Electricity

[keylan]

I wonder we have power stations in Ottd, we have electric railways, trams in cities, cities, factorys and so on, it all uses electricity yet we don't have any power lines, no transformer stations and so on. Would it be possible to add new type of cargo - electricity, and new type of transportation - power line?
To make things more intresting we could make hi voltage lines, transformer station, medium and low voltage lines...
Power station would produce hi voltage, factories would use medium voltage and cities low voltage. What do you think guys?

[planetmaker]

The main question is: in what way will it really add to the game experience?

It means to just build a few power lines and then generate income without caring about any vehicles, their orders etc pp - an even easier income than planes which already generate tremendous amounts of income without any effort.

And please use in the future also the search function: Among others it gives you http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... lectricity - if you produce proper graphics and put them into newgrfs you might fake the looks of this infrastructure already now. No one has done that so far, though. Except, there's a new NewObjects NewGRF (there's way too many 'new' here!) which provides you with the possibility to build high-voltage posts.

[Expresso]

Some industries could require electricity to produce their goods (well, forests don't need electricity, except if you have a forest of christmas trees ).

Cities could require electricity to grow faster and electrified rails could require electricity to make the trains go faster (or even make the trains move at all, making diesel and steam trains interesting).

To complicate things even more, you could increase power consumption as industries produce more, cities grow and your rail network expands.

All this would motivate the player to feed the power plants and makes the game a bit more difficult (an actual challange, yay).

As for the power lines, the player could directly connect those to industries and to a special "industry" (power distribution station), which gets built by a town once it reaches a certain amount of population. It could function just like the water tower for towns.

Power lines (well, the towers that keep them up) could also complicate the construction of railways.

Railways could be fed with power by connecting the stations (or perhaps a waypoint, makes them useful again) with the power line.

To make matters worse: power could get weaker and weaker for each tower it passes (say, 1%). This adds the need to connect multiple power plants, as one won't be able to feed the entire map (on a larger map), no matter how large its power output.

Alternatively power lines could be omited completely, and instead a power plant could deliver electricity to a local area, which grows as it generates more power. However, this last solution is not my personal preference as it takes away control.

[Lordmwa]

This has been suggested before (numerous times i belive)

[Alberth]

In addition, you can already transport electricity in the form of batteries in standard OpenTTD

[michael blunck]

[...] All this would motivate the player to feed the power plants [...]

If "easy money" wouldn´t be motivation enough for feeding the power plants.

regards
Michael

[andythenorth]

If we get TownControl (maybe, one day), then I'll implement a form of electricity in newgrf. It won't require pylons, transmission grids etc. I think they're a step too far.

Meanwhile I deleted the power station from FIRS industries, because other than as a source of easy money, I think it's dumb

[Voyager One]

IMO, this is a VEHICLE based transport game. Who wants to transport electricity, water, gas or anything like that, he's welcome to play SimCity or something similar. IMO.

[HavocS]

IMO, this is a VEHICLE based transport game. Who wants to transport electricity, water, gas or anything like that, he's welcome to play SimCity or something similar. IMO.

Its true except for electricity. I'm not a fan of wires as I hated those in SimCity but for trains it would be a great addition but it would require more than just "adding" electricity. Electric engines should have their power consumption so lots of trains would require more or better power plants. Even that could be done that if a power plant is loaded more than 10% of its nominal max for a day it would shut down for a week or so.
But well, I miss fuel/water/sand refilling too. I really liked that in Railroad Tycoon.

[Lordmwa]

Welcome to the forums

Pretty good first post compared to many people

[michael blunck]

Electric engines should have their power consumption so lots of trains would require more or better power plants.

This is all "micro-management". In fact, it´s already taken care of in the game on a more general level by visiting depots (fuel/water/sand refilling) or by "running cost" (coal/diesel fuel/electricity utilisation).

IMO, a better approach would be to introduce maintenance cost for infrastructure (track, signals, depots, stations, docks, ...) to counteract the "money flood".

regards
Michael

[Voyager One]

IMO, a better approach would be to introduce maintenance cost for infrastructure (track, signals, depots, stations, docks, ...) to counteract the "money flood".

I agree completely with this. It's nonsense to have large rail networks withouth paying anything for it.

I.e. It is cheap to have a double track but you can't run more than a number of trains on that. Then you decide to upgrade it to a quadruple track and get much larger flow capacity but you still don't pay a penny more.

[supermop]

I really dont want to see transmission lines or pipelines in the game, but I do have ideas for adding electricity to the game, which i mentioned along time ago in the firs thread.

I like the idea of towns or industries near a well served power plant growig faster. Electric trains on a network near a well served plant could have lower running costs, or those calling at a depot near a power plant. To get really complicated, one could add three new types of depot or station tiles: coaling station, fueling depot, and feeder substation, for steam, diesel, and electric respectively. Trains calling at the depot or station attached to such tiles, or alternately as long as they are within x tiles of such a station, could receive a discount to running cost. The fueling tiles could accept coal or fuel oil at little or no payment in exchange for this discount, and the feeder station would have to be within y tiles of a well served power plant. All of this could be balanced in such away to make it unnecessary when you are just getting started, but a real advantage to larger networks.

A vey simplified version would be to have the HQ represent a central maintance shop rather than an office building. delivering fuel oil to the HQ discounts running costs for petrochemical vehicles (RVs Locomotives, later ships and aircraft), coal discounts running costs for steam vehicles (early RVs, locomotives, earlier ships), and a well served power station nearby discounts costs for electric vehicles (Locomotives, monorails, maglevs, trams, possible late modern and future RVs). Whether the discount scales with inverse distance from the HQ, i dont know.

Please note, that as far as I know, everything I have laid out here is impossible to implement, and most people would choose not to use it even if it was. Just a thought experiment for now.

Best,

[XeryusTC]

I don't really see the gameplay benefit of this, the only thing I see is a smug "Oh look, we actually have coal plants doing something else than print money" and some unnecessarily added complexity.

[supermop]

Yeah, thats pretty much it.

For those of us who like to watch really complicated systems work like machines, its something else to watch. If it was was accompanied by relevant adjustments to running costs, i think it could present the player with some interesting choices to make; ie, do I pay a premium to run trainss on this network, or is it worth building some support infrastructure? or, these new diesels are cheaper to operate on a unit basis thaan my existing steam locomotives, but I already have a network of coaling stations in place, so maybe I will hold off for a few more years.

I'm not even sure if I would like to play in this way, but as long as we are discussing ways to simulate electricity in the game, I think motive power is interesting to ponder. I generally think area or regional effects that give bonuses are more interesting than a rail company directly taking power to a destination via high voltage lines.

Best,

[keylan]

This has been suggested before (numerous times i belive)

oh, then sorry for sugesting it again

I don't really see the gameplay benefit of this, the only thing I see is a smug "Oh look, we actually have coal plants doing something else than print money" and some unnecessarily added complexity.

i would see this as newGRF add-on for those who would like to see more complexity (like me, i'm trying to create complex networks, using not only trains but even ships and channels for them...), those who want simplicity wouldn't use it.

supermop, HavocS great ideas, thx. Building powerlines could be too mutch - tough i would still like to do it . Shame i suck at programing, i would try to do newGRf myselfe but i can't i can't pass even through "hello world" in C++ i could do simple graphics in blender tough.

[michael blunck]

[...] Shame i suck at programing, i would try to do newGRf myselfe but i can't i can't pass even through "hello world" in C++ i could do simple graphics in blender tough.

It´s not a question of "newGRF" programming. Implementing means to "use electricity" in the game (electric train running, city growth, ..) would need heavy modifications to the core of the game code itself.

There´s an acronym for it: "TMWFTLB".

regards
Michael

[belugas]

Amen

It's good to have ideas. it's even better to have practical ideas. Or even better: to have very good skills and plenty of time

[keylan]

no skills no time thx for all answers, sorry for not searching and bringing up this topic again.

[andythenorth]

Electricity is within reach - with some amount of work. It goes like this:

- agree an actual spec for TownControl (by helping answer questions from frosch). http://wiki.openttd.org/Frosch/Town_Control
- provide patches for elements of TownControl until it's all done
- I will provide test newgrfs that use the patches
- get TownControl into trunk

Then I will add 'Electricity' to FIRS grf. It will work like so:
- any industry producing electricity will store a value in a register on the town.
- some industries may then boost production if electricity is available in the same town.
- any grf author who wants to use electricity to affect towns can access the value stored by FIRS to do what they like with it.
- it will be quite simple, there will be no calculation of number of megawatts etc. Electricity is either available or not.
- I will probably then create a standalone grf that controls town growth using electricity and also delivered cargo (I wouldn't want to impose this on FIRS players, it should be optional).