearly destroyed vehicle is not wort it, so it effectively gets replaced with a newly built one. Building many new expensive vehicles is also not wort it, so the player is forced to replace more expensive vehicles with cheaper ones.

However, as this is pretty fine for singleplayer games, it would require special consideration for multiplayer games as this could quickly lead players from going bankrupt because they were in vacation at the wrong time...

[Elemental]

The main reason was the requirement for very many additional vehicles for war industry infrastructure.

So what about having some high production war industries in the set that that are only available for a short time and then upgrade to a version with less production afterwards?

Another reason why older vehicles might be cheaper is probably that changeing fuel prices are not in the game yet, thus with vehicle running costs balanced to the fuel costs at the date of their introduction, so an older vehicle might be cheaper to run because it still runs on coal prices from twenty years ago.

[Mariculous]

This would require industry generation to work differently. Afaik, currently industries get spawned by city growth. If there is no city growth within tha time, there won't spawn any industries.
So this would be a feature request.

Spawning new industries would give these new vehicles a use for that special purpose (serving these industries for a few years, then being sold again, due to many industries closing or downgrading), but I am not quite sure if players would serve these industries if they know that chain will close in a few years.

Still, players will not be able to comperetively expand their passenger services within that time, but I guess that's fine as they can focus on cargo within that time if they want to expand, which is also realistic.