Parking lots

[L. Spooner Inc]

It would be interesting to have parking lots appear as a primary resource which generates people for transport. They'd start out as small paved lots and, as they get bigger when they're serviced, become multi-storey parkades. To be realistic, they'd have to appear only within city limits. It would be an intriguing addition because, to my knowledge, it's the only primary resource which would appear exclusively inside towns and cities.

[jfs]

I think it might be possible to implement as a NewGRF industry, where the lot visually grows by letting a callback determine the "level" of the lot. You could also implement limits on growth based on the town size and have the production level change solely based on some measure of success.

[Chrill]

It would be an intriguing addition because, to my knowledge, it's the only primary resource which would appear exclusively inside towns and cities.

There are three resources that do this already - Passengers, Mail, and Valuables. Valuables function as an actual industry, but every single house is also technically an industry of sorts.

What is the purpose of parking lots? To generate even more passengers through a sort of park and ride feature? For it to be balanced properly, it would have to "steal" passengers from sort-of-nearby houses and spawn them near the station we build instead. I struggle to see what it adds other than eyecandy.

[acs121]

Well... The Hotel from FIRS actually does exactly the same thing as you say, Chrill, except it isn't a parking lot. It just generates even more passengers than the town itself.

[kamnet]

A nice suggestion. And we even have some parking lots that were drawn in the last year. This would essentially be another type of house, and you could code them so that you could have them appear in clusters. It would give some more visual variety.

[Redirect Left]

An extension for this idea could be for mass parking lots on the outskirts of larger towns, we happens here a bit, called 'Park & Rides', they're usually large car parks with linked buses & trams to get into a major city centre without getting stuck in traffic, or polluting it out.

[acs121]

A nice suggestion. And we even have some parking lots that were drawn in the last year. This would essentially be another type of house, and you could code them so that you could have them appear in clusters. It would give some more visual variety.

Parking lots drawn ?

I recall Pyoro and Andrew350 having both drawn different NewGRFs with parking lots, and Quast65 having parking lots as station tiles, but if that's it...

[L. Spooner Inc]

What is the purpose of parking lots? To generate even more passengers through a sort of park and ride feature? For it to be balanced properly, it would have to "steal" passengers from sort-of-nearby houses and spawn them near the station we build instead. I struggle to see what it adds other than eyecandy.

The difference is these would add a bit more strategy to city design. As something the player doesn't control, like the location of a bank, parking lots require some thinking to exploit. It would also differentiate towns where a parking lot springs up as places worthy of "mining" for passengers. Also, if they aren't exploited, they will begin shrinking and eventually shut down, like other resources, which means as they grow in size the player has to figure out ways to move more and more passengers.

[Eddi]

maybe this would be better coded as a house rather than an industry? might be less annoying for the player if they can clear it for innner-city construction works.

but honestly, i don't quite see the use-case. i've never had a city transport network that was not swamped with passengers anyway.

[acs121]

If it was a house, then you'd have too much parking lots all over the place for no reason. That'd just look ugly AF.

[kamnet]

If it was a house, then you'd have too much parking lots all over the place for no reason. That'd just look ugly AF.

You've never noticed just how much surface parking lots there are in many cities? It kinda does look ugly AF. But, from that visual perspective, it can also provide some open space in your cities, too.

[Eddi]

If it was a house, then you'd have too much parking lots all over the place for no reason. That'd just look ugly AF.

there are ways to combat this, like providing more actual house types for the same town zone, or custom placement rules ("no more than X parking lots in an Y tile radius")

[acs121]

If it was a house, then you'd have too much parking lots all over the place for no reason. That'd just look ugly AF.

You've never noticed just how much surface parking lots there are in many cities? It kinda does look ugly AF. But, from that visual perspective, it can also provide some open space in your cities, too.

It depends on which city. There's a difference between parking lots in North American cities and European cities. Although what I'm gonna say may be a crappy argument, TTO is based on British (= European) cities and transportation. There's not as much parking lots in Cergy-Pontoise (conurbation of 204.000 inhabitants in France) as there are in Richmond (city of 227.000 inhabitants in Virginia).

As for Eddi : yeah, I know about those properties and didn't think about them in the first place.