Drones for Goods transport?

[RaptorZX4]

i think OpenTTD should have drones added, for Goods transport at least.

[Redirect Left]

i think OpenTTD should have drones added, for Goods transport at least.

I guess it's already semi-possible, just making a GRF that pretends its a helicopter, except its shaped like a drone, although at OpenTTD scale i think drones would be tiny, only a few pixels, if you fluff with scales, i can't see an issue with them pretending to be a helicopter code wise, and graphically a drone.

[odisseus]

If you mean door delivery drones, unfortunately OpenTTD cannot model that. It is implied that passengers and cargo somehow get from their destination station to the houses and industries, but from the game's point of view they are just absorbed at the station.

(A long time ago, there reportedly was a patch in which additional transportation costs were incurred for each gap tile between the station and the industry, but that's beside the point.)

If there were some notion of door delivery, the game could feature not just delivery drones, but also the mailman as he walks between his van and the houses, or individual passengers walking to and from the station... This would look awesome, especially with the modern extra zoom graphics, but it's probably never going to happen.

[RaptorZX4]

yeah i just mean a simple one. Maybe the drones could have their own space to land like the helicopters do?

I figure they could also land on a small area on airports (if it's not possible, just the usual helicopter spot then), and on oil rigs too.
Also i figure the drones would be larger than the normal consumer-grade drones, since they would be transporting many crates of Goods.

So all in all, they would act like helicopters, but different graphics, could be bought from hangars, transporting Goods only, and maybe a bit faster than helicopters?

Also on a side note, i think it sucks to see helicopters being unavailable after a while, and kinda forcing you to not use them anymore because of the reliability and the game spamming you about them being too old and needing replacement, and if you ever want to keep them in storage, the game spamming you about them not having enough orders

[Eddi]

Maybe the drones could have their own space to land like the helicopters do?

anything other than reusing the existing helicopter landing spaces is probably too much work.

[LaChupacabra]

There is an OpenGFX Mars Aircrafts add-on that has drones available. Rather too big to carry small parcels, but it makes sense for journeys between airstrip.

Mars Aircrafts - drones.png (50.08 KiB) Viewed 1240 times

You can find it somewhere on the web - it is not available in online content.

I think that nothing prevents you or someone other from creating a set of such or smaller drones. As for the airports, the easiest way would be to create an add-on that would replace the graphics of one of the landing areas. As for features that the game doesn't currently have (?) that would be interesting and useful, it would be the ability to add airports and airstrips with different graphics, as well as adding a new 1x1 landing site layout, but with a low landing point - on the ground.