Patch: No reliability decrease for stopped trains

[Tekky]

Currently, a train not only loses reliability when it is moving, but also when it is not moving. Apart from this not being very realistic, it also is a big nuisance:

• For example, if you have several trains with "wait for full load" orders, these trains will lose a significant amount of reliability by the time they are finished loading, so that they will often require servicing again after loading, even if they serviced immediately before loading.
• When a major deadlock occurs on my network, it can take a long time for me to clear the deadlock. By this time, the reliability of the trains will often have dropped to 0%, even though the trains were not moving and waiting in front of red signals. This reliability of 0% makes it take an absurd amount of time for trains to clear the area that was previously deadlocked, especially if there is a long queue of trains.

Therefore, this patch changes the above behavior of OpenTTD. It causes trains to only lose reliability when they are actually moving. Trains no longer lose reliability when waiting in front of signals or when waiting for a full load.

For discussion about whether it is realistic or not for trains to lose reliability when not moving, please refer to my previous thread in the suggestions forum.

Also, when playing with breakdowns disabled, the reliability of trains no longer drops to 0% if you do not service them. Instead, their reliability stays constant.

This patch is for r17840. It is a very simple patch, as it does not contain any new code. Instead, it merely changes the order of execution of a small piece of existing code. The only thing I actually added was a comment.

I have also attached a Win32 binary and scanned it using VirusTotal. No infections were found.

Legal Information regarding the Win32 binary:
Please note that this program is copyrighted and licensed under version 2 of the General Public License, which means -among other things- that it is distributed without any warranty and you are using it at your own risk. Please see the file COPYING.txt for further information, which is included in the attached .zip archive. I have supplied this notice because it is mandatory according to section 1 of the GPL.

[HackaLittleBit]

Trunk!

[pavel1269]

For realistic, when train does not move, it is not loosing reliability? Then, lets park some locomotives for future museums. They would have, lets say, after 200year working locomotive, because it is not moving, it is not loosing reliability?

[sulai]

• For example, if you have several trains with "wait for full load" orders, these trains will lose a significant amount of reliability by the time they are finished loading, so that they will often require servicing again after loading, even if they serviced immediately before loading.

I see a point here.

• When a major deadlock occurs on my network, it can take a long time for me to clear the deadlock. By this time, the reliability of the trains will often have dropped to 0%, even though the trains were not moving and waiting in front of red signals. This reliability of 0% makes it take an absurd amount of time for trains to clear the area that was previously deadlocked, especially if there is a long queue of trains.

[/list]

If the transport manager does some mistake, there should be some penalty. If there's a deadlock, trains additionally get stuck because of their reliability. In my opinion, this is part of the challenge, and challenge is what makes the game interesting.

[Tekky]

For realistic, when train does not move, it is not loosing reliability? Then, lets park some locomotives for future museums. They would have, lets say, after 200year working locomotive, because it is not moving, it is not loosing reliability?

Of course trains require maintenance from time to time, even if they were not moving. However, it is true that a train requires significantly less maintenance than a train that travels a lot. Therefore, in reality, trains are normally maintained according to distance travelled, not according to time since the last maintenance. My patch tries to simulate this by simply causing trains to not lose any reliability while not moving.

• When a major deadlock occurs on my network, it can take a long time for me to clear the deadlock. By this time, the reliability of the trains will often have dropped to 0%, even though the trains were not moving and waiting in front of red signals. This reliability of 0% makes it take an absurd amount of time for trains to clear the area that was previously deadlocked, especially if there is a long queue of trains.

If the transport manager does some mistake, there should be some penalty. If there's a deadlock, trains additionally get stuck because of their reliability. In my opinion, this is part of the challenge, and challenge is what makes the game interesting.

I personally believe that the deadlock itself and the work required to resolve the deadlock is sufficient penalty. Besides it being unrealistic, I do not see the need to additionally penalize the player by causing trains to brake down all the time after a deadlock.

[maquinista]

I like this patch. It's much better than setting the breakdown to none.
I like playing with reduced breakdowns, but sometimes there are lots of them, because the trains or trucks leave their stations with 0%. In trucks is not a problem, because They enter in the depot and exit in less than 5 seconds, but trains takes too many time.

[smallfly]

This is just a great patch!

To make it complete make the stopped train loosing reliability too but only a bit, so that the 200 years, museum example is obsolete

And stop discussing things like "this is another penalty which makes the game more challenging". I refer to

If the transport manager does some mistake, there should be some penalty. If there's a deadlock, trains additionally get stuck because of their reliability. In my opinion, this is part of the challenge, and challenge is what makes the game interesting.

The game OpenTTD is a simulation. It should base on a working cause-and-effect chain and not on a "hey we need some extra penalty for stupid players even if there is no cause for this effect-chain" I hate this kind of reasoning.

I understand your opinion that mistakes should lead to a smaller profit than players have that do less mistakes. Youre right with that. But you can manage that by adjusting parameters and not by just implementing unrealistic punishments.

(I know I sound angry, but dont take it personal; I even didnt look at your username before ... sulai. ah. now i did it )

[sulai]

For trains stopped at stations I'm completely with you. For trains stopped on some track, I always found it interesting to see parts of my network completely blocked by 0% trains. Of course I understand why people don't like it, but I saw it as part of the fun

It's also a question of game balance: any transportation type should have some (dis-)advantage:

• Ships are slow but are specialized to water;
• Road Vehicles don't make much profit, but they may use town's roads, which is a big plus in urbanized areas;
• Planes are money makers, but they can't transport everything and air ports have noise limits;
• Trains may transport everything and are most efficient, but there is a risk of deadlock (intensified by 0% trains).

I don't want to argue too much for these 0% trains. I could live without them

[smallfly]

any transportation type should have some (dis-)advantage

yeah, im absolutely with you. and my target is to create a patch that makes ottd to game where every single transportation type makes sense. at the moment it is very easy: take a big loan, build 3 airports, spend your money for planes, wait, build more, wait, and so on. you cant loose. you cant make anything wrong. the most stupid player will will against a strategic think rail network building player.

also it doesnt make sense to build road vehicles at the moment. because the difference between the maintenance costs of road and rail is not really serious. i could go on with this but i will stop here. ill write some patches. then we can talk about it again

NOW BACK TO TOPIC

[sulai]

Let me stay a little off topic here

If you'd like to play games where you actually can loose, you should try basecosts or modified building costs. Additionally, very rough and mountainous landscape will result in a hard - but interesting - game. You will be enforced to build small trains in the beginning, so it's a challenging start.

Road vehicles: It certainly does make sense to build them, since they easily earn enough money to make up their buying price in life time. Only thing is: the performance rating is based on a fixed income per year, which is way too high for road vehicles. Thats why I wrote a patch that does performance rating based on the vehicle's value and the total profit. Road vehicles benefit from that, while planes need to earn much more to get a good rating. The patch is included in Gremnon's Patch Pack.

I like your idea of adding property costs for tracks. Keep it up!

OK back to topic

[smallfly]

Let me stay a little off topic here

So do I. But the admins of the forum dont want to deal with the fact that there are off-topics between be-topics (see my posting http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=45589)

so it's a challenging start.

Thats it. Its challenging at the start. Or lets say: Its boring at the start, because you lack money to realize your wishes. After some years the hardest map will get easy because you earn enough, never mind, what you build and how intelligent you are. Thats why I want to add running costs for serveral things like tracks, roads etc. THEN and only then senseful building gets rewarded.

At the moment: You can do the following: Build a train earning money for you. Go sh*tting. Depending how "hard" the map/patches are, you have to go sh*tting for a longer or shorter period of time. But in the end: You will have enough money to build stupid big rail networks without any thinking about it. I want OTTD to be fun from the beginning on. People that build efficient transportation systems should get as much loan as they want (like it is in real life; if you double the money of your share holders they will stuff money into your company till your headquarter bursts)

But I dont like people saying "thats bad". I want to say "thats bad, I will help making it better by writing some patches"

the performance rating is based on a fixed income per year, which is way too high for road vehicles. Thats why I wrote a patch that does performance rating based on the vehicle's value and the total profit.

Nice. But this just changes the appearance of a green/yellow/red icon. It doesnt make the game harder/softer.

[Gremnon]

I think it does make it easier, since I find it makes it a little easier to make road vehicles a useful means of transport again, leaving only ships with any doubts for me.

[sulai]

I hope nobody is annoyed by us being off topic.

... leaving only ships with any doubts for me.

Ships have higher life time and most of them make up their buying price. That means they are not totally useless.

Since total profit is compared to the vehicle's value loss, the "better profit rating" patch respects ships being slow and traveling several years - as long as they are profitable. No warnings about "negative income last year" just because they travel longer than a year. But there are warnings, if the ship's total profit doesn't look like it makes up its buying cost.

Sorry I'll stop to do advertisements for my patches now.

[smallfly]

Sorry I'll stop to do advertisements for my patches now.

Use your signature for that purpose. I often click on the patch links in peoples signature.

[Tekky]

To make it complete make the stopped train loosing reliability too but only a bit, so that the 200 years, museum example is obsolete

Yes, I agree with you that this may be the best solution. I was thinking about making the train lose 1/20th of the reliability it loses when moving. However, in this case, it may be appropriate to display reliability with one or two digits after the decimal point, i.e. to display "71.32%" instead of only "71%" reliability. Otherwise, the player may not notice trains losing reliability when they are not moving.

[smallfly]

To make it complete make the stopped train loosing reliability too but only a bit, so that the 200 years, museum example is obsolete

Yes, I agree with you that this may be the best solution. I was thinking about making the train lose 1/20th of the reliability it loses when moving. However, in this case, it may be appropriate to display reliability with one or two digits after the decimal point, i.e. to display "71.32%" instead of only "71%" reliability. Otherwise, the player may not notice trains losing reliability when they are not moving.

Sounds good. That will show the real process of loosing reliability because you will see the decline in real time. At the moment you just see a status that looks static.

[Bilbo]

Or you can have three reliability decrease rates - the normal one, when train is moving. Some reduced, when train is topped and waiting somewhere on the track (one third maybe). And even further reduced (perhaps even to zero?), when it is waiting in station (loading, unloading ...), since while waiting in station the train can usually receive some limited maintenance and simple repairs.

[sulai]

I second that!

[Tekky]

Or you can have three reliability decrease rates - the normal one, when train is moving. Some reduced, when train is topped and waiting somewhere on the track (one third maybe). And even further reduced (perhaps even to zero?), when it is waiting in station (loading, unloading ...), since while waiting in station the train can usually receive some limited maintenance and simple repairs.

To me, that sounds more like a reason for the reliability of the train to go up instead of down.

[2007Alain2007]

some train sets dont work with this patch