"Peter J. Dobrovka" wrote:
Not neccessarily. The cargo car is often owned by the industry and it
comes
out of the factory with full load already. I only have to own the engine
and
the tracks to take it away.
Cargo cars, when empty must be transported back to the owner I hope. None of
this railroad tycoon "cars dissapear when empty" rubbish.
This covers passengers, mail, coal, everything.
Passenger warehouse = hotel
Factories should have built in lorry loading zones.
They will have them and they will have also have built-in railway
stations.
They ARE railway stations in the moment you connect your railroad to them.
hmmm, two diffrent companies try to connect rail routes to a factory.
Is there some sort of facility to splice two diffrently owned rail systems
together at points, and share line for a distance. hmmm, this could be a
method of income - like toll booths. You set up the railway network / road
network, and other companies run the trains on it.
I see an alternate mode of play where the company simply funds the
construction of infrastructure, and other companies do the transporting
using it.
Thus, a two player co-operative game could involve one player buying the
rights and setting up highways, railway lines, airports & harbours. The
other player(s) buy and route the trucks, trains, and planes and ships.
In real life, harbours and airports are owned by an independent company in
which prehaps some of the transporting companies own a share.
goods cannot magically
move from factory to station back to factory. This means that the
effectiveness of lorry stops must be increaseable - lorry stops *must* be
expandable to accomodate more lorries at a time.
As mentioned before: there is a (hidden?) traffic beside the player's
activity, called "individual traffic". We don't plan to simulate it
exactly,
you will see sometimes horsecoaches and later lorries and taxis showing up
that don't belong to no player.
I would be tempted to go the whole way - at least as far as actual cargo
being moved is. Basically, a factory that exists _is_ currently shipping
goods & making a profit.
I would start with the factories owned by the local town whose population
provies their workforce
Each town would be a type of limited focus
company that owns vehicles and performs shipping.
Finally, make at least one more type of road: highway. Enforce "zoning"
speedlimits on all roads. highways will have limited curvatures, and
allow
the use of larger faster inter-city trucks that cannot be routed along
roads
that take 90 degree turns. The cities must come connected via the low
grade
roads - the players must be given the oppertunity to buy the road,
convert
it to highway, and place toll booths upon it.
Highways will come, but only after 1930.
Fast trucks come, but only after 1930
Its a chicken and egg thing. The
development of fast trucks is tied into the developemnt of high quality long
distance highways.
Fianlly - shared "stations". You don't
own the factorys lorry stop - anybody
servicing a factories goods must use
the factories stop.
Yes.
You can however
fund extenstions to the stop if the factory
itself is lax in that regard.
Hm... - interesting idea...
Funding an extension is a more costly way to "buy in" to the factory's
station.
Also airports, should possibly be paritally
owned & extendable (more runways
can be built). Buying into other companies
automatically confers partial
ownership of all their stations. A small
percentage of the profit of every
station is diverted to the other owners.
Yes.
The use of shared stations would allow
multiplayer games to be competetive
or co-operative as required.
Oh yes, I would like to bring players to cooperate instead of
concurring only.
To share a station you have to include it into your station list for a
transport. If the other station's owner agrees your trains may use his
station. But only for this one transport route, this is no general
permission to use his other stations or even airports, too.
I forsee the exinstance of "non-owned" or town council owned stations. It
should be possible to sell part ownership in a station to the local council
or another company to recoupe the cost of building the station. (or
potentailly gain funding up front by offering to pay for some fraction of a
projected new airport, and waiting for the town or other companies to offer
to buy in).
Imagine the following scenario:
You wish to build a train-station in a town. Instead of just building it,
you first indicate you wish to build a trainstation - (you ask the council -
can I do this) The council then decide if they like you, and a train station
is something thats needed, they offer to part pay for the station - if there
is already a station, or they don't like you, they tell you how much you
must pay them (ie you can bribe the town council when you've demolished too
many trees
. During the bid phase other transport companies too can
request to part buy the station (you can reject them).
Now that everyone has promised money, and the town council has given their
approval you can go ahead and construct a station conforming to the station
you promised. If you are very frugal in your construction, and the money
contributed by the others is large you might even make a profit in the
construction
(ah -"Construction Tycoon!").
To build a toll road / highway between two cities a similar approach must be
used. Indicate that you want to connect the two cities - their councils then
get together and decide wether to grant the rights or not. This stops
another company (or you) just building another road and bypassing another
companies toll.
hmmm.
Chris.
--