Lun class Ekranoplan (WIP)

[Commander_Evil]

Hello there. Long-time lurker, first time... uh, registeree and poster. I have to say, I really like the graphics you guys turn out, so after a few days of thinking about it, I thought I'd join up and contribute.

Now, the other day I played a game of OpenTTD with some friends, and got off to a relatively bad start. In the end, I had to start a new company, and by that time most of the industries on the mainland had been monopolized by my buddies, so I was forced to head off to the archipelago that lay west of the Mainland. In the end, I'd started up a sort of banana republic, held together by those Pickergill Freighters from the NewShips grf. (Big fan of that one.)

Afterwards, I started thinking, "What would be a good way to make shipping more efficient in the near future, while not making up some absurd concept ship?" Then promptly forgot about it for a day. But then, tonight, I had the idea of a new ship to add to the game. Concept-wise, it would be a high-speed cargo carrier, to counter the Bakewell Hovercraft in the vanilla vehicle set (since you can't really use that thing for anything but passenger transit,) or to simply add to whatever other ship newgrfs you might be using.

Enter the Lun. For those who aren't familiar with it, it was a soviet-designed Ground Effect vehicle, basically a big airplane that flew close to the surface of the water to utilize ground effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun_class_ekranoplan

Anyways, had a few rough stats worked out in my head:

Cost: 77,000, (roughly)
Speed: 300 mph (Real speed is 342, but 300 is a nice round number, isn't it?)
Capacity: 100 tons/crates/what have you
Designed: 1991 (The Lun was actually designed in 1987, but for the sake of fun, let's just pretend that a commercial version was released after the collapse of the soviet union. Or not, whatever works really.)
Running Cost: $12,000/yr (Roughly, basing this off of aircraft running costs since it's more of a plane than a ship.)
Max Reliability: Somewhere between 75% and 85%, also based off of aircraft stats
Refittable to: All but Passengers


Now, I don't really know anything about newgrf coding (And I'm a slow learner when it comes to that kinda thing), so for now this is just to show off the sprites and get a general consensus on the idea of adding this thing. Whadda you guys think?

[colossal404]

Zepyris created a grf with ekranoplans a few years ago, you can find it in this topic.
And unfortunately the maximum speed for boats is 127 km/h (~79 mph)

[andythenorth]

And unfortunately the maximum speed for boats is 127 km/h (~79 mph)

I have proof (due to a maths mistake in FISH) that this is not the case any more.

[Commander_Evil]

Well, I'm glad to hear that there's hope.

Put together a small comparison picture, just pasted the sprite into a screenshot with one of Austin & Pickergill Freighters from the NewShips grf.

[Pilot]

You do know it was Weapon yeah?
Also, If you do well with this, will you be making more Ekranoplans?

[Commander_Evil]

You do know it was Weapon yeah?

Yep, but I'm a sucker for re-purposed military hardware.

Also, If you do well with this, will you be making more Ekranoplans?

Not sure, was actually considering making a pack of various "civilian" models of military hardware, like a Submarine Cargo Vessel (based off a proposal to strip the Missile Launch Tubes out of a Typhoon-class Submarine and replace them with Cargo Bays.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_Cargo_Vessel

Really, I wanna experiment with this, and figure out how to actually code this stuff next, once I get that down I'll work on making more vehicles.

[Supercheese]

I have proof (due to a maths mistake in FISH) that this is not the case any more.

You can use the speed callback to set a ship's speed above 79 MPH, but it results in strange behavior, like suddenly resetting to 0 MPH at 80, so the poor Ekranoplan stutter-steps across the water.
(At least on my end when using NML, anyway.)

[Pilot]

Good Luck then ! That SCV sounds like a cool idea too.