Transport Tycoon Forums

i was thinking the other day, real airplanes have a max distance they can travel becouse of the fuel they can store. it would be more fun and also more realistic if in open ttd the airplanes would have maximum distances they can travel. it could make some airplanes that are useless now better on the long distance while others with higher capicity still do better on the short distances.

also it would stop the airplanes that flligh all over the world and get way to much money.

how do you all think about it?

branko wrote:i was thinking the other day, real airplanes have a max distance they can travel becouse of the fuel they can store. it would be more fun and also more realistic if in open ttd the airplanes would have maximum distances they can travel. it could make some airplanes that are useless now better on the long distance while others with higher capicity still do better on the short distances.

also it would stop the airplanes that flligh all over the world and get way to much money.

how do you all think about it?

It's a very intriguing idea. Unfortunately you suggested:

if in open ttd

and this is a TTDPatch forum. If you want to be sure that the OpenTTD folks see this, you might want to post your suggestion over here somewhere.

Before creating a duplicate post there, I'd advise you to use the search function. This has been suggested multiple times.

Yexo wrote:Before creating a duplicate post there, I'd advise you to use the search function. This has been suggested multiple times.

i did read the to do list. it didnt mention this.

I got two hits in a search:
http://www.tt-forums.net/search.php?key ... mit=Search

I once tried to implement it via newgrf, but that proved to be quite difficult, as there is (afaik) no way to check how long its been since the vehicle left an airport, or how long it is to the next airport, or similar. If any devs can point me in the direction of this I might have a chance. The way I would do it is that when a vehicle is out of range (either in the start or the end, depending on method) it would go at, say, 1/10th the speed, or the running cost would be 10x higher, or something similar. Ofcourse adjusable ranges (from lets say 1/64th to 64/1's), where the default could be something like real range in km/10 tiles. I.e. An 737NG (600-700-800-900) would have a range from aprox 300-500 tiles.

I'd try to go for an approach around that: increase running costs tremendously when last servicing is XX days ago. Thus longer flight routes would not be profitable. You'd need to check for the engine speed multiplicator, though.

Or maybe as a restriction in the order GUI like it is with ships? You can't drive from one harbour to the next if the distance between them is too long (except you use buoys).

possibly even better: Just limit the speed to snail speed when the maintenance time is over-due - though I'm not sure that callback can be triggered in-flight.

planetmaker wrote:possibly even better: Just limit the speed to snail speed when the maintenance time is over-due - though I'm not sure that callback can be triggered in-flight.

If there was a setting with autoservice on airports, then it would indeed be possible to do it that way.

If you start meddling with this "fuel" thing for airplanes, then what about RVs, diesel locomotives, ships? The issue is the same.

Voyager1 wrote:If you start meddling with this "fuel" thing for airplanes, then what about RVs, diesel locomotives, ships? The issue is the same.

Except, typically results are less disastrous if a bus runs out of fuel... you cannot get out of the plane and walk

True, a bus is the least of "evils". Now lets take a look at a diesel locomotive - stops in the middle of a mainline and... BIG trouble for the network.

As far as I can see, it's the same thing like a topic I've read last week. It was about electricity and stuff like that. IMO, all these things should be kept as simple as possible. Fuel and similar stuff are (or should be) already included in running costs, aren't they? And planes usually have pretty high running costs.

BTW, most planes IRL can cross enormous distances. Unless someone is playing a map from here to Mars...

True, I think fuel is going into too much detail for now, but to be honest I wouldn't mind playing a patch that required steam trains to take on water or a truck to fill up on diesel on its long haul routes.

No matter how you like you like to imagine distances in OTTD, its true that many of the aircraft have ranges far greater than what is typically represented by a map. I think the idea here - and this is partly devils advocate - is to use ranges to differential aircraft amongst themselves, rather than provide another way to handicap planes. This way you could have meaningful trade-offs between short or long haul aircraft, or have a progression from routes requiring many stops in the early days of aviation, to long distance non stop flights with modern aircraft. If I fly to Tokyo today, I almost certainly will fly non-stop from New York, whereas just a few decades ago it would have been common to stop in Alaska, and maybe Chicago, on the way (this is due too more than just fuel capacity - it also has to do with certain requirements to be close to some airport for emergency landings)

I don't feel too strongly about this, as I rarely use aircraft, but I do think a patch that required players to construct thoughtful networks of air routes could be interesting, as opposed to just place airports in opposite corners of the map to fund a rail network, could be interesting.