[NewGRF] Very large ships

[Bilbo]

I have modified parameters of the ships. Now they are much larger and appropriately more expensive. You can't afford them from start (except ferries, which have improved capacity too, but "only" 5 times - you can easily afford one ferry at start), but later they may be good for delivering production from high-production industries.

The parameters are:

Small tanker: 10 000 000 liters of oil
Large tanker: 22 000 000 liters of oil (like train with 773 wagons!)

Small cargo ship: 6000 tons of cargo
Large cargo ship: 15000 tons of cargo

Small ferry: 500 passengers
Large ferry: 800 passengers
Hovercraft: 160 passengers

In next release I'd like some new graphics for the ships and to have new ships alongside with the old ones (for some purposes, small and cheap ships may be better)

But I am not very good artist, so if someone would either draw some images for these ships or donate some already finished images for this, I'll gladly include them in next release. Otherwise I'll try to draw them by myself, but that may look a bit horrible

Also, bug reports or suggestions are also welcome

Note: this NewGRF is now available in the in-game content download system

[Digitalfox]

Are you basing this cargos max in any real ship?

[Andreander]

The small cargo ships should be the largest imo, if you have a station with 15.000 pieces cargo waiting, you need to increase the number of ships, not just add a huge that can take it every once in a while.

And how many game years does it take to fill that large oil tanker? My biggest oilfield produce almost 350.000 liters/month so that would be 5 years and 3 months-ish I guess...

[Bilbo]

Are you basing this cargos max in any real ship?

No, but I may find some real-life equivalent with similar tonnage and adjust the numbers to match accurately

[Bilbo]

The small cargo ships should be the largest imo, if you have a station with 15.000 pieces cargo waiting, you need to increase the number of ships, not just add a huge that can take it every once in a while.

And how many game years does it take to fill that large oil tanker? My biggest oilfield produce almost 350.000 liters/month so that would be 5 years and 3 months-ish I guess...

For single coal mine with 1500 tonnes/month (which is large, but not uncommon) it will take 10 months to load the ship ... but since then the shipwill take like 6 months for forward trip and anothe 6 months to return, it may be not so much. It is not versatile ship (only for very heavy loads), but I think a bit more realism (allow large naval ships) may come handy sometimes. Also, this is the reason I want to remake this set so there will be the original ships AND the modified ones available at once - small ships may be handier sometimes.

[csuke]

nice idea, it's just unfortunate it's taken so long for someone to do this. Everything in the game is so engineered around trains, so when there is a problem they re-invent the train to find a solution (like massive expanses of water, they make huge bridges possible, or large collections of similiar industries, they make huge trains possible) It's refreshing to know that someone else feels that trains shouldn't be the only viable transport method in the game.

If you feel like working to re-balance the rest of the in-balances then im sure you would be most welcome.

[prissi]

Has the maximum station capacity of 4095 units of whatever good then increased? Otherwise these things would be never useful?

[Bilbo]

Has the maximum station capacity of 4095 units of whatever good then increased? Otherwise these things would be never useful?

Yes, in nightly it is I think unlimited or at least the limit is set considerably higher (in one test game I had over 150 000 tons of coal in my station)

Even with the limit it may be still somewhat useful. With right number of ships and good timing, you'll make it so when one ship leaves fully loaded, another one docks and starts filling. This way the limit will not bother you, though you can't rely on having one ship to carry all that 15000 tons that have accumulated during the long trip - at least not in 0.5.x

[flake]

Just yesterday i was thinking that ships can hold to few compared to long trains, but i think the parameters are a bit to high in this grf.

[Bilbo]

Just yesterday i was thinking that ships can hold to few compared to long trains, but i think the parameters are a bit to high in this grf.

Once I manage to put up some graphics, I'll make some ships with parameters "in the middle" too, like 1000-2000 tons of cargo ...

[blitzkrieg]

Also, bug reports or suggestions are also welcome

Hi
I Am using r10510. I am getting an error which causes the game to close/end .
What are the things u would like to know about the error & what does it mean --> "GIT should be enabled" (part of error message).

[Bilbo]

Also, bug reports or suggestions are also welcome

Hi
I Am using r10510. I am getting an error which causes the game to close/end .
What are the things u would like to know about the error & what does it mean --> "GIT should be enabled" (part of error message).

I'll try to reproduce the bug once I get home ... can you post exact error mesage? Or screenshot showing the error message?

[blitzkrieg]

Bilbo
I am not able to reproduce the error which caused the game to crash.

Finally managed to reproduce it although while starting a new game. Attached is the screen shot.

[Dave_McMahon]

I find the increase in the hovercraft to be useful, I think that making quantity's more realistic is useful, i.e basing industry outputs on real life would be cool (so maybe base the industry on public data if available???

[zedd]

Nice to see this.

The default ships in the game are so tiny it's completely rediculus.
Ships aren't very fast but they are massive. A modern container ship being able to take like 5 000 railroad cars worth of freight (10000 TEU, that would be the worlds second largest container ship though ... so maybe 4000 - 8000 TEU equaling 2000-4000 40foot containers would be more normal). Still scaling it towards railroad cars like that would obviously not work ... but the default ships are useless so they defenitley have to have more capacity.

And what is it on the default ships? Like 4?

Also I noticed this actually works with that new ship graphics grf ... it increases the loads for the tankers and one of the freight ships just fine. Though it decreases the load for the curise ship and doesn't change the car freighter or the others.

Well anyhow, thanks for this.

[thgergo]

I have made a capacity/price tool for newships, except it was more advenced, It can alter the capacities, and the prices can be altered smoothly. It can set a multipler from 1-to 64... So with it, you can have really massive ships with newships`s set. But this tool is only for Michael`s Newship set. I was too lazy to make support for the original ships due lack of interest Maybe I should do it someday...
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=619506#p619506
edit: I bored today, so I have finished the support for the original ones

[Zhall]

22 million litres... jezz, we arent trying to make the game unbalanced are we?

The oil well(s) would probably go out of buisness before you could get half a load.

[Bilbo]

With raised capacacity, the price is raised accordingly too, so the balance is kept ... appproximately. Ships are insanely slow in original OpenTTD, so for them to be at least somewhat usable, they should have high capacity

As to the oil wells closing before the ship is loaded ... well, that is a bit another problem ...

[zedd]

Well ships don't generally serve a singe plant.
Normally you have trains and trucks coming in from all over the place to a port, reloading there cargo to a ship and then doing it the other way around when the ship arrives at it's destination.

The use of this in OpenTTD is somewhat limited unless you specifically design your scenorio for it with lots of water or island like. And then still you can't do it very efficiently because the transfer function isn't intelligent enough to bring cargo booth ways. It will just end up taking the same cargo back instead of the new one from the trains and so forth.

[Zhall]

As to the oil wells closing before the ship is loaded ... well, that is a bit another problem ...

I also think that the game would have some sort of health issue when a ship carring 22 million litres of oil is suddenly sold, or rather its cargo type is changed.

22 million litres? that puts the exon valeez to shame lol. And what are you saying that one ship could supply a country its whole oil demand? Riduculous.

Besides evironmentalists probably wouldnt be to happy about 22 million litres of oil potentially spilling and creating a black gold tsunami.