Building plans

[Václav]

After long time, I have following (may be very stupid) idea how to make building of ways a bit more effective - building plans.

I am not sure if it was (or not) proposed, but my idea is following:

Player may need to buiild some ways very quickly (instantly) - and some ones not. Some ways may be built, but their building may take much more time. So, why don't to let player to prepare building of ways for future. Ways prepared for building would reserve their place and be built by speed (for example) 100 tiles per year. But their building would cost (for example) half than in case of instant building, that is currently used.

So, meanwhile player would build ways instantly on one end of map, on other end of map ways would be built or upgraded more or less automatically - only on player's plan to build or upgrade them.

[Leartin]

I like it, but I think it asks for a lot.

First, you'd need a blueprint mode - the ability to build and place stuff without it actually appearing instantly. That alone would be a nice feature all by itself.

From there, you'd need some method to slowly build up the blueprint. It probably shouldn't just update a random tile, but how would it decide which tile to updated next? Should it remember for each blueprint tile when it was placed, and operate in that order? Or simply start top left?
If you exchange money with time, should the cheapest object take as long as the most expensive one? Seems like it should be appropriate to the cost, the cheaper the faster. However, a constant building speed wouldn't fit then, since later in the game it would take so much longer per tile.

I think a nice option could be a new type of object, let's say a Bulldozer. You'd buy a bulldozer and have cost over time for it. You can send it to a tile and tell it to "start working", and then it would go to the closest blueprint tile and turn it into reality, once done it continues with the next closest tile and so on. If it can't find a blueprint in a certain radius, it will send a message. "Bulldozer at xyz has nothing to do"
Since the bulldozer itself has cost over time, that already pays for anything it builds. (Eg. it builds something that costs 10 credits in a second, but takes 5 credits/second to operate, so using the bulldozer for building costs you half as much) This could be important for statistics.
If you have several seperate construction sites, just send multiple bulldozers - but careful, too many, and the micromanagement of them getting stuck might not be worth the money you save.

[Václav]

Well, I beg your pardon for a bit longer delay with reply  ... but I have read it as soon as possible after you post it.  Hard work in hospital.

Thanks for your opinion and based on it, I can change idea in following way:

Both speeds of building would cost the same - but slow building would (logically) lead to situation that money would be miisng slowly. However, hard to say which way would be closer to reality.

And also, I am not sure what you mean with blueprints. I had an idea that it would be solved:
Track would be covered by player coloured tiles - like in case of highlighting of owner or so. It could be easier than painting of track in various phases of construction. But let's say that there three steps would be sufficient

- bed
- bed and sleepers
- complete (it means bed, sleepers and rails)

[RealAmerican1776]

I also like this idea. Say you have a forest in between two factories. The player would first have to clear a path through the forest before laying down tracks or roads. It makes it a bit more realistic. I remember the story of when Japan first got it's railways. People worried that because the locomotive was powered by coal, the heat from the steam would catch the houses (which were made of wood) would burn. So Japan's first railway was built alongside the ocean.