NFO request/advice: stations for industries built on water

[andythenorth]

The FIRS industry newgrf set will contain multiple industries which are built on water. These will need to include tiles to provide stations. I understand the existing method of providing these as described here: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... tion+water

The current nfo method provides the industry with a built-in heliport and dock. It would be useful to have more fine-grained control over the vehicle types that can use the industry's built-in station. This does not need to be particularly sophisticated, the following would be sufficient:
- tile that only serves ships
- tile that only serves helicopters
- tile that serves both helicopters and ships
- ability to have n tiles of either type within a specific industry layout (desired, not essential, especially if it complicates route finding)

The reason I am seeking this is that otherwise I will need to include inappropriate helipads at industries built on water (such as fish farms, dredging operations and offshore wind farms).

To keep this simple, I am avoiding complications and unknowns such as seaplanes or other vehicle types (for the record I see no requirement to offer train or RV support in this context!). I see no requirements for other complexity such as customisation, state machines etc.

Revealing how little I know about the internals of nfo, I am hoping for something like a new action 0 property for industry tiles, using a bit mask to determine vehicle types can use the tile....there may be a better implementation of course.

A secondary question is about land-based industries including a built-in helipad. There are certain FIRS industries (luxury hotel, survey base) where a single-tile heliport would be useful. The current single-tile helipad is only visually suitable for towns. The four-tile helidepot is a little large for some situations. One solution therefore would be to include helipad(s) at the industry, for which there is precedent, and which it seems might come as a side-feature from my main suggestion above.

Advice / comments?

cheers,

Andy

[frosch]

- tile that only serves ships
- tile that only serves helicopters
- tile that serves both helicopters and ships

At least NoAI is designed to allow that If it would be only that, one could imagine a new flag for industry property 1A.

- ability to have n tiles of either type within a specific industry layout (desired, not essential, especially if it complicates route finding)

That would mean to have multiple stations including multiple signs and independent orders. It would also break the above mentioned flag. Nevertheless the current code allows to specify multiple tiles (at least I guess so), but I do not consider that very useful. Multiple landing positions for a single station will need state machines.

The reason I am seeking this is that otherwise I will need to include inappropriate helipads at industries built on water (such as fish farms, dredging operations and offshore wind farms).

Sadly the next point from here is that you want to specify the landing height of the helicopter. Though it might be a single action 0 property, it creates a big mess of deprecated stuff if we ever get proper state machines.

A secondary question is about land-based industries including a built-in helipad.

Noone prevents you to build oilrig-like stations on land. Though you cannot specify the landing height (s. a.), nor the visual appearance. It will still be a water tile (it will not flood though), and you have to hide it with the stuff on the tiles in front of it (likely also while transparent).

[andythenorth]

@ Frosch, thanks for the reply.

I figured it wouldn't be as simple as it looks. Obviously there should be a concern to avoid code which is going to end up deprecated. On the other hand, designing against a future use case that may never happen could be an anti-pattern no? State machines seem to be complex, and possibly controversial (looked like there was some public disagreement recently about airports??). Anyway, I'll stay out of things I don't know much about .

I think I could simplify the requirement further to suit my purpose (but it restricts what other people might find useful). If I could have industries include a dock for ships that would be sufficient. I have nothing planned where an industry has a helipad but no dock. I can't imagine a water-based industry that can't be served by ships.

As per my secondary question, if a helipad *without* a dock was possible, I could make good use of it, but it is not essential. A better route could be adding a single-tile, ground-level helipad to trunk.

However being able to route ships (only) to an industry built on water *is* essential for FIRS. Would ships-only make this simpler to implement?

cheers,

Andy