Building electrified railway over not electrified

[adf88]

When building electrified railway over non-electrified, underlying rails are converted into electrified. But not always - electrified track we are building may not cover underlying non-electrified track. The image shows the problem:

zrzut_ekranu.png (69.77 KiB) Viewed 5719 times

On the left side we can see that existing non-electrified track was combined with being built electrified track. But on the right we see that tracks were not combined together.

This is wrong in my opinion. More natural way would be to convert rail type in the second case too. Present behaviour can lead to mistakes. It's hard to spot places where a single piece of an electrified railway is not electrified.

// EDIT
Implementation:

electrified_over_non_electrified_r22335.diff

(1.67 KiB) Downloaded 148 times

[SquireJames]

Sure that is what the convert railtype button is for

[adf88]

Sure that is what the convert railtype button is for

Did you read my post?

// edit

The point is that in the first case you don't have to use the convert railtype tool, but in the second you have to. And that's wrong.

[SquireJames]

No, I just decided to post a random comment that was vaguely related /sarcasm

Yes, I read your post. I still don't see the bug. The first shot shows you building across at 90 degrees, so the resulting line is all new. The second is you trying to build over the top of an existing rail piece in the same direction. It's not going to work, it's not intended to work, that's what the conversion button is for....

[Hyronymus]

I usually don't like 'half answers' to questions but can you try to explain your problem in a more detailed way?

[Eddi]

This is wrong in my opinion. More natural way would be to convert rail type in the second case too. Present behaviour can lead to mistakes. It's hard to spot places where a single piece of an electrified railway is not electrified.

how do you intend this to work when connecting an unelectrified rail to an existing electrified rail? and what if you use a NewGRF rail set, like NuTracks?

[planetmaker]

I figure the point is: if you over-build with a compatible railtype you should convert the original railtile to the one being currently build. But only those tiles where you actually build. The problem, of course, then occurs where you overbuild an e-rail main line when attaching an un-electrified side line. Maybe it could be handled similar like for conversion or removal costs: go by track costs.

[Eddi]

so: "take the most expensive one"? but only if compatibility/powered is never removed, that should be done by conversion only.

[adf88]

I mean just to extend present behaviour to other track layouts. Presently if you cross two compatible rail pieces on a tile they will be combined together. I mean to do the same also when being built piece of rail covers already existent piece of rail.

Compatible rail types are being combined together already. But not always, the criterion is "the same trackbit - don't combine, different trackbit - combine". I think we should always do combine.

Below we cross two compatible tracks:

The new track is fully passable by an electric engine. But take some more complex example:

We can see that the new track has a "gap" impassable by an electric engine.
Another example. This happened to me many times. Consider we are building some long electrified track, but there is a piece of non-electrified rail somewhere in the middle. It's hard to spot such places (until we have a huge traffic jam and we scream "WTF..."):


// EDIT

if you over-build with a compatible railtype you should convert the original railtile to the one being currently build. But only those tiles where you actually build.

Yes, but...

The problem, of course, then occurs where you overbuild an e-rail main line when attaching an un-electrified side line.

in that case don't convert. Don't downgrade, only upgrade.

[Lordmwa]

I very much like this - very simple and makes sense.

My tupence on the idea:

Adding electricity (or higher speed in the case of nutraks) by going over the old with the new as an alternative to convert rail tool seems good
The reverse should not be possible without the convert rail to avoid loosing electricity when adding non electrified junctions.

[TERdON]

I agree as well.

Additionally, with NuTracks, it would be helpful if tracks were never downgraded even with the convert rail tool, at least not without confirmation, not even partly (e.g. going from medium speed non-eletrified to low speed electrified).

[adf88]

Sure that is what the convert railtype button is for

Did you read my post?

Never late to say sorry. Sorry - it was mean.

I wanted to summarize everything. The issue can be split into two related ones.

1. The design of the rail tools is wrong. It can lead to mistakes when placing tracks. Rules about combining* tracks are not straightforward - they are different when crossing and different when overbuilding tracks. The fact that crossing-over "works" (track types get combined) encourages to think that it will also "work" when overbuilding.

* The combining occurs when one track is being crossed over or overbuilt by another track but with different track type. In the first case (crossing over) new track type is chosen if it's not less compatible then the old track type, otherwise the old track type is preserved. In the second case (overbuilding) always the old track type is preserved.

Since A "works", one may think that B should "work" too.

w.png (108.62 KiB) Viewed 4147 times

2. There is almost no visual indication of the situation where a rail track was placed but some parts in the middle of it wasn't turned into compatible railtype e.g. when placing an electrified track, some parts in the middle may left non-electrified and the user is not notified about the fact.
Usually, when placing a track and there is an obstacle, the track stops on this obstacle. It gives a visual feedback - we can easily see that not entire track was placed. It's like different when overbuilding another tracks, they get placed anyway, it's like the obstacles were silently skipped:

Almost no visual indication, easy to miss.

ttc.png (39.8 KiB) Viewed 4147 times

Also notice that "combining" is not the same as "converting". If we would unify the rules of the combining in a way that I proposed, the rail conversion tool wouldn't get obsolete. It's for massive, aerial converting of tracks to a single type. The track tool would become better in precise mixing of tracks of different types.
I agree on that the proposed changes would make the tools to interfere more and that this is a bad thing about interfaces in general. But a bit of interference doesn't have to be wrong, especially when it resolves other issues.


There is also a related FS ticket about stations: http://bugs.openttd.org/task/6590