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OpenTTD is a fully open-sourced reimplementation of TTD, written in C++, boasting improved gameplay and many new features.

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roadrunner
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To Baldy's Boss

Post by roadrunner »

There has been some friction between us lately. Some of the reasons for that being:

You are frequently seen posting about turning off breakdowns as being some kind of "cheat", and the manner in which you have done so seems to have a condescending and "holier than thou" type of attitude.

Maybe I can lay it out for you so you'll understand.

Breakdowns are very poorly implemented in this game.

First off, it is unacceptable, and totally unrealistic for a vehicle to be breaking down 2-3+ times on every round trip, on a reasonable length route.

As you are probably aware, the reliability factor of vehicles is assigned randomly when the game is loaded. When I open the buy menu for vehicles (RV's, trains, etc...), the reliability factor may be anywhere between 50%-99%. This is completely unuseable with breakdowns enabled, when I am using vehicle sets that model real vehicles, which have a specific reliability.

Also, previous vehicle reliability begins to drop when new vehicle models become available. There is no reason for a given vehicle design, made to the same specifications, and produced on the same machines, and by the same people, to be less reliable just because a new model is available. There is also the fact that the newest/fastest vehicle may not be the be the best vehicle in a given situation, but with breakdowns enabled you are pretty well forced to use the newest vehicles anyway because of reliability issues.

I continue to use older, slower vehicles on shorter routes where the newest, fastest ones are unnecessary and inappropriate to the situation, and should not be penalized for doing so. Therefore, I play with breakdowns off.

These are some of the reasons that I, and many/most others play with breakdowns off. No need to have a guilty conscience for turning of a broken or poorly implemented feature.


On another note:

You have posted many times asking for help, and in nearly every post you attach 1-2 savegames that most people aren't going to download. People have repeatedly asked you to post screenshots if you want help, but it goes ignored.

If you want to learn how to build efficient transport networks, I would suggest that you have a look at websites like:

OpenTTD Wiki - Railway construction section:
https://wiki.openttd.org/Railway_construction
Much information about railway building: basic building, junctions, signals, stations, etc.

Owens Transport Tycoon Station
available here:
http://www.transporttycoon.net/
He has much information about building rail networks in general, as well as junctions, signals, stations, etc.

I have also found it helpful to view screenshots and download savegames posted by other forum members. By doing so, you can see what is possible in openttd, and implement the concepts learned in your own games.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Redirect Left »

I entirely concur. I play with breakdowns off, it is nothing more than an unrealistic frustration. Whilst I hope sometime the OpenTTD crew can remove and reimplement a better algorithm for breakdowns, I understand it is unlikely to happen as its very low priority (I'd imagine).

I also use older trains on routes where speed isn't much of an issue for whatever reason, and the breakdown rate of them is horrendous, even over such short distances of urban roles from one side of the city to the other.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Swoop »

I'm afraid I disagree for 2 reasons:

If breakdowns are off then a) there's absolutely no reason to choose a more reliable engine over a more powerful one and b) no reason to place handy depots for servicing en route cos there's also no reason for trains to ever be serviced.

Ok, that was a 3 reasons.

And you'll never get trains broken down over a crossing/junction, causing a huge tailback.


4 reasons.



And are you sure that reliability is randomised for addon trainsets, like UKRS? My Klondykes are always at 97%, which is why I ignore the Edwardian (84%) when it comes along.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by leifbk »

I like to play with reduced breakdowns, because playing without breakdowns is boring.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Redirect Left »

Swoop wrote:b) no reason to place handy depots for servicing en route cos there's also no reason for trains to ever be serviced. .
I personally play with servicing enabled with breakdowns set to none, and still enable autoreplace, so thats a bit of a moot point for myself!
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Post by roadrunner »

Swoop wrote:I'm afraid I disagree for 2 reasons:

If breakdowns are off then a) there's absolutely no reason to choose a more reliable engine over a more powerful one and b) no reason to place handy depots for servicing en route cos there's also no reason for trains to ever be serviced.

Ok, that was a 3 reasons.

And you'll never get trains broken down over a crossing/junction, causing a huge tailback.


4 reasons.



And are you sure that reliability is randomised for addon trainsets, like UKRS? My Klondykes are always at 97%, which is why I ignore the Edwardian (84%) when it comes along.
In response to point "a" above

I choose engines based on suitability to task, and use engines that I want to use...not ones I'm forced to use based on some arbitrary reliability factor.

Point "b" above

I also play realistic games, so building and using service depots is a normal part of railroad maintenance in my games, even with breakdowns off.
Swoop wrote:And you'll never get trains broken down over a crossing/junction, causing a huge tailback.
Not sure why I would want that.
Last edited by roadrunner on 27 Mar 2015 00:12, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Supercheese »

Breaking news: Different people have different playstyles. Learn more live at 11.
Eyecandy Road Vehicles | Fake Subways | Supercheese's NewObjects

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Post by Baldy's Boss »

I agree that breakdowns are overdone in the game.However,I do regard them as essential.
There should be some sort of penalty for using older models.I wish that there was some way to keep steam engines going at a much increased cost without their becoming inoperable,but there has to be something between having old engines work perfectly forever and the best present alternative of having them become unusable.I've suggested in the past buying a manufacturer,which gives you a monopoly on an old unit thereafter,comparable to the monopoly on a prototype we're already offered.(Any competitor who wanted the unit whose manufacturer you bought would have to buy it from you).

Horsepower,tractive effort,speed,reliability...we're supposed to be juggling these factors,as well as designing routes to be straight and level through terrain that starts out random.
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Post by roadrunner »

Being able to turn breakdowns off, and turning "vehicles never expire" on seems to work well for people who want to play a freeform game. I'm not expecting my game to be compared against yours or anyone elses. I'm playing for my own enjoyment only.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Swoop »

roadrunner wrote:
I choose engines based on suitability to task, and use engines that I want to use...not ones I'm forced to use based on some arbitrary reliability factor.
How does the reliability force you to pick a particular engine? I pick the reliable ones cos I think that's the sensible choice, other people might prefer the extra power of another engine and think that 84% is still reliable enough. There's no-one holding a gun to your head, choose whichever engine you like. The reliability of the engine is merely another factor in making the choice and gives me a reason not to just pick the best engine all the time, it's not like purchase or running costs are ever a factor in the decision.
roadrunner wrote:
Swoop wrote:And you'll never get trains broken down over a crossing/junction, causing a huge tailback.
Not sure why I would want that.
Ah well this is more my personal preference, I like it when bad things happen, I like disasters to deal with.....gives me more to do and more to think about while I'm playing with my trainset. If nothing ever goes wrong then all I'm doing is watching trains go past.....and I can do that from my kitchen window without a PC.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Eddy Arfik »

I've been playing with breakdowns off for a while now out of frustration that it didn't seem to scale with map size, recently serviced, near new trains shouldn't break down 3 or 4 times in one trip, but never really changed my playing style. I still use depots at end-of-line to force regular servicing, and have auto-renew enabled. I decided I would turn breakdowns back on (at reduced setting) in my current game to prove how crippling it is, but I was actually surprised. It's 2150 and I have trains designed in 1941 that are still running at 70% reliability between services (in my world you can still buy brand new steamers 200 years later). I think the biggest problem is reliability decay happens too quickly in most games (defaults are designed for 256x256 maps, most vehicle sets don't seem to change this much), trains drop from peak to 0% in less time than it takes to get from one end of the line to the other. I'm currently using daylength patch which appears to help a lot in slowing this process, but I understand that isn't ideal solution for everyone. Maybe one solution is to modify vehicle sets so that reliability decay factor is at a level more suitable to the larger maps most people play on now.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Wahazar »

Breakdowns works fine, even for large map, in case of true daylength patch (to be more specific, this from reddit client).

I'm using breakdowns on my server, to remove abandoned companies, instead of this rude autoclean feature.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by V453000 :) »

Breakdowns as a concept are fun, trains which are perfect can be boring for some people (with some playstyles).

The problem is that breakdowns only punish the player, without any real reward...

- if you service trains poorly, they will break down a lot
- if you service trains well, they will still break down though

An excellent step miles forward would be to make a mode where you COULD reach the point where

- if you service trains well, they do not break down at all

For example, for a year after visiting a depot, there would be no chance for trains to break down. After a year, the chances would get higher and higher until another service.

It would be great on all levels, not just the breakdowns themselves. How many discussions have you seen about discouraging long trips? Doing that by costs or anything monetary does not and never will make sense; if you had to service your trains multiple times per trip, it would already get more tedious on management of trains.

Reliability could turn into a value defining how quickly would grow the likelihood of breaking down after a year. (or the year could of course be just another value which could differ with each train.)


As a half-assed workaround, I want to make DOOM (a train set in development) have a special feature - trains would start losing power/TE/(speed in worst cases) if unserviced for a long time. Approach through NewGRFs is very clunky since it is not easily possible to make such a counter for trains (without desyncing the game horribly in multiplayer), and because doing so in OpenTTD itself would make a LOT more sense.

Perhaps sometime somebody will take the initiative to code something along those lines. :)

P.S. To conclude, breakdowns are one of the most questionnable features of the game due to their implementation. It is obviously possible that some people like playing with them as a part of the fun, but anybody saying that it is the only option and any other is cheating, is just plain dumb.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by Eddy Arfik »

McZapkie wrote:Breakdowns works fine, even for large map, in case of true daylength patch (to be more specific, this from reddit client).

I'm using breakdowns on my server, to remove abandoned companies, instead of this rude autoclean feature.
That's the same patch I modified for my custom build of Cirdan's branch, what daylength factor do you use? I find factor 4 works quite well but I'm interested in what other people use and how it affects their playing style.
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Re: To Baldy's Boss

Post by WWTBAM »

Please refrain from writing open letters publicly criticising users on this forum. Last time a user did so on these forums, the username of the user being attacked was etched into most users memory due to a long and extremely aggressive flame war that ensued.
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