[OTTD] 2cc TrainsInNML

[Lionic]

Should running costs not also factor the fuel type (i.e., steam) and the era? As NekoMaster mentioned, to run a steam engine today is horrifically expensive due to the lack of resources and skill. This is one of the reasons that the Flying Scotsman has been so expensive to get steaming again as the UK does not have anyone who builds locomotive boilers of that scale, they had to buy a new one from Germany! When you had thousands of steam locomotives running throughout the UK you could get them fixed at a much cheaper rate, now it is up to very specialist teams who are constantly begging for new blood to learn the trade.

No disrespect to anyone involved in discussion, but I would like to remind you that 2CC covers different parts of the world with various economic conditions. I.e. it could be realistic and natural decision for the regions like USA or UK to make steam running unprofitable from say 1950's, but what about Africa, or South America where there's cheaper to run an ancient steamer with local coal and cheap labor, rather than importing foreign diesel or electric? Same for HEP/steam heating routine--important for the North region, but who would care about it in tropic???

[Emperor Jake]

No disrespect to anyone involved in discussion, but I would like to remind you that 2CC covers different parts of the world with various economic conditions. I.e. it could be realistic and natural decision for the regions like USA or UK to make steam running unprofitable from say 1950's, but what about Africa, or South America where there's cheaper to run an ancient steamer with local coal and cheap labor, rather than importing foreign diesel or atomic? Same for HEP/steam heating routine--important for the North region, but who would care about it in tropic???

Good point, this set should be generic while still being able to emulate train operations from all over the world. At the same time, it should be easy to use and flexible.

Also, my searching fails to find any real-world unit named Queensland Rail 400. However, for it's 1955 introduction year, there is the South Australian "Redhen" railcars, which not only look very much like the sprites, but also had some units numbered in the 400 series. Another thing that makes me believe that the Redhen is the intended unit is that the given unit power is 220hp. The real units each carried 2 diesel engines of different manufacturers depending on batch, but all averaged about 220 hp per engine.

I've known about this for a while, I'll make an issue for it along with a few other minor name tweaks.

Regarding the A and B unit feature, how are these alignments? Should I do the rest like this?

atsf_emd_f3.png (6.09 KiB) Viewed 7235 times

[Eddy Arfik]

No disrespect to anyone involved in discussion, but I would like to remind you that 2CC covers different parts of the world with various economic conditions. I.e. it could be realistic and natural decision for the regions like USA or UK to make steam running unprofitable from say 1950's, but what about Africa, or South America where there's cheaper to run an ancient steamer with local coal and cheap labor, rather than importing foreign diesel or electric? Same for HEP/steam heating routine--important for the North region, but who would care about it in tropic???

Or China, almost all mainline freight was steam hauled there until only a few years ago. I'd hate to see steamers crippled by running costs that scale up based on the years passing, that wasn't what I was suggesting at all, I was looking more at balancing gameplay since electric track costs a lot more to build and maintain there should be some benefit to the player in the form of reduced train running costs.

[Lionic]

I'd hate to see steamers crippled by running costs that scale up based on the years passing, that wasn't what I was suggesting at all, I was looking more at balancing gameplay since electric track costs a lot more to build and maintain there should be some benefit to the player in the form of reduced train running costs.

Same, and maybe some cost advantages to more modern locomotives to make upgrading to modern models more desirable.

[Voyager One]

As I've already said before, don't mess with different running costs in different eras. Too complex, impossible to make a generalized calculation and IMO not that important. Lionic is perfectly right if you ask me.

since electric track costs a lot more to build and maintain there should be some benefit to the player in the form of reduced train running costs.

Isn't it enough that electrics are more powerful, faster, have bigger TE... What else do you need?

... and we're coming back to the same thing I've already said: all depends on a player's choice and preferences. You want steamers? Fine. You wan't diesels in your game? Fine. You wan't electrics? Fine. You wan't all? Fine. There isn't a way to satisfy everyone and everything so just drop this and let's focus on more important issues.

P.S. Like any of you would care for a $10000/year discount on electrics' cost when you're already in e.g. year 2000 and your company has a billion on the account...

[RichardJGE]

Should running costs not also factor the fuel type (i.e., steam) and the era? As NekoMaster mentioned, to run a steam engine today is horrifically expensive due to the lack of resources and skill. This is one of the reasons that the Flying Scotsman has been so expensive to get steaming again as the UK does not have anyone who builds locomotive boilers of that scale, they had to buy a new one from Germany! When you had thousands of steam locomotives running throughout the UK you could get them fixed at a much cheaper rate, now it is up to very specialist teams who are constantly begging for new blood to learn the trade.

No disrespect to anyone involved in discussion, but I would like to remind you that 2CC covers different parts of the world with various economic conditions. I.e. it could be realistic and natural decision for the regions like USA or UK to make steam running unprofitable from say 1950's, but what about Africa, or South America where there's cheaper to run an ancient steamer with local coal and cheap labor, rather than importing foreign diesel or electric? Same for HEP/steam heating routine--important for the North region, but who would care about it in tropic???

I suppose I mean more for regional specifics. I do plan to do some reading into some of the trains, as I came across a steamer, recently, while playing in 1951, that had the exact stats as a Diesel, which, on the surface, makes no sense whatsoever. What is also worth remembering is that some of these trains were purchased by other countries, the list just provides their country of origin. I believe there are a number of British Diesels working in Africa and Eastern Europe now.

I have access to a rather large locomotive library where I can get all the data required, but it will be quite a few days as I am currently compiling my research progress.

Best,
R.

[Transportman]

If a coding can be made to increase the normal speed of the trains, guess it could be factored into the Set Parameters .. before you start a game you choose if you want your train drivers to obey the speed limits as a normal game or if want them to drive at higher speeds which in turn increases the running costs and servicing of vehicles be more frequent, and possibly more expensive.

If it possible to code it in the Set Parameters .. can have default Normal, and 3 or 4 settings to increase speed maybe 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% increases. If you choose the higher speeds, every thing increases by that factor. 100% means train travels double the speed will cost you double the running costs.

I'm going to say no to that. That means a lot of work, for very little gain.

I've been going through the stats of the DMUs in the most recent build, and I've found some interesting inconsistencies. In general, most are less powerful than their real-world counterparts, often half, which obviously hurts performance quite a bit. This seems to affect older additions more, as the new units seem to have more correct stats. I have been working on a excel file with the differences and sources, but I haven't finished it yet.

There already is an issue on DMU/EMU power output, so check that you are not doing work double. Also keep in mind that because consists are not fixed but can be made of any length people want, so properties might not map perfectly with RL.

Firstly, the Israel Railways IC3, RENFE 594 TRD, and the SJ Y2 are all variants of the same design! More specifically, the RENFE is a broad gauge variant built under license by CAF (with later tilting and variable gauge versions itself), while the Israel IC3 variant and Y2 seem to be just simple export versions of the Danish IC3 train. Since the set avoids other duplication, this seems to be a rather noteworthy exception.

See the answer of Voyager One, we try to avoid duplication, but sometimes we make an exception to fill gaps.

No disrespect to anyone involved in discussion, but I would like to remind you that 2CC covers different parts of the world with various economic conditions. I.e. it could be realistic and natural decision for the regions like USA or UK to make steam running unprofitable from say 1950's, but what about Africa, or South America where there's cheaper to run an ancient steamer with local coal and cheap labor, rather than importing foreign diesel or atomic? Same for HEP/steam heating routine--important for the North region, but who would care about it in tropic???

Good point, this set should be generic while still being able to emulate train operations from all over the world. At the same time, it should be easy to use and flexible.

Costs always are tricky to balance. Currently the costs are set as a function of several properties, which I think works just fine.

Also, my searching fails to find any real-world unit named Queensland Rail 400. However, for it's 1955 introduction year, there is the South Australian "Redhen" railcars, which not only look very much like the sprites, but also had some units numbered in the 400 series. Another thing that makes me believe that the Redhen is the intended unit is that the given unit power is 220hp. The real units each carried 2 diesel engines of different manufacturers depending on batch, but all averaged about 220 hp per engine.

I've known about this for a while, I'll make an issue for it along with a few other minor name tweaks.

That would be appreciated.

Regarding the A and B unit feature, how are these alignments? Should I do the rest like this?

atsf_emd_f3.png

Those alignments look fine to me.

There isn't a way to satisfy everyone and everything so just drop this and let's focus on more important issues.

Actually, there is a way for everyone to satisfy themselves, everyone can grab the source, change what they want and compile it again.

[RichardJGE]

As I've already said before, don't mess with different running costs in different eras. Too complex, impossible to make a generalized calculation and IMO not that important. Lionic is perfectly right if you ask me.

P.S. Like any of you would care for a $10000/year discount on electrics' cost when you're already in e.g. year 2000 and your company has a billion on the account...

Discounts I don't care for, but it does baffle me that, economically, some very old trains are much more beneficial when they should be outrageously expensive to run. It's the general economic discrepancy that I care about, not so much the specifics between X and Y Locomotive (in general).

I think much higher running costs would actually make the game far more interesting, the game just becomes an elaborate model railway at particular points and losses any ability to call itself an economic game.

Regards,
R.

[Voyager One]

Actually, there is a way for everyone to satisfy themselves, everyone can grab the source, change what they want and compile it again.

Yup.

@Transportman - Since it's mostly your decision, codewise-speaking, I'd really like to hear your opinion about those design/maxspeed/cost suggestions I've written before... Doable? Applicable? Worth doing? Other?

[Lionic]

Isn't it enough that electrics are more powerful, faster, have bigger TE... What else do you need?

We've got quite varied selection both of powerful diesels and not so powerful electrics thanks to you))), so it is sometimes possible to directly compare them and consider economic benefits (I have given to Transportman an example of two South American locomotives a few posts earlier).

... and we're coming back to the same thing I've already said: all depends on a player's choice and preferences. You want steamers? Fine. You wan't diesels in your game? Fine. You wan't electrics? Fine. You wan't all? Fine. There isn't a way to satisfy everyone and everything so just drop this and let's focus on more important issues.

P.S. Like any of you would care for a $10000/year discount on electrics' cost when you're already in e.g. year 2000 and your company has a billion on the account...

That depends on how you balance the game, I once balanced it so successfully that I've enjoyed a near-zero profitability until the jets were discovered. And speaking of balancing I would have advised people to use something like BaseCosts Mod that allows in particular to set various types of locomotives more or less expensive to run, but unfortunately it has no effect on 2CC((((((( .

[RichardJGE]

Isn't it enough that electrics are more powerful, faster, have bigger TE... What else do you need?

We've got quite varied selection both of powerful diesels and not so powerful electrics thanks to you))), so it is sometimes possible to directly compare them and consider economic benefits (I have given to Transportman an example of two South American locomotives a few posts earlier).

... and we're coming back to the same thing I've already said: all depends on a player's choice and preferences. You want steamers? Fine. You wan't diesels in your game? Fine. You wan't electrics? Fine. You wan't all? Fine. There isn't a way to satisfy everyone and everything so just drop this and let's focus on more important issues.

P.S. Like any of you would care for a $10000/year discount on electrics' cost when you're already in e.g. year 2000 and your company has a billion on the account...

That depends on how you balance the game, I once balanced it so successfully that I've enjoyed a near-zero profitability until the jets were discovered. And speaking of balancing I would have advised people to use something like BaseCosts Mod that allows in particular to set various types of locomotives more or less expensive to run, but unfortunately it has no effect on 2CC((((((( .

Funny you should say that, near-zero profitability, several (big name) train companies have run financially on practically a knife edge!

R.

[Transportman]

As I've already said before, don't mess with different running costs in different eras. Too complex, impossible to make a generalized calculation and IMO not that important. Lionic is perfectly right if you ask me.

P.S. Like any of you would care for a $10000/year discount on electrics' cost when you're already in e.g. year 2000 and your company has a billion on the account...

Discounts I don't care for, but it does baffle me that, economically, some very old trains are much more beneficial when they should be outrageously expensive to run. It's the general economic discrepancy that I care about, not so much the specifics between X and Y Locomotive (in general).

Most trains become unavailable after some time. Also, I'm not even sure if I could include age into the costs-callbacks in the way you want.

@Transportman - Since it's mostly your decision, codewise-speaking, I'd really like to hear your opinion about those design/maxspeed/cost suggestions I've written before... Doable? Applicable? Worth doing? Other?

If you mean this suggestion, yes, that should be doable for wagons/coaches. Time-wise it will be a bit time consuming, and I'm not sure about the added value of doing it. That said, I do intend to rewrite some parts of the costs determination for the vehicles in the future (future not further specified), that would make this change a bit more trivial to include (and other changes to the costs of vehicles).

We've got quite varied selection both of powerful diesels and not so powerful electrics thanks to you))), so it is sometimes possible to directly compare them and consider economic benefits (I have given to Transportman an example of two South American locomotives a few posts earlier).

I can't find the example that quick, but it just is a result of how costs are currently calculated, as a function of properties that is the same for all engines, so when those properties are close together, their costs will also be close together.

That depends on how you balance the game, I once balanced it so successfully that I've enjoyed a near-zero profitability until the jets were discovered. And speaking of balancing I would have advised people to use something like BaseCosts Mod that allows in particular to set various types of locomotives more or less expensive to run, but unfortunately it has no effect on 2CC((((((( .

I think I know why, all vehicles use the same running_cost_base, so all costs are varied equally. I do think I did have a reason for that, but I can't recall it at the moment and need to come back on that at some later point. For now I made issue 7939 to keep it on the radar.

[RichardJGE]

As I've already said before, don't mess with different running costs in different eras. Too complex, impossible to make a generalized calculation and IMO not that important. Lionic is perfectly right if you ask me.

P.S. Like any of you would care for a $10000/year discount on electrics' cost when you're already in e.g. year 2000 and your company has a billion on the account...

Discounts I don't care for, but it does baffle me that, economically, some very old trains are much more beneficial when they should be outrageously expensive to run. It's the general economic discrepancy that I care about, not so much the specifics between X and Y Locomotive (in general).

Most trains become unavailable after some time. Also, I'm not even sure if I could include age into the costs-callbacks in the way you want.

Understood. As I have no idea of OTTD programming and my knowledge goes only as far as 'Hello World', I only have theoretical suggestions and no actual, practical solutions to how it would be coded.

I am presuming that, as of now, OTTD has no mechanics in place for the type of fuel the vehicle uses? And any way to manipulate that in terms of cost?

Thanks for the reply,
R.

[sim-al2]

South Australian "Redhen" railcars

According to wiki (in average of different models) there is 220hp per car. So, what's the issue here?

The Redhens carry TWO engines per unit (car), one engine driving an axle on one bogie, so each has 440hp. This is also true of several other units, like the Kiha 189 for example, and is a very common arrangement around the world.

DMUs... less powerful than their real-world counterparts, often half...

IRL, DMUs have engines spread across SOME cars or SOME bogies. It is impossible to copy all these variants into our set so the compromise is simple. Power (and HPs) are always given to front and rear head + players can add powered MU wagons which give more power. Keep in mind that RL realism isn't always possible to apply in OTTD.

Yes, but units like the Transwa Prospector have half the horsepower of the real version, which hurts utility greatly. In general, most of the world's DMUs have the majority of cars powered, even if it's one or two axles per car.

Taking the Transwa Prospector example, the 2cc two-car head has 520 hp (260 hp per unit), and gives 260 hp for each intermediate unit (Powered wagon) . The real world two-car train has one 386 kW engine PER UNIT, or 772 kW (1035hp) per two-car train.

The 2cc Kiha 189 has 900hp for the two-car head unit, and 450hp for each powered wagon. The real world train mounts 2x450 hp per unit, or 900hp per car. A real-world three-car train has 2700hp, or 900 hp per car.

[Eddy Arfik]

Sorry for starting this whole running cost debate. If you look back at the original post were I mentioned it, I described in detail the small code changes I made to my own copy to implement the idea. I thought these changes might have been worth adding to the main branch, but after reading all these other comments maybe it's better to just leave it as it is, it works well enough for the most part.

[Emperor Jake]

I've uploaded the new spritesheets for all the affected B-unit engines to the devzone.

Now that that's done, I have a few more nits to pick: namely the horsepower of some 19th-century steamers. I played a small game starting in 1870, and noticed that some of the steamers are severely underpowered for their type and size. The horsepower for these early engines is rarely available, and my guess is that Voyager gave them rather conservative educated guesses for the horsepower. If an actual horsepower value is available and I missed it, then of course we should use that instead.

The way it is now, the generic 4-4-0 from 1848 is more powerful than the PRR D16 of 1897, which was one of the most powerful 4-4-0s ever built. And the Prussian S3 is supposed to be able to pull a 320t train at 75km/h according to the German wikipedia article, and the OTTD version can barely reach 50. And the Z25 is plain useless as the practical general engine it's supposed to be. This throws off the game balance and causes the player to favour the old 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 instead of upgraded models.

Here are my suggested horsepower values; I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that seem most useful for gameplay.
- NSWGR Z25 - 200 to 650hp
- Canadian Pacific 374 - 180 to 670hp
- Prussian S3 - 215 to 590hp
- PRR D16 - 620 to 950hp
- China Railways H - 386 to 720hp
- JNR 7100 - 90 to 200hp

[RichardJGE]

I've uploaded the new spritesheets for all the affected B-unit engines to the devzone.

Now that that's done, I have a few more nits to pick: namely the horsepower of some 19th-century steamers. I played a small game starting in 1870, and noticed that some of the steamers are severely underpowered for their type and size. The horsepower for these early engines is rarely available, and my guess is that Voyager gave them rather conservative educated guesses for the horsepower. If an actual horsepower value is available and I missed it, then of course we should use that instead.

The way it is now, the generic 4-4-0 from 1848 is more powerful than the PRR D16 of 1897, which was one of the most powerful 4-4-0s ever built. And the Prussian S3 is supposed to be able to pull a 320t train at 75km/h according to the German wikipedia article, and the OTTD version can barely reach 50. And the Z25 is plain useless as the practical general engine it's supposed to be. This throws off the game balance and causes the player to favour the old 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 instead of upgraded models.

Here are my suggested horsepower values; I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that seem most useful for gameplay.
- NSWGR Z25 - 200 to 650hp
- Canadian Pacific 374 - 180 to 670hp
- Prussian S3 - 215 to 590hp
- PRR D16 - 620 to 950hp
- China Railways H - 386 to 720hp
- JNR 7100 - 90 to 200hp

This seems more than sensible. As an interesting side-note, many steam locomotives built in the US continued to be far more powerful than their diesel counterparts for many years: it was only steam locomotive's other factors, as in their use, maintenance and fuel which signalled their death toll, not their strength.

[Lionic]

I have noticed that Maglev Turbobus has returned. Good news for me! Although it does not display Tractive Effort value.

[Emperor Jake]

I have noticed that Maglev Turbobus has returned. Good news for me! Although it does not display Tractive Effort value.

Neither do the other two maglevs. It's done on purpose because Maglevs don't have tractive effort as they use a different method of acceleration.

[NekoMaster]

I guess the only way to show acceleration for Maglevs would be its Acceleration in Meters per second per second (or Km\h per second). If you don't know what that is, that's how many meters per second it gains every second of acceleration.

Though its probably too hard to calculate without having proper figures from the real world and its mostly an aesthetic thing unless we start getting more and more maglevs.