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Micromanagement

Posted: 18 Aug 2019 18:52
by Wuzzy
Hello!

So I've been knowing TTD since a long time. I actively used TTDPatch before OpenTTD was even a thing and later I've been playing OpenTTD on and off for years. I'm really impressed by the result so far. :bow: :mrgreen: I have to admit, I generally did not play TTD/OpenTTD a lot, but when I do, it goes to addiction-like levels. :D

Anyway, lately I've been playing looong rounds of the game and I realized the amount of micromanagement in the game skyrockets fast, especially in the late game.

In the late game, I tend to collect more and more vehicles, so more and more of them will become old.
I recently did a full 100-year game in Toyland (for the first time ever, I mostly ignored Toyland before) and in the late game I almost spent all the time exclusively micromanaging instead of extending my transportation empire …

Basically, every few minutes, a message about an old vehicle appears . A huge amount of time I just spent for replacing old vehicles by hand. Basically, what I did: Click on old vehicle, send it to depot, wait, open depot, copy old vehicle, sell the old vehicle and launch the new vehicle. For every single vehicle. When you have hundreds of vehicles this quickly becomes a CHORE.

I have looked in the FAQ and help but did not find anything useful. Is there really no quick and easy way to replace vehicles? I must be blind or something. Please tell me there is something I overlooked. I have seen there's a new replacement feature, and this already helps a lot, but it seems to only work if you want to replace a vehicle with a completely new vehicle model. But I just wanted to replace old/unprofitable vehicles with new ones, same model.

To be honest, the “list” feature for vehicles … it wasn't really useful to me. It's still time-consuming because you apparently have to manually drag vehicles one-by-one to the list. I usually end up ignoring lists because I seem to be faster by just handling each vehicle by hand manually. Are there no automatic lists like “all vehicles with a negative profit”, “all vehicles of the model X”, “all old vehicles”, etc.? These lists would be actually useful.

Another thing which forces me to micromanage a lot was when getting rid of vehicles with a negative profit, or a low profit (too low to score 1000 points). It's the same thing: I have to pick each vehicle individually. Also takes an insane amount of time.

In the late game, when the monorail and maglev appears, the micromanagement strikes again: It takes a HUGE amount of work to replace your entire railway network. The easiert part is replacnig the tracks, there's a nice convenience feature. But the HARD/fiddly part is replacing all the trains … Basically I have to sell all the trains (which itself takes ages), replace the tracks (easy), and then buy new trains one-by-one again and set up their entire orders again, for every single train … No joke, by the time I managed to replace my entire railway network with monorails, the maglev appeared soon … So everything started again …

Selling a vehicle is also annoyingly time-consuming. You always have to first send it to depot, wait, and then sell it manually. Is there no shortcut, to tell a vehicle basically: “Go to depot and sell yourselves!”? That small change would already be a HUGE improvement. :)

So, these are just a few of the gameplay grievances I had. What do you think? Do you agree? Do you think the micromanagement in this game is too much? Have any ideas?

OpenTTD is still a great game, mind you. :)

Re: Micromanagement

Posted: 18 Aug 2019 20:06
by jfs
There's two ways, "auto-renew" which is a per-company setting you set in the Settings window, and "auto-replace", which is done from the Manage button in the vehicle list windows.
Auto-renew replaces vehicles with the same model when they're near their lifespan, auto-replace replaces selected vehicles with a different model either immediately or when they get old.

Re: Micromanagement

Posted: 18 Aug 2019 20:26
by Wuzzy
Thanks, I will try to look in the company settings, then. That's a strange place to put it in. I feel like this feature should be moved to the vehicle list, because there it just makes more sense. The setting can bite you in the ass in the early game, when money is still tight. It's not convenient if you have to flip the setting on and of during the course of a game.

The “auto-replace” you mentioned I already wrote about in my post. That's exactly NOT what I need. As far I know, this screen forces you to use a different vehicle model. It also has nothing to do with the age of vehicles. (It's still an useful screen, just not what I meant.)

I also noticed there's a replace button in the depot but it doesn't seem to work. Nothing happens when I click it. No matter if there's a vehicle in the depot or not. 1.8.0. What is this for?

Re: Micromanagement

Posted: 19 Aug 2019 09:14
by Auge
Hello
jfs wrote: 18 Aug 2019 20:06 There's two ways, "auto-renew" which is a per-company setting you set in the Settings window, and "auto-replace", which is done from the Manage button in the vehicle list windows.
If a player was able in the auto-replace window to select the same type of vehicle as replacement, we would have a unified UI for both functions.
Wuzzy wrote: 18 Aug 2019 20:26 The “auto-replace” you mentioned ... also has nothing to do with the age of vehicles.
Of course, it has. You can choose between an immediate replacement or a replacement for vehicles that reached their life span.

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