Useless Tracks - Lifted tracks and planning tracks.

[FooBar]

Useless Tracks - Lifted tracks and planning tracks.
Lifted tracks only show ballast and can be used to keep your old and disused rail lines visible in the landscape. The planning tracks allow plotting new rail lines. Both railtypes do not allow vehicles.

Requires OpenTTD 1.2.0 (r23166). OpenTTD 1.3.0 (r24367) required to get the signals. Download via OpenTTD ingame Online Content or from the DevZone.

[MrZombie]

Seems useful (especially for Multiplayer), I will see if my friend wants to add this to his server, thanks for the planing tracks!

[dasy2k1]

I love the depots in CC but it would be even better if the rails were in CC with prehaps the depots in CC2 especially in multiplayer when you could see exactly who was planning track right in your way!

[FooBar]

I'm not sure if the second company colour can be used for depots, but that would be easy to find out (I don't have the time to do that unfortunately).
The tracks are drawn in CC, but the game doesn't support that. May that change then it will work automatically

[YNM]

@ FooBar : I think the lifted tracks should have the fences disabled or shown that the fences are rusty, etc. ?

In the case not everyone wants it (50-50), just add that as a parameter.

(Also, wheres your bridge foundation objects ? Have you finished it ? )

[FooBar]

I left the fences so that there is at least some way to see who owns the tracks. But sure, they can be improved.

The bridge foundations are on hold, because I've recently started a job and am now in the middle of moving house. So I don't have time to work on TTD stuff right now.

[NekoMaster]

What about adding mile posts with a little company colored square sign that designates who owns the land the track planning or trail is.

[Railwaymodeler]

Been playing a game with this GRF, and I find it actually is quite handy.

I only enabled the abandoned tracks, not the planning tracks. The abandoned track shares a use with its real world counterpart: Some abandoned lines are there with the forethought that if they need to use the line again, they can re activate it and rebuild it.

I had a rail line passing through a small but growing town. I abandoned the line after re-routing the mainline, but converted it to the abandoned track, so that if I ever wanted to reuse the line, there would be buildings where the track once stood. When I used the convert rail tool, I did get a small amount of income from the conversion from regular track to abandoned, which seems realistic, as railroads can sell the scrap rail to a recycler, and the cross ties to stores for sale as landscaping items.

What I'm not sure of, is if it is cheaper to maintian the line as abandoned, or if it makes any difference in the maintenance expenditures?

[FooBar]

I would have to check to confirm, but I believe that maintenance costs are set to zero.

[Transportman]

I would have to check to confirm, but I believe that maintenance costs are set to zero.

They are indeed set to zero (just looked at the code).

[NekoMaster]

Another nice thing about the abandoned tracks is they can be used for decor as trails, since most railroads never actually re-build their lines and they become rail trails for people to use as bike paths. An example would be the rail trail here in Oshawa that goes from a park at the end of Division Street all the way up to Nonquon Road near where I live (I just live up the street from the end of the trail). That rail trail use to be a line that connected Canadian Pacifics rail yard at Nob Hill farms to Millworks (a hardware and lumber store).

[Nappe1]

This is excelent addition. For years (at least since I was working with the day lenght patch momentarily) I have been dreaming about "delayed building" which would mean designing the routes (with a lot cheaper price) and then building them in relatively realistic speed. (not draging 1000 miles of rails in single day, like it happens now.) And though this makes only the first half happen, It's still excelent step towards the idea. we have been using these since the release in all our multiplayer games.

(don't know how we did it, but the difficulty jumped a lot with very challengive map and some new grf'es. First time in last decade or so, found hard to stay profittable in this game... However planning tracks made the change big enough in building costs so that while I am still not making huge loads of money, I can survive from 1830's to 2030's. )

[trainman1432]

maybe you should make a track laying machine?

[Espee]

The lifted tracks are great, but I have a problem with the planning tracks. Seems some AIs can lay down planning tracks, do nothing with them, and block any further use of those tracks until the AI company goes out of business. Shouldn't there be some type of time period where planning tracks would expire to permit continued gameplay by the other players, both real and AI?

[PikkaBird]

The lifted tracks are great, but I have a problem with the planning tracks. Seems some AIs can lay down planning tracks, do nothing with them, and block any further use of those tracks until the AI company goes out of business. Shouldn't there be some type of time period where planning tracks would expire to permit continued gameplay by the other players, both real and AI?

If the AI are laying tracks that they can't run trains on, I'd say that's a problem with the AI rather than the tracks (and "some type of time period where planning tracks would expire" would be a poor solution to the problem in any case).

[Espee]

The lifted tracks are great, but I have a problem with the planning tracks. Seems some AIs can lay down planning tracks, do nothing with them, and block any further use of those tracks until the AI company goes out of business. Shouldn't there be some type of time period where planning tracks would expire to permit continued gameplay by the other players, both real and AI?

If the AI are laying tracks that they can't run trains on, I'd say that's a problem with the AI rather than the tracks (and "some type of time period where planning tracks would expire" would be a poor solution to the problem in any case).

We're talking about planning tracks as opposed to the normal dumb things that AIs do with regular rails, such as not checking to see if 90 degree turns are permitted before laying right angle connections on diagonal tiles. IMHO planning tracks SHOULD have some type of expiration within a few years of gameplay or they merely become a tool for cheating in multiplayer games...

[Supercheese]

Most anything can be a cheating tool in multiplayer. The onus of preventing cheating should NOT be on grf- or OTTD-developers, but on server admins.

[kamnet]

Seems some AIs can lay down planning tracks, do nothing with them, and block any further use of those tracks until the AI company goes out of business.

This would also be a problem with any real players. I agree with Supercheese. If you're in a single player game, take control of the AI and remove them. If you're on a server, have the admin do it.

[peter1138]

AIs should be intelligent enough to choose a rail type they can build vehicles for (I assume the AI API allow for this). I suggest you report a bug to the AI's author.

[trainman1432]

i still think we should make a track laying machine(do you?).