New map features

[cirdan]

Oh dear. I think I had never had so many bug reports right after a release.

Bug Report - Crash when trying to Add or Remove items in the NewGRF Settings window, both in the splash screen and in game.
Happens on 32bit Windows, both with and without the freebridge patch.
EDIT: More specifically, it happens when I try to click to highlght a GRF to be added or removed.

I have just pushed a fix for this too; thanks for your bug report.

[JGR]

I've bumped the tracerestrict-cirdan branch on github with Cirdan's updates.

[wallyweb]

Oh dear. I think I had never had so many bug reports right after a release.

Better now than in 6 months time.

Bug Report - Crash when trying to Add or Remove items in the NewGRF Settings window, both in the splash screen and in game.
Happens on 32bit Windows, both with and without the freebridge patch.
EDIT: More specifically, it happens when I try to click to highlight a GRF to be added or removed.

I have just pushed a fix for this too; thanks for your bug report.

Here are the Windows 32 bit binaries. Oh my ... We lost the guarantees, so there are no guarantees.

For those who like the long road around the station:

OpenTTD-REBASED-r27339-ga066c950-Win32.7z

(5.46 MiB) Downloaded 79 times

For those who like the shortcut over the bridge over the station:

OpenTTD-FreeBridge-ga066c950M-Win32.7z

(5.46 MiB) Downloaded 73 times

Caution when building bridges over stations. Stations are higher than they appear in the rear view mirror:

ProblemReactionSolution.png (29.6 KiB) Viewed 2778 times

JGR's tracerestrict version will be posted before too long.

[wallyweb]

I've bumped the tracerestrict-cirdan branch on github with Cirdan's updates.

Here are the Windows 32 bit binaries for JGR's tracerestrict-cirdan version of Cirdan's push above:

The long way around the station:

OpenTTD-g0c1cc91f-tracerestrict-cirdan-Win32.7z

(5.48 MiB) Downloaded 82 times

The shortcut over a bridge:

OpenTTD-g0c1cc91fM-FreeBridge-tracerestrict-cirdan-Win32.7z

(5.48 MiB) Downloaded 82 times

As noted in my previous post, make sure your bridge goes over the station and not through it.

All guarantees are void.

Enjoy

[TrueSatan]

My ubuntu bundles are a few posts before, if anyone needs them.
I haven't applied the lift bridge over stations patch.
I was wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to
have some parameters in the extra settings with the defaults
you have in your current patch, cirdan.
So anyone can change the min height of the bridge
to his liking before he starts a game.
Inside the game itself it should not be changeable again.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks again cirdan and jgr for your nice additions

[TrueSatan]

Okay again I have the strange behaviour about trains going to service without sending them or
having an order to do so.
Screenshot and savegame applied.

That's not how I want it
Somethings wrong with the go to depot behaviour now.

[cirdan]

I see from the screenshot that your savegame was made with JGR's tracerestrict patch applied on top of my branch. Can you reproduce this behaviour on my branch alone?

Also, do you have autorenew enabled in your settings? What is the remaining lifetime of the trains that suddenly go for servicing?

[TrueSatan]

Yes I can reproduce it with an older savegame only with your branch.
Setting for auto renew you can see at my screenshot.
It was not that way before. My Vacuum train enters without any order
to do so the depot.
auto renew should only happen if i send it to the depot.
Therefore i have trains with a special order to go to the
depot if the lifespan of the vehicle is over (0)
i don't want to replace rather old trains.
worked until the last modifications you did flawless.
hope you find something
oh and lifetime is 320 years (48) of the shown vacuum train hehe
cheers

[cirdan]

Then it is working as intended, although we may discuss whether this is good or not. What I had in mind was to unify autorenew/autoreplace behaviour with respect to looking for a depot: vehicles for which an autoreplacement was set would actively try to visit a depot, but this was not the case with autorenew, and I found it odd.

So, to make sure that I understand you: you want old vehicles that happen to visit a depot to autorenew themselves, but you do not otherwise want vehicles to look for a depot when they get old. Is this right?

[TrueSatan]

Thats right, it worked that way before.
As I wrote in a post earlier I lost about 600m Euros because all
of my old vacuum trains went to the depot renewing themself.
but wait not all. I have seen some with an age over 200years
that were not replaced. Maybe the depot was to far.

So in a way there would be some setting needed that allows renew only
if there is an order (or old behavior) and the new behavior to look
for a depot without the need to put and go to servicing/nearest depot
order.
Currently you could get out of cash very fast, sure it depends on some more
settings then only auterenew, but if you use some old save game then...
I like the idea and ever wondered why I have to put an order to the vehicles to
send them to the depot, but with vacuum trains i understand the need not to have auto replace
on them but on for example normal trains.

Anyway... Sorry but currently the new version is unplayable for me, so i stick with the old
version.
Only my opinion, hope to read some more opinions from others that use your patch as well

Cheers

[cirdan]

Thanks for the explanation. I do appreciate your (or anybody else's) opinion on the matter.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to autorenew only some of your trains?

[TrueSatan]

Because its for example very expensive to replace the vacuum trains on "normal" settings.
And in real life you wouldn't renew the trains if the company says they are only running
for for example 25 years. Usually you would fix them until they break down forever.
Some of the steam trains are still running irl and they are not new trains.
Its something different to replace them with newer models. But the replacing
interface is a nightmare. Its okay if you only have some models and some trains running but with all those trainsets
and the big maps with hundreds of trains...
Guess for all those trainsets should be some setting if there is some successor of
a EMU/DMU comes out to replace the older model or set it as the replacement if you want to replace them automatically.
Same goes for newer wagon models.
Not sure if that would be doable with some new action for the newgrf and some work for the replacement window.

And I still have the feeling that the station rating is affected, at least on "normal" trains running
on normal tracks. For the vacuum trains there is no or only a small effect even if the train is 400 years old.
They deliver the goods (including passengers) so fast it doesn't matter I guess.

The next thing is the interruption in my networks. Currently i put the order to go to the depot
at a certain point in my lines. With the new behaviour they go the next depot whenever they think its time to go there.
If the depot is miles away and on the wrong side the train will get lost i fear.
I usually like to have some control over my trains and network haha

Anyway I like the idea and maybe one day I will switch and rebuild my networks to work
with the new renew patch, but currently it throws playing years with the old behaviour over board.

Thanks and keep up the good work, I love the bridge patch

Cheers

[wallyweb]

I do appreciate your (or anybody else's) opinion on the matter.

I set autorenew to off and "Vehicles never expire" to on

My issue is that with autorenew on, I often get a new engine "upgrade" that is not to my liking and end up having to manually send it to a depot to buy what I need. Far better for my playing style to see the annual warning that my train is very old and urgently needs replacing after which I can do it at my own convenience.

I use the vehicle's orders to schedule a depot for regular visits or for "service if needed" visits.

[Hafting]

Thanks for the explanation. I do appreciate your (or anybody else's) opinion on the matter.

I appreciate the realism of having to service trains. Unfortunately, the game create s slight problem, no matter how I do this.

I usually give my trains a depot order somewhere in the order list, which I consider the most realistic way. Any serious railroad use scheduled maintenance. But this creates problems when the line gets really busy. (Such as a passenger line connecting ever-growing cities.) Stations are easy - build as many platforms as needed to avoid bottlenecks. Track can be doubled if need be.

But depots are worse. They become bottlenecks, because I can't build a multi-track depot.

I can build several depots, sure. But then I end up with several groups of trains - some use depot 1, some use depot 2, some use depot 3 . . . Adding more trains then require a careful balance so I don't add depot-1 trains only. Worrying about this looses its charm when the game has 5 such lines as well as a lot of industry transport. And depot-1 trains can still congest and block the line for trains using the other depots.

Another method is to not have depot orders, just provide some depots along the line. This tends to be disastrous for a busy line. A train decides it needs service, and rolls through some stations without stopping in order to reach some depot. Then it has to go back in order to resume its route - passing even more stations. In the meantime, passengers pile up. Worse, if the line ever gets a gridlock, every train goes to the depots when I eventually fix the block.

The no-order mehod can be refined by having (parallel) depots so the trains are forced to visit one of them. This ensures that the trains are always freshly serviced and won't go to depots at times inconvenient for their schedule. Also, two parallel depots can service trains as fast as they come. So no congestion due to service. The problem is that this too breaks down very badly with congestion-induced delays. The trains feels the need for service, and decide on depot trips at the most inconvenient times. This cause more delays in tightly packed scenarios.


A multi-platform depot would solve this. I.e. build several depots so they connect side-by-side. They could then act as a single depot as far as depot orders are concerned, and a train going to depot will pick an entrance not busy with another train - just like they pick a free platform when rolling into a big station. It would then be possible to build depots large enough to service the busiest lines with a single depot order. Might need to think a bit about track layout and signalling, but that is what the game is about.


Would this be possible? To have a row of connected depots work like a single multi-platform depot?

[wallyweb]

A multi-platform depot would solve this. I.e. build several depots so they connect side-by-side. They could then act as a single depot as far as depot orders are concerned, and a train going to depot will pick an entrance not busy with another train - just like they pick a free platform when rolling into a big station. It would then be possible to build depots large enough to service the busiest lines with a single depot order. Might need to think a bit about track layout and signalling, but that is what the game is about.

This is intriguing. With signalling on a track connected to a "depot access" it could be used as an "entrance only", while other "depot accesses" could be used as "exit only". No more magic turn-arounds. Enter at the rear and exit at the front.

[romazoon]

Would this be possible? To have a row of connected depots work like a single multi-platform depot?

you can add some connected/shared waypoint or a station tile right in front of your depot, then instead of using a depot order, use a "go via without stoping" station or a waypoint order, that way you can add more depot parrallel to each other, and train will be pushed to go to the one that have a free route.

As a bonus : train will still be free to service in any depot on its route, because it will not have a depot order in its list Very usefull if using breakdown (especially the advanced breakdowns included in a few patchpack)

[Pyoro]

Personally I like the change. Autorenew not working just because you don't have breakdowns on is odd, since station ratings etc still depend on train age. Bothering with 600 or so trains to manually renew is no fun, and setting up depot orders just to send them to a depot once in, like, 40 ingame years (and I play with daylength) really not worth it.

[cirdan]

Would this be possible? To have a row of connected depots work like a single multi-platform depot?

Well, this is a whole different can of worms... You mean a bunch of depots built side by side that behave like a single depot with respect to orders? I guess that it could be done, but it would be a lot of work.

Personally I like the change. Autorenew not working just because you don't have breakdowns on is odd, since station ratings etc still depend on train age. Bothering with 600 or so trains to manually renew is no fun, and setting up depot orders just to send them to a depot once in, like, 40 ingame years (and I play with daylength) really not worth it.

To clarify, what is it that bothers you? Having to set up a depot order for each vehicle, or having vehicles with a depot order that will be pointless for most of its lifetime?

[Pyoro]

To clarify, what is it that bothers you? Having to set up a depot order for each vehicle, or having vehicles with a depot order that will be pointless for most of its lifetime?

Hm, the setting up, I guess. And maintaining it: you might demolish the selected depot and then need to change all those orders. It's just more convenient to solve this in bulk.

The (conditional) order itself isn't a huge bother, if it's there.
But I'm not even sure whether autorenew works if you set a "go to depot if maintenance is necessary" order (I don't think so, though. I might mis-remember though ^^).

Ultimately, it's a small thing for the type of games I usually play. If it annoys me too much, I just send the entire vehicle list to a depot manually. It's a bit of a chaos for a month or two ingame, but solves the outdated vehicle problem.

[cirdan]

This is bad, because there is no way to reconcile your and TrueSatan's positions. You want trains to go to a depot for autorenew even if it is not in their orders, but TrueSatan wants to avoid precisely this.

In fact, I was going to propose to partially revert the change and make it so that only service orders would make a vehicle visit a depot for autorenew, as that would solve TrueSatan's problems, but then you would have to add service orders to your trains. Personally, I have been testing this patch for a few months now and I have got into the habit of inserting a service order somewhere when I initially set up a vehicle's orders, and it is not that much of a hassle (updating a running game can be daunting though), and it is indeed a small nuisance when you have to relocate a depot, but overall I certainly find it worth it if it relieves me from having to autorenew every vehicle manually.