AI Event: "vehicle is getting old" When should it be sent?

[planetmaker]

A question for the AI authors. There currently is no event which indicates that a vehicle is getting old. Such event can be implemented, but the question is, when should the notification be sent?
* one year before the vehicle gets old?
* when the vehicle gets old?
* additionally every year after it has gotten old?

I think concensus is, that AIs only need one notification, but when?
See also the related FS task: http://bugs.openttd.org/task/5078

[krinn]

- 1 time only (first the AI cannot forget it like a human, even 1000 vehicles gets old at the same time, second, it might slow down openttd if the AI doesn't handle the event and openttd is sending all years X events because X vehicles are old and the AI doesn't handle vehicle age).
- 1 year before it reach old limit (as at old limit the vehicle breakdown are way too high already).

So my taste is one shot only, one year before date ; upto AI to handle it then ; openttd has done its job.
Thx to muxy (never really get time to try it).

[FooBar]

One year before is also when a human player first receives a message, right? It seems fair that an AI gets a similar message (i.e. event) at the same time.

[Brumi]

I would probably prefer it the same way as the human player receives these messages.
Krinn makes a valid point regarding the multiplicity, although sending the message multiple times may have a use if, for instance, sending the vehicle to depot fails for some reason.
But in the end I already coded the part which handles vehicles getting old, so even if this feature gets introduced, I probably won't use it anyway, so I'm perfectly fine with the one-time message...

[Kogut]

The same way as the human player - to keep it simple, easier to understand and debug.