[NewGRF] Very large ships

[Orodin]

Lol, no you obviously didn't

I've been reading up on the fact that changing newgrf's ingame is very much discouraged. So yes, I know that.

Which leads me to a few more questions (part of which are a bit off-topic, my apologies in advance for that!):

- If I save my game to another location first and then make a change, would every save be affected?
- Is it safe (or even possible) to add the original ships back into the savegame (so that I would have those together with the large ships)?
- If so, how can I do this?

(And yes, I know it's fully my own responsibility if I would do this. And no, I will not complain or get angry if I run into trouble afterwards! )

Thanks again, and sorry for the (partial) hijack

[Eddi]

- If I save my game to another location first and then make a change, would every save be affected?

no, only saves you make after this change. so if you don't overwrite the original save, you can always go back to an "unspoiled" state, if things go seriously wrong

- Is it safe (or even possible) to add the original ships back into the savegame (so that I would have those together with the large ships)?

in theory, since each NewGRF gets its own set of original vehicles, you can make a basic ship set that reintroduces the original ships, by changing only a few details.

or you can modify this set so it won't override the original ships in the first place.

- If so, how can I do this?

there are plenty of NewGRF tutorials out there.

[Orodin]

Thanks once more.

Well, creating my own stuff, or changing the stuff that's currently in there is probably going to be a bit too difficult for me. Best not to go there for me. Knowing myself it would probably do me more harm than anything else.

[/hijack]

[Orodin]

Yeah, so I check out those NewGRF Tutorials. Ain't gonna happen for me

For single coal mine with 1500 tonnes/month (which is large, but not uncommon) it will take 10 months to load the ship ... but since then the shipwill take like 6 months for forward trip and anothe 6 months to return, it may be not so much. It is not versatile ship (only for very heavy loads), but I think a bit more realism (allow large naval ships) may come handy sometimes. Also, this is the reason I want to remake this set so there will be the original ships AND the modified ones available at once - small ships may be handier sometimes.

I'm wondering if you have ever gotten round to doing this, Bilbo.

Because as is it, the basic ships are being replaced by the large ships, which isn't an ideal situation.

[raidho36]

I know it's an old topic, but there are not many ship GRFs with adequately large ships so...

Anyway I wanted to comment on the ship sizes. I used to work on an oil tanker ship VN-264, it's a standard river class ship, it's capacity is 4 500 cubic meters of oil. Oddly enough, it only takes 8 real hours to load it from the oil station. Dry loads can take much longer though. Not just tankers, most river class ships have 4 500 tons DWT capacity, this is how much stuff they can carry, but there are many smaller ship designs. And then there's the sea class vessels, those can be 2 times as long, 3 times as wide and 5 times as deep than those large river ships. NS BURGAS tanker vessel has capacity of 156 000 cubic meters of oil. And yes it takes absolute forever to load. It can stay anchored for months before it's ready to sail off.

So if you wanted this GRF to be on the realistic side, small vessel needed to be 3 times smaller, and large vessel 5 times bigger.

Here's a picture, the sea tanker ship being loaded by two river tanker ships simultaneously. It looks flat but make no mistake - it has 18 meters of draft, most of it is underwater like an iceberg.

[SimYouLater]

So if you wanted this GRF to be on the realistic side, small vessel needed to be 3 times smaller, and large vessel 5 times bigger.[/img]

Yeah, unfortunately that's not as easy as it looks. Ships have a maximum sprite size. Small ships aare the size they are because they're easily visible. The utility tugs and trawlers from the "xFish" graphics are the closest thing a small ship comes to a realistic size (for a small ship) and it's barely bigger than a bus. That means 1/3 (0.33...) tiles wide and 4/5 (0. to 9/10 (0.9) tiles long. If we assume that's approximately normal IRL, then a "normal"/"average" ship is to be 3 times the size. That would be 1 tile wide as well as 2 and 7/10 (2.7) tiles long, but that alone nearly reaches the size limit!

Having seen both the NML and the graphics of the Fastnet Paddle Steamer, I know that it is between 4/5 (0. and 9/10 (0.9) tiles wide at most as well as between 2 and 4/5 (2. and 2 and 9/10 (2.9) tiles long. To have a ship 5 times the size of a "normal" ship means to use sprites that are...

• ...4 to 5 tiles wide! (0.8 x 5 = 4; 1 x 5 = 5, of course)
• ...13 to 15 tiles long! (2.7 x 5 = 13.5; 3 x 5 = 15)
• ...unable to fit in canals!
• ...so big they overlap docks hideously! (note that alignment is not the issue; ships are not like planes or land vehicles, they are allowed to dock at whatever angle is most convenient for the path finder, as unrealistic as that is, and that means ship sprites are always centered around the tile the ship is actually on)

...so unless code is written for super-large ships that dock 1 tile farther away than a normal ship (a good idea for a patch, but NML is already hard for me and I couldn't code a patch or feature to save my life) your suggestion is a pipe dream.

Here's a picture, the sea tanker ship being loaded by two river tanker ships simultaneously. It looks flat but make no mistake - it has 18 meters of draft, most of it is underwater like an iceberg.

My god... What horrific wastes have we wrought in the name of fossil fuels?!

[raidho36]

I only referred to capacity; ships' physical in-game size is essentially nil so sprite size would be only of any importance as a part of the style.

My god... What horrific wastes have we wrought in the name of fossil fuels?!

You'd be surprised, it's an extremely efficient way of transporting large volumes of oil over long distances. This ship's crew is only ~30 people and on average their combined salary is about $2 500 000 a year, the ship itself is $100 000 000, with $100 000 000 worth of service it's good for 25 years (so it costs about $10 000 000 a year fully amortized), and it carries $60 000 000 worth of oil at a time (assuming $60/barrel) and charge upwards of $5 000 000 for it. It can be fully loaded from smaller vessels in 2-4 weeks and round-trip is 15 weeks for the longest possible routes. Trains charge double that amount for the same volume. Transporting it by truck can be more expensive than the oil itself. The only cheaper way to transport oil is by pipe, but it has enormous capital costs.

[skippern]

I have worked on that kind of ships, not the largest ones, but a shoe number smaller. The largest I’ve worked was 287m long, 55m wide, and a loaded draft of 18m, remaining freeboard of about 8 meters. That vessel loaded about 1.100.000 bbls of crude oil. I have done ship-to-ship transfer with vessel loading between twice and thrice that volume.


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[CazadorSirenas]

I downloaded this and I'm so very happy about my lines of ferry now! 800 passengers is finally enough to compensate for the slowness.

I don't see any difference in the hovercraft, though. Did that remain the same? Because 160 passengers is already the game standard.

And yes, I agree with the people here that the cargos were excessively modified. My oil ship takes load from four different wells in one go, all at max. producing, and normally only gets 10/12mil litres. I think the small limit of 10mil it's more than enough for the large, and instead the small could be down to 5mil for example? But I have no complain about the 15,000 units of cargo!

But the big issue with boats in this game is not so much the capacity rather than the speed. I mean, 24km/h? Or 40? Boy that's slow... that's the thing I wish someone would make a NewGRF for, maybe doubling it so the slow ship is 48km and the fast 80. The hovercraft 112km is the only decent enough.

Anyway, thanks a lot for have made this!