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Longer wagons - feature or bug?

Started by Zeno, May 21, 2011, 09:02:49 PM

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Zeno

I've been taking a look into sources of several rail wagons (e.g. car transporter and container platform) which are a bit longer than "standard" wagons. I've seen they have a length of 9 instead of 8, and I see a problem here:
If wagon A has length 8 and capacity 30, then a newer version comes which has length 9 and capacity 34, there's a benefit if you consider capacity (and probably higher speed), but what about lenght? Your trains won't fit on your stations if you use same number of wagons, so you're loosing a full wagon per convoi, which makes the capacity win useless.
Personally, I consider this a bug (of planning, of execution or whatever you want). What are your thoughts on this?

transporter

Just add on to the station length. I usually build stations with a length of 12 tiles (since most fit within that) with a couple extra straight sections for expansion

Václav

I think that it is not bug. Why should it be a bug?
In the beginning of game you can use train of full length (of 24 vehicles) and it fits to stations of standard length (of 8 tiles) - but as waggons are getting to be greater (in length and capacity), you don't need to use so much waggons to get the same capacity.

Chybami se člověk učí - ale někteří lidé jsou nepoučitelní

Zeno

Well Vaclav, with "bug" I mean unwanted behaviour because in case of car wagon you find that chronologically the three wagons available have lengths 8, 9 and 8. It is ok when talking about the coal wagon timeline, which starts with very short wagons (4) and ends up with half tile wagons ( 8 ).

Personally, I find a stupidity to make a non-standard length wagon without a specific reason (such as 8-9-8 example), as long as it will be probably not be properly balanced. Note this change of length affects to balance in many aspects.

Václav

If I am not wrong, you probably think waggons for piece goods - there are some ones what are longer than next. But waggons for bulk cargo are getting to be longer than previous.

But I don't see anything bad on waggons longer than 8. If some waggons are longer than 8 but next ones are long 8 again, than it is very strange but not bug - but it is issue of painting of new waggons and replacing old ones with them.

So, I think that you got new job for Simutrans - but as I wrote, it would not be good if all vehicles would be long only 8.

Chybami se člověk učí - ale někteří lidé jsou nepoučitelní

VS

Quote from: VaclavMacurek on May 22, 2011, 10:22:04 AM
(...) strange but not bug - but it is issue of painting of new waggons and replacing old ones with them.
That's what I think, too. Or changing the numbers.

Some of the wagons were replaced by graphics from Raven, and did not always fit perfectly.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Zeno

Yes (to both of you), of course some wagons may have length 8 and others could be longer. Actually I there were some passenger wagons by SMC somewhere that are length 12, which helps to give variety and lets the player have some beautiful graphical choices to make (also they can be used just for express service, etc).

Actually I guess it's a problem of some wagons having a 9 length without a reason; and they can be changed probably to length 8 even without changing graphics. I wanted to know your point of view at that cases. Thanks :)

VS

If I made it 9 units long, then it must have looked bad? Anyway, it's an oddity for sure and should be fixed... somehow... :)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Václav

Quote from: Zeno on May 22, 2011, 11:56:37 AM
Actually I guess it's a problem of some wagons having a 9 length without a reason; and they can be changed probably to length 8 even without changing graphics. I wanted to know your point of view at that cases. Thanks :)
I am not sure that their length 9 is without reason - but here we need to compare waggons with length 9 where it seems that they are the same long like waggons with length 8.

And length 9 may be found reasonable.

Chybami se člověk učí - ale někteří lidé jsou nepoučitelní

prissi

That is one of the many reasons the automatic convoi replacer was never added to simutrans ...

In pak64 early cars are length 7 and newer passenger cars length 8; thus there might be an upgrade needed in stations length. But this happened in real life too quite often.