Uh, ok... Since it's a discussion thread, I've got a couple of suggestions on highways.
First of all, now we can emulate highways with a set of two one-way roads, which is pretty cool, but still not good enough.
Thus, suggestion #1:
It would be great to make two different types of road: common road and highway. the main difference between them is a speed limit.
How often you see a big rig running at 60mph in downtown? Or on an old road built in 1930's? Exactly, never (exceptions confirm the rule). In fact huge and fast trucks evolved and became profitable only after highways were built in 1940's (before that, trains were the main way of freight transportation).
So, keeping in mind
maximum speed limits in the US, let's say:
- common roads: 45mph speed limit
highways : 80mph speed limit
This will make sending trucks through cities less profitable, while building highways between cities - more profitable, which is more realistic. That's when you'll actualy have to deside wether to buy a slow cheap truck to deliver goods into a city center or a fast expensive trailer to transport raw materials trough unpopulated regions.
But what about early years, when there were no good roads or highways? And what about the future, when 80mph highways are way too slow? Well, here is the suggestion #2:
There must be upgrades for both roads and highawys (just like upgrades for rail tracks in original TTD: rail -> monorail -> maglev). I was thinking about two tiers of upgrades for each type:
- roads: dirt roads (speed limit: 25mph, available from early 1800's) -> pavement roads (speed limit: 45mph, available from early 1900's)
highways: highways (speed limit: 80mph, available from 1940's) -> super-highways (speed limit: 120mph?, available from 2010's?)
Now, futuristic high-speed vehicles (like the Superbus I resurrected this thread with) will make sense.
As for highways graphics, I have now idea if it'll be better to make them 2 tiles wide or fit the whole thing into one tile...
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