Improvement Ideas to the game for Destinations in general and Buoys

[DAS_k1ishEe]

A copy of my reddit post.

My first improvement Idea concerns Buoys.

Reddit server rules suggest 15-20 tiles between buoys. Placing them on long routes can be very tedious. I would suggest to change the Buoy tool to be similar to train signals. You enter the wanted distance between buoys and then draw a line with the buoy building tool in the water (8 axis control).

My second idea is about improving setting up destinations. I would like to be able to cover whole areas with the "Go To" tool, similar to the terraforming tools. Selecting an area, all valid stations, buoys & waypoints for the vehicle will be imported to the destinations table - the order of these added destinations should depend on the drawing direction you applied with the tool.

All of this should extremely fasten up the routing process for most vehicle types, while still being faithful to the original game concept. I hope it's easy to implement into the game.

[odisseus]

The rule of 15-20 tiles was imposed a long time ago, when the boat pathfinder was quire inefficient. Large numbers of ships could put a substantial load on the server.

Since then, the pathfinder has been significantly improved (IIRC this happened in 2019), and there is no need to place buoys that often. Here's my personal rule of thumb: buoys need to be placed every 50-100 tiles on the sections where ships can sail straight, and every 20-50 tiles on bendy sections, such as canals and rivers, or around promontories.

[MagicBuzz]

Personnaly, I place buoys only when I get a "boat is lost" message.

Then I place a buyos half distance of the current segment.

I noticed most of the time boats have difficults to find straits, so most of my buoys are in the middle of straits.