Passenger boats should carry mail

[Mido]

I am really surprised that I searched the forum and found nothing about this. Currently the only way to transport mail by boat is by refitting a cargo ship, and they are incredibly slow. The passenger ships, for reasons unknown, do not carry mail - why are airplanes able to carry mail but boats are not? Each passenger ship should be able to carry a few bags of mail as well.

[Transportman]

That has to do with history, Transport Tycoon Deluxe wasn't able to transport multiple cargoes per ship, and mail only via slow ships, so OpenTTD will not get it.

On the About page:

OpenTTD is an open source simulation game based upon the popular Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", written by Chris Sawyer. It attempts to mimic the original game as closely as possible while extending it with new features.

Since ships with multiple cargoes were not in Transport Tycoon Deluxe, they will also not be in OpenTTD by default. However, a change in which NewGRFs could add such functionality would be fitting within that attempt, as OpenTTD would still mimic the original with the default vehicles while providing a way to extend them through NewGRFs. That would require someone who thinks that is a good idea and can code (or convince someone to code it), and get it included by the developers.

[SilverSurferZzZ]

Just this week I published (on BaNaNaS) the first release of ImprovedMCars. This set solves your problem, and add other extras to original ships and airplanes; And, in future, will adds new vehicles to this list.

The set, even, works in toyland climate

[Mido]

That has to do with history, Transport Tycoon Deluxe wasn't able to transport multiple cargoes per ship, and mail only via slow ships, so OpenTTD will not get it.

So it is just something Chris Sawyer never got around to doing? The whole boat system feels so unfinished

[Transportman]

That has to do with history, Transport Tycoon Deluxe wasn't able to transport multiple cargoes per ship, and mail only via slow ships, so OpenTTD will not get it.

So it is just something Chris Sawyer never got around to doing? The whole boat system feels so unfinished

Could be, or maybe he did think about it but discarded the idea or just plain didn't think about it. Actually, only for air vehicles it was implemented to have both passengers and mail in the same vehicle, for trains and road vehicles it can be done by NewGRFs with articulated parts that carry a different cargo (although that does have some downsides). So it would make some sense if it is also possible for ships to have multiple cargoes per vehicle.

[leifbk]

Both FISH and Squid (FISH2) have fast passenger ships which can be refitted for mail. They can't carry both at the same time, though.

[kamnet]

So it is just something Chris Sawyer never got around to doing? The whole boat system feels so unfinished

In retrospect, there are a lot of things about Transport Tycoon Deluxe which feel unfinished. We're talking about a game created a quarter of a century ago.

I like the idea of passenger boats carrying mail simultaneously. I'm not certain that OpenTTD can address that while retaining full backwards compatibility with the original game.