- Credit: Wikimedia Commons
- GP10-numbers.jpg (25.6 KiB) Viewed 2683 times
Ships have hull numbers, planes have tail numbers, road vehicles have license plate numbers, locomotive engines have number boards. These are distinct from, say, manufacturers' serial numbers in that they are assigned by owner or authority and may even occasionally be changed. They are also highly visible. Clearly, somebody thinks it important to be able to see which vehicle they may be looking at.
In a recent IRC discussion, I mentioned that I would like to see signs that trail vehicles, displaying useful information about them -- where they are going, what they may carry, load percentage, reliability percentage. All of this should, of course, be configurable, so I can see exactly the info that will be most useful to me at any time. When there are a dozen trains jammed up at a junction, it would be nice to see at a glance what is really going on.
To keep it simple, though, how about just number boards?
Oh, sure, I can click on any train to see what it is. But if I click on a dozen trains at once, then associating those windows (on my always-crowded screen) is a job in itself. I want to get an overall picture. I want to be able to scroll down a main line and see what traffic is on it -- and what's stopped, what's lost-but-not-lost-yet, etc. The train number alone would at least be a clue.
As it stands, one 20-car train of gons is pretty much like any other, especially if it's empties. A sky full of unnumbered planes is just an air show.
Number boards should be affected by transparency; ideally, they would be distinct from fixed signs, so that a player could choose to see one or the other. At a minimum, they should display the actual vehicle number; better if they displayed any player-assigned vehicle name; best if the text could display any of the usual info instead.
But I'll take numbers any way I can get them.
- number-board-example.png (9.68 KiB) Viewed 2683 times
