Ambitious idea - Sim everything

jellyman · Post by **jellyman** » 10 Mar 2006 23:47

Maybe we could add other simulations to OTTD to make it more interesting. This might work in multiplayer mode.

An obvious starting point is Simcity type city simulation. Perhaps a player could volunteer to be mayor of a city. They then run a city simulator for that town on their computer. They can control zonings, build utilities, allow or prevent transport companies building in their town etc.

And maybe their could be an industry player. They build, buy and sell industries. Maybe they also run the industry in more detail, but I can't think what this might entail (setting pay rates? running marketing campaigns?). So the city player wants to start a new city. He has to talk to an industry player who builds a power plant. And the transport player then gets the job of hauling coal to make the power plant work.

And then the city grows, so there is more jobs for the transport player to move passengers or support new industry in the city.

Maybe you could even have a 'theme park player'. He runs a theme park simulation, which appears on the main map as just one building with some stats on passengers etc. But he can build all the rides and roller coasters like roller coast tycoon or whatever the game I played once that went like that.

This would be an idea focused on multiplayer - where different players focus on different aspects of the overall simulation because the entire simulation is too complicated. And different parts of the simulation may be run on different computers. The theme park is the obvious example where the main map only needs to now the size, location, economic impact, and passenger generation capabilities of the theme park, and maybe have some graphical representation of it, but wouldn't need to know anything about the simulation of individual rides/patrons within the park.

Brianetta · Post by **Brianetta** » 11 Mar 2006 07:52

It all makes sense except for the theme park. Why not have a factory sim, or a sawmill sim? Makes way more sense, and the player running the sawmill could offer a subsidy for the first player to bring him wood... and take his goods away.

KING · Post by **KING** » 11 Mar 2006 12:21

...the game is called ottd.
openTRANSPORT TYCOON
also. in muliplayer. you would need a 10K X 10K map. (since citys would need to be like at least 100X100
50 players.
and a 50GHz CPU to run it all.

In short if you want this. Have fun makeing your new game.

Killer 11 · Post by **Killer 11** » 11 Mar 2006 13:39

what's up with you man quit this flaming already those ideas are quite nice actualy

richk67 · Post by **richk67** » 11 Mar 2006 14:16

Killer 11 wrote:what's up with you man quit this flaming already those ideas are quite nice actualy

It may be a nice idea, but since there is more than enough workload on the devs creating/maintaining the current OTTD I think its fair to say "no" in any way they wish.

As King said - I wish you luck in developing your own game.

Killer 11 · Post by **Killer 11** » 11 Mar 2006 15:08

But still he wrote the messege in a bad way.

XeryusTC · Post by **XeryusTC** » 11 Mar 2006 16:31

We have OTTD for managing transport companies, SimCity for managing cities and RCT/ThemePark for themparks. I see no need to combine them into one game and make that one game too complex.
You could gather your own dev crew though and ask if you can have a OTTD branch for this all.

DeletedUser21 · Post by **DeletedUser21** » 11 Mar 2006 16:35

it would be nice for a MMORPG, everyone can decide what he likes to start online, a transport tycoon, a city planner, restaurant keeper.

jellyman · Post by **jellyman** » 12 Mar 2006 04:45

Sorry I didn't realise the game was called Transport Tycoon.

Obviously transport tycoons are boring people with no imagination who never have ideas and never expect anything done unless they do it themselves.

Its called a suggestion forum for a reason........

DeletedUser21 · Post by **DeletedUser21** » 12 Mar 2006 11:19

Indeed, you are right about the suggestion part, but there is one problem, I like the idea but it's not doable, if you post a suggestion it must be one that is within the lines of the original game.

Your plan is very ambitious but as I see that devs already are very busy with the transportation part alone I can't imagine how busy it would get for them if you include more games in this one.

So to make a short story, long

: 'I think it's a good plan and it would be very fun, but not doable since the insane coding part witch will move the final release not 10 years but in 100 years into the future.

'

Expresso · Post by **Expresso** » 12 Mar 2006 12:05

Well, this game is about transporting things, not building towns. But some more options to manipulate towns wouldn't hurt imo.
Though, I do think some more options to influence the behavior of towns would be nice.

Elections:
Held once every x years for each town on the map, all at the same time. There could be multiple political parties per town, the amount of which could be determined by town size. Players could be able to provide funds to one of these parties in only one town. Each party would provide different advantages and disadvantages.

The political party can be chosen from a list and each party provides certain effects if the elections are won. The victor gets to provide the mayor, which basically means that the town is more difficult to make angry. While bribing gets way more expensive, the rest of the local authority options become cheaper.
Fund local industry:
Build an industry near the town. This should be extremely expensive to do, though it provides jobs to the town and makes it somewhat happier with the player funding the industry. The player does not get to determine the exact location of the new industry, but he does get to determine the type. This makes it possible to get rid of the "fund new industry" exploit.
Sue for monopoly abuse:
The more exclusive transport rights a player has collected, the more likely it gets this succeeds against him.
Exclusive transport rights (fix):
Only allowed when a player has an outstanding rating with the town in question and is active in the town.

I think these ideas are a nice alternative to the transport-sim-tycooon-city idea

. It makes towns have more influence on the game world, while not changeing the core functionality of the game, and adds a nice mini-game.

jellyman · Post by **jellyman** » 12 Mar 2006 21:17

I would be most interested in aspects of this idea that focus on enhancing interactions with towns. As a starting point you could create a 'virtual' town player. This controls all towns. Gets a tax from all real estate, and from all industrial profits (measured by goods delivered by a player to an industry). These taxes can be spent on supplying power to towns, and on offering subsidies to players. Town growth requires power, and is affected by passenger transport.

Then you can expand the idea by adding different aspects of economy/infrastructure. Perhaps add education where the town pays for education facilities. These would provide a small boost to town growth. They would boost the educational level of the population. Higher education levels can support a wider variety of industries, and corporate headquarters which generate a lot more air passengers, and a lot more first class passengers. If education is added, then the default tax rate can be increased so the town can pay for it all.

The virtual player would be an ai simulation to start with. Then it might be interesting to add an interface to see what the virtual player is doing. Then expand the interface to allow a human to take direct action. Then expand it to allow a human to take complete control. The furtherst progression of my idea would be to separate out aspects of the simulation for the 'town player' to another player on another computer. For instance the town player tracks every single school, its staffing level, what subjects it offers and whatever on the town player simulation (why go to that detail I don't know, but this is an example of the concept). The main regional simulation only knows the overall affect on the education level of a town for use in calculating industry opportunities. It doesn't even have to have actual school buildings on the main map. I included the theme park example originally not because I like the idea of theme parks, but because I thought it was the clearest way to try and explain the idea of having a separate simulation interacting.

Other aspects of city simulation may be ignored or made very low priority. For instance I don't think adding fire stations and police stations has any interesting consequences for transport so probably wouldn't add to the game (or perhaps high crime areas will start to vandalise trains etc, and no one wants their station to burn down). This idea is all about giving the transport player a more interesting simulated environment to interact with.

CharlyHRO · Post by **CharlyHRO** » 13 Mar 2006 17:40

I think, like the subsidiaries patch already does, give the players the ability to choose unique colours, so in coop games you don't have to label lines/junctions coz you can identify who built by the color of the tracks...

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Ambitious idea - Sim everything

Ambitious idea - Sim everything

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