Transport Tycoon Forums

Hello everybody,

I'm currently develloping a patch that will allow subsidiaries management in OTTD. It is a patch so it is fully disableable (hmm... another great wording from me).

Basically, this will allow a player to run multiple companies simultaneously. For now, it is not possible to create a Subsidiary from scratch, you have to buy out an AI to get a subsidiary company (but I promess it will soon be possible).

So how does it work: the mother company has full control on its subsidiaries. You can at anytime switch the company you play with. Vehicles from affiliated companies can travel on affiliated squares, and get into affiliated stations.

However, subsidiaries aren't full blown companies, so there are some restrictions. For example, a subsidiary (as opposed to the mother company) cannot by shares into other companies. At the time it becomes a daughter company, it has to give out all of its shares in other companies to the mother company. Fund transfers from one affiliated company to another is possible, however, it costs 2% of the transaction amout (those banks...).

Finally, if one of you subsidiaries really is financially in a bad shape, you can perform a Merger, and absorb it into any of your other subsidiaries (this also makes room for new AI's).

Check the screenshot to see the current progress, and drop a message here to tell me what you think!

Lord of the Pigs

Get the latest version of the Subsidiaries Patch here!

Looks cool!

Would definately be great for when the economy engine is rewritten later and things like this (which reflect real life) would be useful.

btw - one spelling thing. The word would be "Administer" not "Administrate" unless you speak some language just off English

- JD

One thought, to reflect a real economy you could have something like "The official cash rate" which is what most central banks (read: government) alter in order to increase and decrease interest rates for all banks operating in the country.

Again, possibly more of a think of the economic re-write, but just a thought. Might be nice to know you'll lose 10% to fees, but that you think it would go down to 2% in the near future etc.

- JD

Sounds very interesting, good job!

Have you thought about submitting it to Sourceforge so the devs can keep track of it?

mdhowe wrote:Sounds very interesting, good job!

Have you thought about submitting it to Sourceforge so the devs can keep track of it?

I'll do this as soon as it's totally finished. To be honest, I just wanted some motivating feedback before going on.

About the spelling, that was just a wild guess, my mother tongue isn't english, it's french.

Lord of the Pigs.

Personally i believe the word "administrate" is actually preferable to Administer.

Administrate means "to administer".


Relating to the gameplay: I don't think the companies should be able to bounce cash around between themselves that easily.
It makes sense for the mother company to give money to the subsidiary, however the ability to give cash doesn't make much sense. Maybe if a percent of the subsidiaries profits went to the mother company or something similar.

I see - and you're free to keep it that way. Usually in my development when naming buttons I say "I would click here to"... and pick the word.

For example:

- I would click here to save
- I would click here to merge
- I would click here to edit
- I would click here to send money

as this keeps it consistant hence why I thought "Administer" would be best (and it is onmy my opinion) and it would add consistency.

- JD

Whee Finally i can have diffrent coloured trains visiting the same station when this is intergrated..

Well I guess that it enables tunelling, too

I don't know if the term "tunelling" is used widely, so I'll explain what it means:
1. found daughter company
2. daughter company borrows money from the bank
3. transfer all the capital from daughter company to mother company
4. daughter company declares bankrupt
5. if (lucky) goto 1. else goto prison

I had thought about that problem, however it is prevented.

Daughter companies cannot borrow money (they can repay though)
If They need money, they can get it from any of their sister (or mother) companies.

Bad boy, no cheating.

Ok, the patch is complete. Here is the full feature set of the "Subsidiaries Management" patch.

Creating a subsidiary:
You can create a subsidiary by either, buying out 100% of an AI company, or creating your own subsidiary from scratch.

Features of subsidiaries:
Any Vehicle from any sister company can use the tracks roads, stations or depot of any other sister company. It thus enables you to build multicolor network such as in the screen shot (You could have one color for cargo, one for passengers, one for aircrafts, and any onther you might think about).
They can be pretty usefull when you have to terraform, or destroy a lot of city buildings, do this with one of your subsidiaries, and then build the station using another one.
Also, any subsidiary may freely connect their railway tracks to sister of (mother) companies. Building multicolor networks has never been so easy!

Limitations of subsidiaries:
Even if they look they are, subsidiaries aren't full blown companies, and have some restrictions applied to their behavior. For example, a subsidiary cannot borrow money, only the mother company can.
How can you finance your subsidiairies then? You can easily transfer any amount of money to and from any of your subsidiary using the management window. But please note that it costs ~3% of the transaction amount in bank fees, so your subsidiaries had better be profitable.

Well, I guess that's it. Check out the SF tracker for the patch. If you have a compiler and an SVN client, please try it out, and tell me what you think.

I can't wait to have it included in the nighties...

Lord of the Pigs

Hey great work dude
I have been waiting for this for so long! now my airlines can finaly have dedicated low-cost and regional brands! I am a newish user so is their anyway you can post a link to somewhare ware i can just install an exe version as i dont have compiler or svn and dont know how to code

I thank you once again on the best new patch!

nwa320 wrote:Is their anyway you can post a link to somewhare ware i can just install an exe version as i dont have compiler or svn and dont know how to code

Sure here it is. It's only a windows executable, I don't have what's required to cross build for other platforms (and would have no way to check it actually works).

All you have to do is extract the exe to your openTTD directory. You'll want to rename the original exe file before doing that (so that if something goes wrong, you can easily go back to your previous version).

Lord of the pigs

Thankyou very much mate
much appreciated and keep up the good work
nwa320

hey sorry but I get a invalid language packs error so if possible could be a legend and tell me what lang files i need or upload the ones that that .exe file usually operates with


cheers Lord of the pigs

Ooops, sorry. Here it is, the only usable languge yet is english.
Just copy it into your OTTD/lang directory. Don't forget to backup your original english.lang (so you can revert back to the original version at any time).

lordofthepigs: a typo for you: in the screenie it says "substract".
I think you mean "Subtract" (only 1 s ).

taskjd:
I would click here to Administrate
I would click here to Administer

Both work using your logic . But for some reason Administrate sounds better to me.

i can never remember all that stuff about nouns/verbs etc, so looking it up won't get me far (as in clarifying which is preferable.

Administer & Administrate are synonyms (mean exactly the same thing)

A couple of google searches show that "administer" is much more widely used.

7,140,000 for administer

291,000 for administrate

Moriarty wrote:lordofthepigs: a typo for you: in the screenie it says "substract".
I think you mean "Subtract" (only 1 s ).

Well, I'll fix this. As for the Administrate vs Administer issue. My opinion is that's just splitting hair in 4 (does this expression exist in english?).

Lord of the pigs

lordofthepigs: The expression in English is:

"splitting hairs"

No need for the number 4.