How do I boat?

[DerekCZ]

Okay, so I have been playing this game for a long time, and usualy my games end up with airports that are being feeded with busses, trams, and trains. But I just realized that I have been completely missing boats... But everytime I try to set up a boat connection (usualy between two cities at some lake's edge), the boats have trouble even making profit. Also, they break down very often and are slow... Is there any actual GOOD use for boats that can not be substituted by another more efficient transport type? aka is there any situations where boats are more efficient than others? The only real thing I have been using them for was connecting multiple companies via oil rigs using cargodist.

[kamnet]

Okay, so I have been playing this game for a long time, and usualy my games end up with airports that are being feeded with busses, trams, and trains. But I just realized that I have been completely missing boats... But everytime I try to set up a boat connection (usualy between two cities at some lake's edge), the boats have trouble even making profit. Also, they break down very often and are slow... Is there any actual GOOD use for boats that can not be substituted by another more efficient transport type? aka is there any situations where boats are more efficient than others? The only real thing I have been using them for was connecting multiple companies via oil rigs using cargodist.

Depends on your setup. I often like to make games where I have lots of rivers and lakes, so the water is essentially a free road for me and I'll use boats for passenger and mail travel between areas just to build up a route and create a positive ratings in those towns until I'm ready to expand with other forms of transportation, especially if I'm playing before 1920. It's also pretty much the most fun method to use if you use a NewGRF industry that has any water-based industry like fishing or oil rigs.

[DerekCZ]

Well I also find boats nice, and I would love to use them more, but I just can not find a way to efectively implement them into my already established Hub-to-hub airport systems.
I personaly think that boats are the least thoughtful way of transport in the game, for example with trains we can use signals and stuff, road vehicles will queue when their station is full, and planes, well, are doing plane stuff, but boats... When you give them green from their depot they all depart at the same time, they pass through each other, and an infinite amount of them can be loading/unloading from a single tile. Would be nice to see a patch for them, just sayin'
EDIT: I am not blaming anyone or whatever, I surely do realize that this is how it was in the original TT and will propably not be changed in a game that tries to replicate the original

[Kalen]

I'm not keen on the technical specifics but I believe it's been shown over and over that trains, especially when employing efficient networks using signals, will always outperform other vehicle types.

This might not be true in specific situations, as each transport type has its own perks (road vehicles and trams are useful inside cities, especially with drive-through stops, aircraft can cover large distances with comparatively much less infrastructure, ships can use natural water venues and canals when needed), and there's also the matter of infrastructure maintenance costs when enabled, but it should be true in general, I think.

So in the end, perhaps the question you should ask yourself is whether you're willing to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of diversity and fun. Ships (when using YAPF and buoys aplenty) are fun to use, in my opinion, especially with canals, even if they're not very efficient (at least once you have strong trains).

Regarding your last comment about ship physics, I think in a roundabout way that actually helps offset their inefficiency compared to trains. If what you're suggesting were implemented, that might actually make ships even further underpowered compared to trains.

[MlemandPurrs]

Movement speed of vanilla ships is like watching paint dry, so get one of the newgrfs that gives you faster and better ships,
fe. Squid.
when playing with the vanilla ships i do not even bother with passenger transport at sea until the hovercraft comes around, as its the only passenger ship moving at an tolerable speed and thus will give you income worth a damn.

If the city happent to be on an peninsula can use smaller ships to bolster the income further. Just join the docks to an existing bus stop with ctrl during building them.
Oil tankers as you did are one thing, another use would be to haul mass cargo of one type from place A to B when like 12-16 trains would have required to be running otherwise.

[andythenorth]

I'm not keen on the technical specifics but I believe it's been shown over and over that trains, especially when employing efficient networks using signals, will always outperform other vehicle types.

Ships have ~infinite capacity per tile (limited only by CPU and game constraints).

Proportional to the amount of effort involved building, for cargos with low time penalties, ships probably are the most efficient transport type. Someone from OpenTTD Coop will NOW PROVE ME WRONG WITH STATS.

[leifbk]

I've been obsessed by ships in ottd for years, in particular with andythenorth's wonderful Squid (fish2) ship set. Ships are always my main source of income, often outdoing the other means of transportation by an order of magnitude. But then, I generate maps singularly suitable for shipping, with a custom 60% water level. I usually start in the 1700s with sailing ships and horse carts.

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One of the joys of shipping is the ability to build multi-dock harbours, where each dock has its own purpose. Here is a paper mill with four docks. From left to right: Incoming wood and clay, outgoing cardboard (manufacturing supplies), outgoing paper (goods), and finally a liquid terminal for chemicals. I have adorned the area heavily with ISR/DWE objects. I'm also using a few Auz, VAST, and MariCo objects in my games.

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Here is a part of another waterfront. It's a pity that inline pictures can only be up to 800 pixels wide. There are two docks connected to the steel work, one for metal and the other one for incoming iron ore. The third crane is a fake dock added for eye-candy. Here's also one of my very few passenger terminals; I mostly do cargo transport. To the right a port can be glimpsed; it's served solely by trucks fetching supplies for nearby industries; no incoming goods, but fake docks and ships have been added for the good looks.

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Here's a larger picture of the Sørheim area. One of my very few train lines is carrying oil from a nearby oil well to a refinery. A passenger tram line is running between two nearby towns. Apart from the iron ore from a single mine that arrives by ship, the steel mill is entirely fed by eGRVTS2 trucks.