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Please add appropriate prices for river removal (patch attached)

Started by neroden, May 11, 2010, 06:33:57 AM

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neroden

As noted in this topic:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=5060.0
making the cost of rivers 0 makes them free to remove.  Which is undesirable.

Attached is a proposed patch to make removing rivers very, very expensive so that people will be forced to build bridges and tunnels.   ;)

(Also available in git at git://github.com/neroden/simutrans-pak128.britain , branch 'standard-fixes')

The Hood


Gryphonite

Hello,

First time here!

When you try to link a canal into a river it assumes you are destroying the river first, so costs 500,000. Is there a way around this? I agree it should be expensive to destroy rivers but being able to link canals into them is useful.

The Hood

Welcome to the forums gryphonite!

I can't reproduce what you describe - only when deleting rivers does the cost get incurred, but if you just build a canal over the top of a river it counts as an "upgrade" of the river and only costs the cost of the canal.

Gryphonite

Hmm, interesting. I'm using the latest nightly builds (06/06/10) of both Simutrans and pak128.britain. Even when I try to upgrade the river with a canal I incur the cost. It is most noticeable with the Wide River (navigable).

The Hood

Yes, I've noticed that now with the latest nightly and pak on a clean install.  I don't think this is intended behaviour, but either way this is game rather than pak behaviour, so I'll raise a separate topic in the main forum.

The Hood

I've now "fixed" this by the following:

- the largest two river types have a speed of 50km/h
- the second smallest river still has a speed of 10km/h
- the smallest river has a speed of 0km/h - not navigable
- the canal has a speed of 45km/h
- the two larger rivers will therefore not upgrade to canals, so no deletion cost is incurred when connecting canals into these rivers.
- the two smaller rivers can still be upgraded to canals, so will incur a cost when being connected.
- I've also fiddled around with river costs so smaller rivers aren't very expensive to delete, which means it isn't more expensive to upgrade rivers to canals than building new canals.

neroden

Quote from: The Hood on June 13, 2010, 12:37:23 PM
- I've also fiddled around with river costs so smaller rivers aren't very expensive to delete, which means it isn't more expensive to upgrade rivers to canals than building new canals.
Unfortuately, it is now cheaper to bulldoze smaller rivers than to build bridges over them, which is probably not desirable....


The Hood

D'oh.  Would you like to propose some sensible values instead?

neroden

Quote from: The Hood on July 15, 2010, 07:16:50 AM
D'oh.  Would you like to propose some sensible values instead?

It depends on bridge pricing.  I think the bridges may be too expensive (relative to canals) right now.  

Current price: 250.00 (!) for a wood road trestle, maintenance 1.75.  For a three-tile bridge that's 750 (!) and maintenance 5.25.  A dirt road instead costs 30, maintenance 0.30.  The difference is 720, maintenance 4.95.  The cost of bulldozing a single river tile needs to be more than that difference, and enough more to make the lower maintenance worthwhile.  At the moment that would be a minimum of 720.00.

That seems like too much since we also want it to be less than the cost of the canal, which is already high at 200.00.  The answer is to make the bridges cheaper as well.  If (for instance) River0 costs 199.98 and River1 costs 199.99, then they'll still be cheaper than the canal.  (I'm assuming that the game engine has been fixed to charge the lesser of the demolition cost and the canal cost; if it hasn't, I'll go back and fix that.)  That would leave a bulldozing cost of 199.98.

That means that there needs to be a bridge costing less than 66.66 per tile -- I suggest the wooden road bridge should cost 50.00.  The maintenance should also be knocked down so that it doesn't 'pay off instantly' to do the demolition instead of the bridge-building.  For it to take 2 years to pay off (with a 50.00 bridge), the appropriate maintenance cost for the wooden bridge would be .70.  You would probably want to make other bridges cheaper as well.

This is assuming you want to keep the canal price the same.  :-)  The higher the canal price is the higher the prices of bridges can be....

(All these numbers are different in experimental, BTW.)

jamespetts

Hmm. That analysis only makes sense if and in so far as those numbers are indeed realistic relative costs of bridges to ordinary ways. If not, there is insufficient incentive to avoid bridges.
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neroden

Quote from: jamespetts on July 16, 2010, 06:35:25 PM
Hmm. That analysis only makes sense if and in so far as those numbers are indeed realistic relative costs of bridges to ordinary ways. If not, there is insufficient incentive to avoid bridges.
.... in which case canal prices have to be increased.

Note that the numbers are *all different* in experimental.

First of all, bridge prices really ought to be adjusted based on the km distance in experimental.  (They aren't right now, which means it's cheaper to build elevateds.)  Once this is done, Experimental Is Different:


Current price: 250.00 (!) for a wood road trestle, maintenance 1.75.  For a three-tile bridge that's -- once the price is scaled per km instead of per tile -- 187.5 and maintenance .58.  A dirt road instead costs 7.5, maintenance 0.08.

The difference is 180.00, maintenance .50.  The cost of bulldozing a single river tile needs to be more than that difference, and enough more to make the lower maintenance worthwhile.  At the moment that would be a minimum of 180.00.

We want that to be less than the cost of the canal, which is already high at 200.00 -- and it *is* already less than the cost of the canal.  If (for instance) River0 costs 199.98 and River1 costs 199.99, then they'll still be cheaper than the canal.  (I'm assuming that the game engine has been fixed to charge the lesser of the demolition cost and the canal cost; if it hasn't, I'll go back and fix that.)  That would leave a bulldozing cost of 199.98.

That means that there needs to be a bridge costing less than 66.66 per tile -- and there *is*, as the wooden road bridge costs only 60 per tile (once the prices are scaled to be per tile.).  Yay.  Unfortunately, knocking down the river still pays for itself within 14 months.  However, very slight price drops for the bridge or very slight price increases for the canal could stretch this out significantly.

jamespetts

Hmm - I still think that the most realistic solution to all of this is simply to prohibit the demolition of rivers. After all, one can't actually demolish a river in reality: the water has to go somewhere.
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