Local authorities

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L. Spooner Inc
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Local authorities

Post by L. Spooner Inc »

Please, for the love of all that's holy and unholy, and out of pity for my abused mouse and keyboard and the ultimate fate of the dent in my wall which is getting larger, PLEASE do something about local authorities. Yes, I know I can turn them off entirely. That's not what I want. I would like some kind of realistic objection to dynamiting half the city without turning them into utterly insane, delusional psychopaths who will object for 40 years to putting in a bus stop without planting a continent-spanning forest and enough bribery to build twenty large airports.

The most utterly infuriating part of trying to deal with local authorities is the way, once you have a negative reputation with them, they will then obnoxiously block you from doing anything to improve that reputation, like put in a bus stop. If you ran a train line past their town 20 years ago, forget about EVER improving your relationship. They will hate you with the strength of a billion galaxy-sized supernovas for all of eternity, and will pick up arms and start shooting at the mere prospect of giving them a bus stop. It's ludicrous and it's aggravating and it makes absolutely no sense.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by This is my name »

I wish I can put houses in the way of my guide construction somewhere else. NO BULLDOZING
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LaChupacabra
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Re: Local authorities

Post by LaChupacabra »

What seems to be the biggest problem is to much negative impact of removing trees. It's a bit absurd that you can level the whole area around the city and even sink the entire map and everything will be ok, but you can't cut a few trees to build a line that, for example, will deliver food this city.

An extremely slow rising rating in the city is also a problem.
The Wiki says that the rating increases every month by 5 if it is lower than 200, it would mean that to be able to build a station, in the worst case you would have to wait 20 years, what is over 3 hours
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kamnet
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Re: Local authorities

Post by kamnet »

Easiest solution - build slower. Destroy only one or two buildings, buy the land after, and give yourself some time for the drop in your rating to recover.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by LaChupacabra »

The problem is when you forget about a station and delete it after some time. If the city is large and bribes are not available or too expensive, you will be unable to do anything. This can be very annoying and above all it makes no sense.
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odisseus
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Re: Local authorities

Post by odisseus »

I just can't understand why you have such a big issue with the town authorities. Just build a few bus stops before doing something that would drop your rating. When you need to recover the rating, send the actual buses to those stops, and in a few years the town authorities will love you.

Perhaps it would be more practical to provide a passenger service from the very beginning. When you have at least five well-serviced stations in the town, the rating recovers fairly quickly. As a side effect, the town will start growing, but excessive growth can be prevented by blocking road ends.
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L. Spooner Inc
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Re: Local authorities

Post by L. Spooner Inc »

odisseus wrote: 01 Jan 2020 23:13 I just can't understand why you have such a big issue with the town authorities.
Because not everyone plays the same way you do. Because starting every game by methodically setting up a bus service in every town for the sole and explicit purpose of subverting a deliberate game mechanic which isn't working properly is both annoying and immersion-breaking. I play one-player only, and I play to experiment with different challenges for myself like no airports or road vehicles only or no borrowing or one industry only or passengers only, or whatever. Having to begin each game by being forced to put two money-losing bus stops in every town to permanently forget about a game mechanic is pointless and irritating. If I was going to do that then I'd just turn off local authorities altogether. I'm not asking for local authorities to be removed, just fixed.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by jfs »

We just added another feature for Game Script that will be in 1.10, they can now adjust company ratings in towns. So you can make a game script that rewards you for completing objectives by raising your rating (or punishes you for failure), or you can even just make a GS that improves your rating everywhere all the time.
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L. Spooner Inc
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Re: Local authorities

Post by L. Spooner Inc »

That sounds perfect! Thank you.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by jfs »

I released a GS that does just this now. "Eternal Love"
It requires a nightly build from January 5th or later for now, the feature will naturally also be supported in a later 1.10 beta 3 or RC1 (and 1.10.0 final) release.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by odalman »

There is a setting called Town council's attitude towards area restructuring. I have it set to Permissive, which is default. In a town where a player has not done anything yet, he has high enough rating, 500, to remove a church, cinema, arena or bridge. Once the player rating has dropped because of demolishing objects in the area, the rating can be quickly be repaired up to 220 by planting trees, which is enought to build any station and even destroy regular buildings and roads.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by jfs »

That setting has very little effect on anything, to the point of being almost pointless.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by Kevo00 »

This problem is a total pain on tropical scenarios, too, where you often have to knock down trees to do the slightest thing.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by Captain Rand »

L. Spooner Inc wrote: 31 Dec 2019 10:43 PLEASE do something about local authorities.
Never going to happen. For reasons that make no sense to me, OTTD must remain true to the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
L. Spooner Inc wrote: 31 Dec 2019 10:43 Yes, I know I can turn them off entirely.
Really? How? All I've ever seen is the "Permissive" setting. Doesn't seem to do much.
L. Spooner Inc wrote: 31 Dec 2019 10:43 It's ludicrous and it's aggravating and it makes absolutely no sense.
Yes it is, and no it doesn't. It ruined many games for me. It's one of the reasons I stopped playing the original Transport Tycoon all those years ago, and was infuriatingly reminded of it when I first discovered OTTD. I almost gave up on that too before I figured out a workaround.
It involves the cheat menu, patches, and an A.I. that does nothing. So, It won't be for everyone. It's clunky and awkward but has become second nature, and essential if I want to get anything done. It saved the game for me.

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Re: Local authorities

Post by jfs »

So play version 1.10 and use the Eternal Love game script I linked above. It makes all local authorities consider you Outstanding all the time.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by kamnet »

jfs wrote: 05 Feb 2020 19:22 That setting has very little effect on anything, to the point of being almost pointless.
If this has little effect on anything, then it sounds like a great candidate for reforming into something better.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by Master Trams »

Something I feel could be a decent addition to local authorities is promises. For example, you can promise to a town to build a train station connected to other towns, or you can promise a suburban rail network, or even a bus/tram route (depending on NewGRFs) with specification as to intra or inter-city. Then, once you've made the promise, there is a 50/50 chance as to whether the town will accept the promise. If they accept and you build, then your relationship improves. If they accept and you don't build within 20 years, then you're relationship takes a hit (reason being "broken promise"). If they reject and you don't build, your relationship will remain unaffected. If they reject and you build, then your relationship will plummet faster than you can say "train station built" (reason being "advice ignored").
One possible drawback to this would be that you have to make the same promise to each town you want to involve in whatever new scheme you're planning on building. Another feature could be that, if the station is to serve an industry, then you have to make a promise to the industry, who will then relay it to the local authority. If the council agrees, (of which there is a 60/40 chance), then there will proceed to be a 50/50 chance of the industry accepting the promise. This would then affect relationships with industries (a new feature). In a different thread, I mentioned the idea of contracts, comparable to subsidies... The industry relationship feature could mean that an industry will offer a contract to whichever company they have the better relationship with...
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Re: Local authorities

Post by odisseus »

That would add a lot of additional complexity to the game. How exactly would you define a "connection to other towns"? How many stations make a "rail network"? How exactly would you classify a station as "intra or inter-city"? Is the promise fulfilled if you build a station but abandon it after one year? And how would you make these aspects visible to the player?

Politics isn't really the focus of OpenTTD. Local authorities exist just as a deterrent to prevent the player from harmful and irresponsible actions, such as razing the whole town, excessive terraforming or building a lot of unused stations. The OP and some other players actually wanted to eliminate even that kind of intervention from the local authorities.

However, if you think that some players would like a more complex way to deal with them... feel free to create a patch.
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Re: Local authorities

Post by Master Trams »

odisseus wrote: 20 Jun 2020 22:38 That would add a lot of additional complexity to the game. How exactly would you define a "connection to other towns"? How many stations make a "rail network"? How exactly would you classify a station as "intra or inter-city"? Is the promise fulfilled if you build a station but abandon it after one year? And how would you make these aspects visible to the player?

Politics isn't really the focus of OpenTTD. Local authorities exist just as a deterrent to prevent the player from harmful and irresponsible actions, such as razing the whole town, excessive terraforming or building a lot of unused stations. The OP and some other players actually wanted to eliminate even that kind of intervention from the local authorities.

However, if you think that some players would like a more complex way to deal with them... feel free to create a patch.
I just feel that local authorities are really quite pointless in the game at the moment, buy why get rid of them when you can at least make an effort to improve them. As for your questions
1) A connection to other towns would simply be a station (rail/road) and the next station along the tracks isn't in the town's limits...
2) A minimum of 2 stations make a network...
3) A station would be classed as intra or inter-city based on where the tracks go, and if the next station on said tracks is within the city limits.
4) The promise would be fulfilled if you build the station, then after that, the current system looks after whether that station is used or not.
5) These aspects would be made visible to the player by way of the relationship with the town. If you mean aesthetically, then I don't know yet.
Either way, whilst it may not form an addition to the core game, it would be a nice addition, maybe as a NewGRF or a patch...
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Re: Local authorities

Post by 2TallTyler »

Master Trams wrote: 21 Jun 2020 08:48 Either way, whilst it may not form an addition to the core game, it would be a nice addition, maybe as a NewGRF or a patch...
NewGRFs can't access any of this functionality, but it would be possible with a Game script. Look at Busy Bee or its fork Bee Rewards for inspiration. Here's the Wiki page with information on how to write a Game script. :)
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