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GUI improvements for managing vehicles.

Started by ashwolf, March 27, 2018, 08:27:29 AM

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ashwolf

    Hi there.

    As I was a OTTD player for looong and I really enjoy what Simutrans offers, I also find that the game lacks GUI features that are REALLY useful to manage vehicles, especially when you tend to have HUGE networks with hundreds of vehicles of the same type and when you really need to replace your old obsolete vehicle models by new ones.


    • Autoreplace : It allows to select a model of vehicles that is currently used on the networks and to replace by one another. All the vehicles that uses the former model will be replaced by the new one. This is how it works in OTTD : https://wiki.openttd.org/Replace_vehicles#Autoreplace . Then you could have an option to define the level of Account Balance below what it has to stop replacing vehicles (for example : below Account Balance of 100 000$ it stops Autoreplace until Account Balance is above 100 000$)
    • Give group orders to vehicles : As the Lines system isn't implemented in OTTD, giving Group orders to vehicles can be done in various places such as : a depot where several vehicles are parked on, a station that is commonly used by several vehicles, the list menu of vehicles or the groups menu of vehicles. As for Autoreplace, you can ask several vehicles to go to depot, to get out of depot...

DrSuperGood

Vehicle replacement is a feature of Simutrans Extended.

Since standard does not have such harsh mechanics one usually does not need to replace vehicles since one can withdraw all and then start a whole lot of new replacement vehicles.

prissi

OpenTTD groups were the answer to Simutrans lines. The lines are much more powerful (think of alle the cool statistics), and you can convert (promote) any schedule to a line. There was once though of a tool to find all similar schedules to group them into a line. (When we though about giving up on schedules and just use lines for everything.) But it was never released, because it would be only needed for old games. Newer ones use lines almost all the time.

And unlike OpenTTD, simutrans is designed with much less micromanagement. The replacement feature (or the need to replace) was introduced to TT to hide the fact that there were about four different vehicles per way type. Together with the faster passing of time, smoking wreck on roads and tracks made autoreplace almost needed as soon as larger maps were possible.

In Simutrans (standard) nobodz cares if you deliver coal with horse carrige in 2020.

ashwolf

#3
Quote from: prissi on March 27, 2018, 02:03:00 PM
OpenTTD groups were the answer to Simutrans lines. The lines are much more powerful (think of alle the cool statistics), and you can convert (promote) any schedule to a line. There was once though of a tool to find all similar schedules to group them into a line. (When we though about giving up on schedules and just use lines for everything.) But it was never released, because it would be only needed for old games. Newer ones use lines almost all the time.
My intentions weren't to make Simutrans compete with OTTD about lists/groups/UI, just to give an example of what i'm talking about when I mention autoreplacement.
Quote
And unlike OpenTTD, simutrans is designed with much less micromanagement. The replacement feature (or the need to replace) was introduced to TT to hide the fact that there were about four different vehicles per way type. Together with the faster passing of time, smoking wreck on roads and tracks made autoreplace almost needed as soon as larger maps were possible.

In Simutrans (standard) nobodz cares if you deliver coal with horse carrige in 2020.
Not sure about what you're talking about. I surely have the opposite feeling. To me it seems that WAAAY much more micromanagement is needed in Simutrans for one reason : you need to balance the transportation of Inputs and Outputs, so you need to balance your transports. As for OTTD, it's MUUUUCH quicker because factories does accept goods from any supplier in unlimited quantity and they can produce as much as you can provide them, and even if their production isn't transported they still accept goods from suppliers. In Simutrans you spend a great amount of time just balancing your network between transportation of inputs and outputs (which is great IMO because it's part of the challenge an it's much more realistic...).

Plus, the production increases slowly in OTTD as long as you transport the primary goods, it's not a big deal to have faster and faster trains : they're quicker so they can manage a higher production... I never really used Groups in OTTD, I find them pretty useless because you can manage the whole list of vehicles at once and it's very quick to do that by replacing them.

But in Simutrans, part of the earnings comes from bonus earned if the models you use are above average speed of available models, which means that profit tends to decrease as the time passes and if you want to keep a good margin rate you need to have faster vehicles, by replacing them.

prissi

The speed bonus mostly applys to medicine and books. All other goods do not care much. In SImutrans you have to balance input/output and (for passengers and mail) must rather meet the demand. Both require changes in the number of convois you are running, resp. extending your capacity by using longer trains for instance. However, the latter also requires extension to your infrastructure.

Maybe I used micromanagement wrongly. With micromanagement I mean useless tasks to keep the player busy. Simutrans' intention is to focus on the actual management, which by design is more challenging.

Experimental has the autoreplace feature, but I am not sure, how often it is used. Most standard paks have a vehicle lifetime (throughout they will generate positive income, at least on pak64) of several tens of years. Hence vehicle replacement because the vehicle is so slow it runs into losses should not occur too often, i.e. once a day or so if you play without fast forward. Also at that point you are swimming usually in money (due to the network effect) and hence moist play see the challenge in keeping up with demand rather than worry about profit.

But as said, there is a autoreplace feature in experimental, and somebody can probably make a diff to port this back to standard.

Ters

We had a long discussion on vehicle replacement not too long ago. It highlighted many aspects of vehicle replacement in Simutrans, and thereby how there is no simple solution. I alone use at least three different replacement strategies. Unfortunately, I am not able to find it.