Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

[Andrew350]

Small update, I am still working on this bit by bit, hoping to get the first alpha out by end of this weekend It won't have everything included, notably articulated trucks are staying out for now (as if anyone will miss the vehicles ), as well as the land-based electricity industry chain, and the "black hole" industries to allow building materials and electricity to have an end-game/alternate delivery location. But the improved town growth mechanics should be more or less implemented and ready for testing.

I've started building the set with the NML patch which opens up town register access, which has allowed me to properly implement the final stage of house construction. Self sustained houses will now require >5000 population, active passenger service, and a player-constructed Municipal Hub industry built nearby in order to begin appearing. The Hub is meant to act as a supplier for all the towns needs, which signals the end of your need to continue delivering cargo there. This, along with several other changes, should make town growth much more predictable and manageable, while at the same time increasing the challenge and spurring continued network growth well into the late-stages of the game

Disclaimer: I haven't had a chance to actually playtest these mechanics yet, so 5000 population may be a bit too much, or the industry may be a bit too expensive, etc, but that can all be adjusted if needed. I've just picked figures that feel right for now, but for sure building towns to the final stage will involve a lot more investment of time and resources than before. No more 10 minute builds and then moving on

I went a little overboard with this newfound power of accessing town storage and ended up turning the Hub into a sort of budget-ghetto-town-growth-info GS. Why? cuz BAD FEATURES r fun

Black & Co., 2277-02-11.png (31.7 KiB) Viewed 2413 times

Don't mind the power plant graphics, they're obviously just for testing. And this information "feature" may or may not actually be included, I'm just having fun with it

[Michpi]

Well, I feel like that the requirement of 5 000 people is TOO much. This is already a fairly large city. Requirement of 3000 (or even 2000) looks much better fo me.

As for the price of the industry, I do not know at what point in time your screenshot was taken. Just for example, in 2108 (30 game years of not very intense game), I have only 43 mil $.

[Andrew350]

Well, I feel like that the requirement of 5 000 people is TOO much. This is already a fairly large city. Requirement of 3000 (or even 2000) looks much better fo me.

As for the price of the industry, I do not know at what point in time your screenshot was taken. Just for example, in 2108 (30 game years of not very intense game), I have only 43 mil $.

Hmm, perhaps 5,000 is a bit high, I'll lower the population requirement to 3000 for now and see how things go in testing, it can always be changed later

With the extra requirements, it will likely take you 20-30 years or so to grow your first city to the final stage, just to get all the necessary cargoes in production and delivered. After that it gets easier, but hopefully by that point you will be making enough money that 50 million isn't out of reach (although that probably depends on map size somewhat). It's very hard to judge how other people play the game, how successful they are, etc, so I can only guess based on my own experience, but if you have $43 million after 30 years, that sounds about right I think

Regardless how you play, once you get passengers flowing the millions come easy, so the first city will be difficult but after that $50 million is probably trivial Dunno though, will have to see how it works out in testing

[Fuerfrost]

Is there any way to make a cost multiplier based on map size or resource settings?

[Andrew350]

Is there any way to make a cost multiplier based on map size or resource settings?

Hmm. I was going to say "No, because there's no callback for that", but then:

Code: Select all

fund_cost_multiplier:   ((map_max_edge >= 512) == 1) ? (((map_min_edge >= 512) == 1) ? 12 : 10) : 6;

Apparently this works So I guess with an ugly, convoluted set of nested ternary operators I can sort of make it work

I think I'll leave it at one price for now though, until I have a better idea of what good values might be for different maps

[Michpi]

With the extra requirements, it will likely take you 20-30 years or so to grow your first city to the final stage, just to get all the necessary cargoes in production and delivered. After that it gets easier, but hopefully by that point you will be making enough money that 50 million isn't out of reach (although that probably depends on map size somewhat).

I see.
But my message was more about inflation. Because $ 50 million at the beginning of the game will turn into $ 90 million after 30 years.
Or is it supposed that inflation should be turned off?

[Andrew350]

Oh yeah, I would definitely not play with inflation on Especially in the upcoming OpenTTD 1.11, because inflation is now fixed from 1920 to 2090. That means when starting Wasteland in 2077 everything will already have 150+ years of inflation applied to it, which will make it impossible to ever make money.

Supposedly there's now also a way for NewGRFs to detect if inflation is on, so I should probably add a check for that and throw an error message explaining that inflation will break the game. So thanks for bringing that up

[Michpi]

Well, on the contrary I always play with inflation on.
Don't know about vanilla 1.11, but in JGRPP is it possible to choose how to apply inflation.

1.jpg (16.33 KiB) Viewed 2213 times

I think in vanilla should be this option too.

Anyway if you are adjusting costs for play without inflation, let's play without it
(But in this case the price looks really high )

[kamnet]

Well, on the contrary I always play with inflation on.
Don't know about vanilla 1.11, but in JGRPP is it possible to choose how to apply inflation.
1.jpg
I think in vanilla should be this option too.

Anyway if you are adjusting costs for play without inflation, let's play without it
(But in this case the price looks really high )

This was the feature being discussed. JGRPP is built on nightly revisions of OpenTTD that will have new features that eventually appear in the next release of the game. This will be in OpenTTD 1.11 when it's released on April 1.

[Andrew350]

This was the feature being discussed. JGRPP is built on nightly revisions of OpenTTD that will have new features that eventually appear in the next release of the game. This will be in OpenTTD 1.11 when it's released on April 1.

I don't think there is any setting in vanilla, pretty sure it is clamped to those years no matter what.

If you really prefer to have inflation on I'm not going to stop you, just print a warning message that the game may be unbalanced, so in JGRPP it may still work fine for you. But in vanilla, without that setting, it definitely won't work (at least not without some serious adjusting to costs to account for 150 years of inflation from game start, which is really not something I want to do )

[Simons Mith]

I've got a mineral mine producing 0t monthly. (But! I could deliver wastelanders to it, and that would double production.) So, um, is 0t production supposed to be possible?

Edit to avoid double-post: I presume the Municipal hub is a placeholder at the moment. May I suggest making it a Dome, thereby adding a bit of a sci-fi feel? Having self-sufficient domes popping up might be a fitting late-game reward for all those hard years hauling.

Edit2: The mine 'woke up' after a couple of months and started reporting its production accurately. Nevertheless, I'd delivered 22-33 tonnes out of zero before the production information updated. I noticed the problem in mid-late May 2077, just as I finished building the roads and truck stations, but it had vanished mid-late July 2077.

[Andrew350]

I've got a mineral mine producing 0t monthly. (But! I could deliver wastelanders to it, and that would double production.) So, um, is 0t production supposed to be possible?

Edit to avoid double-post: I presume the Municipal hub is a placeholder at the moment. May I suggest making it a Dome, thereby adding a bit of a sci-fi feel? Having self-sufficient domes popping up might be a fitting late-game reward for all those hard years hauling.

Edit2: The mine 'woke up' after a couple of months and started reporting its production accurately. Nevertheless, I'd delivered 22-33 tonnes out of zero before the production information updated. I noticed the problem in mid-late May 2077, just as I finished building the roads and truck stations, but it had vanished mid-late July 2077.

That sounds like the industry was simply under construction. Sorry there aren't specific graphics to visually show that yet, but yeah if you see an industry with 0t production that should just mean it hasn't finished building yet. There should be no other way to get 0t production, so if you still think it may have been a bug, a savegame showing the issue would help

As for the Hub graphics: I like the idea. I think the first alpha will just have some placeholders until I get around to drawing something more appropriate, but a dome is certainly a good candidate

[Andrew350]

Ok well, it's the end of the month and I told myself I'd release a test version by then, so here it is:

wasteland2.grf

This update is NOT compatible with previous versions of Wasteland

Be aware that this is definitely an alpha, and is quite rough around the edges (more so than usual). The new town growth changes should be functioning without issues however, so if you encounter trouble there please do let me know.

• There are a few known faults in the economy, notably the fact that electricity can only come from offshore colonies, which need water to spawn. A land-based electricity cargo chain is planned, but not implemented yet. There are also still no alternative delivery sites for building materials or electricity.
• All vehicles have been rebalanced for more challenging gameplay (based on "high" cost settings), but not everything is implemented yet. Articulated trucks are absent, and some of the broad gauge trains are still a bit funky. Notably cargo sprites are not implemented yet. They should all at least be functional though.
• Many, many things still have placeholder graphics. I know it's ugly, I'm (slowly) working on it

Here's my working changelog to highlight some of the changes so far:

Code: Select all

---------------
0.7.0 alpha 1 (02-28-2021)
---------------

 - reworked existing railtypes and added electrified rail, broad gauge, and maglev
 - new train rosters for all railtypes with rebalanced stats for more challenging gameplay
 - removed "SCRP" cargo, replaced with "STEL" 
 - changed "_OIL"->"OIL_" and "CHEM"->"RFPR" to match standard labels from other sets
 - adjusted some cargo payment rates
 - changed wastelander mechanics to allow return trip with "tired wastelanders", also added quadruple production boost option
 - slightly lowered pay rate for wastelanders, due to now being a two-way profit stream
 - new maglev train sprites
 - rebalanced ship roster to match new trains
 - rebalanced aircraft roster to be much more expensive (no more profitable gravel planes)
 - adjusted some grf strings to be more clear
 - fixed 'disable aircraft' and 'disable ships' parameters, which did not work (oops)
 - reduced spawning probability of trading post, also removed sawmill sound effect because it was f****** annoying
 - trading post renamed to scrap yard, now produces steel instead of scrap metal
 - added high voltage power conduit as a tramtype for transporting electricity (experimental)
 - added coal, sand, and eltr (electricity) cargos
 - changed steel mill to accept iore and coal, produce steel
 - added coal mine industry
 - added debug parameter for houses
 - shack houses now also accept irradiated food
 - added sand quarry industry
 - changed cement plant into prefab mfg facility, now accepts grvl, sand, stel to produce bdmt
 - nuclear train!!
 - prevent rare occurence of industries spawning on north-facing slopes during gameplay
 - prevent terraforming under extracting industries
 - new town growth requirements:
     - self-sustained houses:
         - municipal hub industry built in town
         - greater than 3000 population
         - passenger service
     - renewed houses:
         - at least 75% of town has been rebuilt (any house-type except destroyed)
         - clean food, water, building materials, AND electricity delivery within same 2 month period
     - shack houses (unchanged):
         - clean OR irradiated food AND water delivery within same 2 month period
 - shack and destroyed buildings no longer produce passengers
 - towns no longer supply wastelanders when at minimum 3 building limit (fixes easy wastelanders exploit)
 - houses now have a much larger search area for cargo delivery
 - wasteland now disables itself if another industry set is loaded without the industry parameter turned off (incomplete list, only most common/popular for now)
 - added municipal hub industry
 - industries now have set funding costs

The most significant part is the new town growth requirements:

Code: Select all

 - new town growth requirements:
     - self-sustained houses:
         - municipal hub industry built in town
         - greater than 3000 population
         - passenger service
     - renewed houses:
         - at least 75% of town has been rebuilt (any house-type except destroyed)
         - clean food, water, building materials, AND electricity delivery within same 2 month period
     - shack houses (unchanged):
         - clean OR irradiated food AND water delivery within same 2 month period

I will be making a handy cheat sheet with these and other tips included to make remembering the town growth model easier (as well as updating the docs on the website), but this is the gist of it.

If you are brave enough to try out the new changes, please don't hesitate to give any feedback on the gameplay mechanics; this is all still very experimental and I've had little in-depth testing of the full experience yet Graphics are as always sparse, so go easy on that bit; I'll get to it

Near future releases will hopefully be more frequent, but will likely be savegame breaking, so please don't get too attached to any games you start with these alpha versions if you plan on keeping updated

[Michpi]

Quick feedback
About graphics
You changed wagons length and now they don't fit onto the stations.
(I hope you are not planning different lengths of wagons)
This is a 2,0 tiles train

1.jpg (125.31 KiB) Viewed 2000 times

As for gameplay, I really missed small trucks (4-6 tonn). They were the best for delivering goods to towns.
Conserning new industries. Maybe it's better to use another mechanic for secondary industries? When they work with any cargo, but you have to deliver all cargo for maximum production.

Electricity carrier is a tram. So it can be blocked by other RV and can block them by himself.
And power "conduit" construction looks weird. Maybe use tramway graphics without rails? Poles with wires.

Add...
I thought a little about electricity. I've got about 30 cities and only 2 power plant. I don't feel like building these pipes all over the map. Let's make battery car for trains

[Andrew350]

Quick feedback
About graphics
You changed wagons length and now they don't fit onto the stations.
(I hope you are not planning different lengths of wagons)
This is a 2,0 tiles train

Oops yeah forgot the first generation wagons are a bit shorter (6/8) but didn't update the graphics to match. Will fix

As for gameplay, I really missed small trucks (4-6 tonn). They were the best for delivering goods to towns.

I never really found a good use for them so I removed them. Every time I used the smaller trucks I immediately regretted it because they were too low capacity. I needed dozens of them even on short routes, when I could simply use the slightly bigger trucks to accomplish the same thing, usually cheaper or at the same cost because of needing fewer vehicles. I'm curious if others will miss them too

Conserning new industries. Maybe it's better to use another mechanic for secondary industries? When they work with any cargo, but you have to deliver all cargo for maximum production.

Hmm, I always felt the FIRS way of getting output with only one cargo was a bit weird personally. Like, how does coal alone make steel without the iron? Again, good to see an opposing view here and curious if others feel the same.

Electricity carrier is a tram. So it can be blocked by other RV and can block them by himself.
And power "conduit" construction looks weird. Maybe use tramway graphics without rails? Poles with wires.

Well, you're not really supposed to build the power conduit on top of a road I know it's possible, but that's just a quirk of it being a tramtype and not being able to disallow such a combination. Power lines in general are going to be awkward in OpenTTD no matter what, it's just not really made for this kind of thing

As for the graphics, maybe. I had some issues making it look good though, specifically making the offset work with things like tunnels, etc. Also catenary-like wires look very insignificant/silly to be transmission lines, but making them taller/bigger isn't a great option either again because of placement on the tile. See here also, I think Garry ran into the same issues, I was watching to see what he came up with: viewtopic.php?p=1241471#p1241471

Add...
I thought a little about electricity. I've got about 30 cities and only 2 power plant. I don't feel like building these pipes all over the map. Let's make battery car for trains

Battery trains: no, this isn't toyland

There will be more power plants once the other electricity chain is implemented, but part of the challenge too is managing the distribution of cargoes, and having few options means you have to prioritize where you deliver to. I'm open to increasing the amount though.

Again, thank you for your input, it is very helpful

[Simons Mith]

I use small vehicles to deliver small amounts of cargo regularly. If they're not included then I'd adopt something like the eGRVTS MOG. So they do have a definite use for delivery smoothing whenever you have a 'deliver multi-cargos within two months' mechanic.

As far as how steel mills et al make steel with only coal - well I always imagined industries got their other deliveries (including workers) via 'invisible camel train' or something. This is the default delivery mechanism used by all OpenTTD industries that haven't been connected to the transport network yet. It mostly keeps them ticking over, but it's such a poor system that /any/ delivery service a company can provide is better and will be used in preference.

Finally, while fancy game mechanics are interesting and all, I was wondering whether AIs can function in the Wasteland? Are things intended to be so complex that no AI can ever cope?

[Andrew350]

I use small vehicles to deliver small amounts of cargo regularly. If they're not included then I'd adopt something like the eGRVTS MOG. So they do have a definite use for delivery smoothing whenever you have a 'deliver multi-cargos within two months' mechanic.

Ok, so I guess small vehicles should probably come back then This raises a point though: how do people feel about autorefit support for cargo? Do you use it? Is it important?

I ask this question because at the time I decided to add support for it I thought it was a quick and easy thing to do to add a neat feature. Unfortunately it has some drawbacks, the biggest one being that vehicles have to stay segregated between body styles in order to make any sense. This wasn't a problem before because I made the vehicles that way anyway, but I've started to not like that approach because it artificially bloats the number of vehicles needed to fill each niche and makes it awkward to add extra fun stuff.

For example, if I was looking to do, say, 10 generations of vehicles, and I need at least 4 different body styles for different cargos (e.g. hopper, reefer/dry van, flatbed, tanker) that means a minimum of 40 vehicles. If I also want articulated vehicles for extra capacity, and smaller vehicles for feeder services (minimum 1 each per generation), that's another 40+40, so 120 total (not counting buses). If these vehicles didn't have to support autorefit, they could simply switch body styles via regular refit in depot, which would cover all cases with only a quarter of the total vehicles (30). This then allows much more freedom to do specialty vehicles and other things which otherwise wouldn't fit well into such a segregated scheme without further bloating the amount of vehicles unnecessarily.

Tl;dr, dropping autorefit support would allow for more sensible road vehicles overall, and more cool special stuff If autorefit is something you think is critical please let me know. I know I use it occasionally, but not enough for me to personally justify continuing the current vehicle scheme Unless you prefer the vehicles being separated by type like they are just...because? Let me know

Finally, while fancy game mechanics are interesting and all, I was wondering whether AIs can function in the Wasteland? Are things intended to be so complex that no AI can ever cope?

AIs will work fine (sort of), but you may need to tweak the settings to achieve a good result. For example you may need to dial back the cost settings to "low" for most of them to be profitable, and if you plan on using road vehicle AIs you should turn off the built-in roadtypes. If you're expecting them to build towns though, that will probably never happen of their own doing At best they occasionally make some profitable cargo routes, and often fail trying to build passenger routes in the beginning, but obviously they aren't working towards any specific goal other than profit.

[kamnet]

Tl;dr, dropping autorefit support would allow for more sensible road vehicles overall, and more cool special stuff If autorefit is something you think is critical please let me know. I know I use it occasionally, but not enough for me to personally justify continuing the current vehicle scheme Unless you prefer the vehicles being separated by type like they are just...because? Let me know

Be lazy - just make it autorefit to whatever without changing the vehicle style. I mean, after the apocalypse, you just make do with whatever you can get your hands on, right?

[Andrew350]

Be lazy - just make it autorefit to whatever without changing the vehicle style. I mean, after the apocalypse, you just make do with whatever you can get your hands on, right?

Allowing a tanker to refit to coal isn't exactly sensible Or a hopper refitting to food, etc....it just doesn't make a lot of sense. And even if I made graphics for the more ridiculous cases, like lumber strapped to the side of a tanker truck, etc, is it something people would accept as reasonable? I don't think I would. This is the trouble with autorefit: the body style really has to match the refit options available, otherwise you end up with ridiculous combinations that just shouldn't be possible.

Actually the real trouble is that restricting which refits are available is possible in code, but in-game there is no way to warn the player that such a refit option is impossible, which leads to autorefit failing silently, which looks like a broken feature. If there was, at a minimum, a way to warn a player that certain refits are impossible, then such a feature might work. But that really is impossible, since there's (currently) no way for the game to know what a vehicle is already refitted to before setting the order for autorefit, which makes a warning of such a conflict impossible.

So as a result, the best option seems to be ignoring autorefit altogether, in favor of the more predictable standard refit option. This leads to less on-the-fly flexibility, but an increase in overall predictability and sensibility, with the option to still include autorefit as an optional buff to some vehicles in an attempt to boost their attractiveness over non-autorefit vehicles (but obviously only in the cases where it makes sense).

For the base vehicles in Wasteland, I'm not very interested in special buffs or maluses for certain vehicles, but rather a more predictable approach where each vehicle has a certain cornerstone in which role it fills; other vehicles can come later So in that sense I think autorefit is holding back what is possible, forcing me to make multiple vehicles to fulfill the same things which a single vehicle could otherwise do.

This is where I need additional input though, since I have a very specific, biased view about the subject

[Michpi]

Ok, so I guess small vehicles should probably come back then

I think there is no need for many generations of small trucks. Because a higher speed or a larger load capacity doesn't matter for the regular delivery of small volumes of cargo. So I think that 2-4 generations of small trucks is quite enough. Of course, they shouldn't lose their reliability.

This raises a point though: how do people feel about autorefit support for cargo? Do you use it? Is it important?

I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about.
If a vehicle can carry various loads, does this not mean that it can autorefit to any of these loads? (At least, in the depot)
Or are you talking about some kind of universal vehicle?
Anyway I've never used autorefit for road vehicles before.
In your set there is one obvious autorefit option: wastelanders <-> tired wastelanders.

Is it possible to make the game remember the length of the articulated trucks for the purpose of replacing?
I mean, if you have, for a example, 3 trailers hopper, after replacing it to the new generation you have got a 3 trailers hopper too (not default 2 trailers).

Is there any rule to determine how big must city be to achieve 3000 populations?
Is this just a matter of time of servicing or the city must have some minimal number of buildings?

Hmm, I always felt the FIRS way of getting output with only one cargo was a bit weird personally. Like, how does coal alone make steel without the iron? Again, good to see an opposing view here and curious if others feel the same.

Well, it looks like the production mechanics of steel mill and prefab facility is completely different from the mechanic of food lab.
Once all the cargoes are delivered to the food lab, it starts producing clean food and does it slowly. This makes it possible to transfer all the clean food produced, even if the food lab previously had large stocks of any of the goods.
Prefab facility and steel mill produce their goods instantly. So if you have, for a example, a large stocks of gravel and steel, and you deliver a small amount of sand, you immediately become a huge number of buildings materials (2000-3000 tonn or even more). And you can't handle all these buildings materials Or you must have a lot of trains, which are waiting for good most of time.
Maybe this mechanics should encourage regular delivery of all cargoes, I don't know.

As for regular delivery of small cargo.
I wish to have some kind of railcar. A fast (as fast as other freight engines) and very cheap train with "built-in" load capacity of one wagon, not able to haul any wagons.
What for? For servicing industries with lower production rate. 6/12 bags of seeds, 18 000 litres of oil, etc.
It can be done using trucks for short routes, but for the longer one I prefer trains.
They must be really cheap in terms of buying and running cost. 3 or 4 railcars must have the same price as a standard train with the same load capacity. Just wishes