Smart warning for negative income

[odisseus]

The negative income warning shows a yearly message for every vehicle that has had negative total income in the previous year. However, this warning is very often triggered when:

• the vehicle takes longer than one year to complete its round trip;
• the vehicle is part of a transfer route, and the income gets awarded to another vehicle.

For example, if the player has a long-distance route with slow boats, he is guaranteed to receive lots of these notifications, and if something serious happens (such as train deadlock or industry closure), the warning will be lost in the flood of false alarms.

This problem can be greatly reduced if the logic that decides when to show the negative income warning is made a little more sophisticated. I suggest that the warning should not be shown if one of the following conditions holds:

• the expected time for the round trip is longer than one year
  and the vehicle is not empty
  and the vehicle didn't unload during the previous year (except transfers)

or

• all orders in the order list which permit unloading are transfer orders.

Keep in mind that the common "full load" order does allow unloading. For example, a passenger plane may have full load orders at both destinations, and it will still be unloading at both. If such plane suddenly starts making losses, the player should get a warning.

[jfs]

Another alternative would be to consider the average yearly income of all vehicles with shared orders, instead of only the individual vehicles.

[Chrill]

Another alternative would be to consider the average yearly income of all vehicles with shared orders, instead of only the individual vehicles.

If a single train has gotten lost, for example, it could remain lost forever whilst its shared friends continue racking in profit.

[odisseus]

I don't think that's a real problem, because a lost train already generates a different kind of warning. However, the idea of taking the total income of a vehicle group into account has a different shortcoming.

Consider what happens if you send 50 ships to a weak oil field. At any time, most of these ships will be stuck waiting for their turn to load. Yet every once in a while one of the ships will earn some cash, which might be sufficient to keep the entire group just above zero profitability. Sure this situation doesn't pose a threat of bankruptcy (as there is net income, however small), but the vehicle maintenance might consume a large part of the income, and I think most players would want to be warned about such situations.