Project: Economy and Balancing

[Moriarty]

Steelmills demand passengers? I've never seen that.
Only the Oil Rig ever did that for me.

Each industry should have a maximum capacity (based on tile size), not be a "black hole" for raw materials. It would also be nice to be able to fund a "baby" industry as opposed to the huge cost now.

Agreed, otherwise you can do what I do and send all the goods to the single factory in the corner so as to make most profit.

[athanasios]

Steel Mills demand passengers in TTD. Didn't see that yet in OpenTTD.

[glx]

Steel Mills demand passengers in TTD. Didn't see that yet in OpenTTD.

Look closer then

[Tekky]

In Celestar's .pdf file is described that passengers will have specific destinations. In this context I would like to refer to my suggestion thread passengers with specific destinations using train timetables. In contrast to the proposal in Celestar's .pdf file, my proposal uses flexible coverage areas - passengers will be prepared to walk further to a station that provides better service.

I'm not sure if my proposal may be interesting for Celestar's project.

[DannyA]

How about if players were able to build town owned roads at a town to increase their town rating?

- roads can be changed by other players and town.
- rating increase could depends on road position/value to town maknig building 'blocks' of road pointless.

I find it annoying when I'm prevented by a town from building stuff which it benifits from - like roads.

[Zephyris]

I am (slowly) playing with ideas for new ways to model cargo payment rates, town growth rates and cargo (esp passenger and mail) production rates but I am extensively using normal distribution-like functions, ie. of the form e^((-x)^2). Are these too computationally intensive for wide scale use?

Normal distribution represented by: N(x,y,z) where x is the variable, y is the mean and z is the standard deviation.

Cargo payment rates function (Fr):
Fr="distance"*"quantity"*"payment rate"*N("time",0,"perishibility")
ie. Positive half of normal distribution describes decay in value due to time.

Town growth rates (G):
G="growth factor"*"cargo per month"-"inhibition factor"
"inhibition factor"="population"*(Σ(N("distance",0,"population")-2*N("distance",0,"population"/10))
ie. Each town inhibits growth moderately close to it by a factor related to its population. Towns very close by have their growth promoted. The large rthe population of a town the larger its range of influence is and the greater its effect.

[Fallen]

Most balance problems result from aircrafts being too effective and from large railway networks being too efective. I am mostly concerned with late game. The first 10 years of play are usually ok.

Include a huge maintenance cost for bigger airports + make aircraft running cost higher. Increase the maintenance cost of great railway systems ... making them effective for medium/heavy traffic. Doing this would not be a jump but a huge leap forward in the terms of balance, heavily promoting effectives in deisgn of your tracks.

[dylf]

As we already have talked elsewere i the forum about this paradox. Is OTTD going to be "Open Industry Transport Tycoon Deluxe" or is the better of beeing the regular game where you transport goods from A to B.

IMO I would like perfer to see a more complex way of playing the game, OITTD, go on!

[Red*Star]

IMO I would like perfer to see a more complex way of playing the game, OITTD, go on!

Well, and here we go. The following text I've written on a discussion site on the OTTDwiki, and because it was partially off-topic there and because someone sent me to this thread with my ideas I will re-write them here. Maybe there are *some* things you could use for the "Economy and Balancing" project, although I know that most of it remains very complex (and I think it is either impossible to do in OTTD, or will change the WHOLE game and take a LOT of work).

To summarize it: I find the train schedule model extremely unrealistic.

Imagine a big rail network like the german one: Did you ever see a train that is sent to stations A, B, C, D and transports passengers from A to B, from B to C, C to D and D to A? What about passengers in A, do they all want to B? No, some of them want also to C and D. I know this point has already discussed (search for "passenger destinations" on the forum), but I've also got another: What about the cycle trains are sent through the network? Our trains in OTTD depart when they are full, go to the next station, unload, etc. - totally chaotic. In reality there are (normally) cycles in which trains arrive and depart at a station, e.g.:

(quoted from my first wiki text)

Code: Select all

___              ___              ___
.A  \_____B____/  C  \_________ / D
___ /          \ ___ /          \ ___

Every hour goes one train from A to D and also from D to A. Exact schedule
(there is only a one-way-track with two-way bypass at C):

Schedule of XYZTrain 5248->
A departure: x:00
B arrival:   x:14
B departure: x:15
C arrival:   x:28
C departure: x:29
D arrival:   x:49

Schedule of XYZTrain 5248<-
D departure: x:02
C arrival:   x:22
(waiting seven minutes for train 5248->)
C departure: x:29
B arrival:   x:43
B departure: x:44
A arrival:   x:58

(end of quotation)


To go more in the details here's a

(quote from my second wiki text)

I mean, in reality you never just "buy a train, give it two or more stations to serve, and let it go for it". In reality you have a huge complex of

* engines
* wagons
* stations
* switchyards
* ...*muchmore*
* and cargo to transport

and you try to combine these elements in a way they are fulfilling your transportation needs. E.g. you bring engine E from A to B, let it carry 10 container wagons to D by passing C, where 10 oil transporters are added to the train. At D you split your train in the center, you add other 5 cargo wagons to it, to transport the whole bunch to F, where the powerful engine E gives the wagons to a switching engine S, which "sorts" them in a switchyard together with other wagons. In the meanwhile E is connected with 5 empty person railway cars which are needed at city Y because another train there had a breakdown. (But just because E is so-or-so going to city Y, because there it has to do its next big transportation job.)

During all this actions dozens of other engines [and people, of course] did also their work, and because it alltogether would get a total mess if it is not planned, there exist regular and irregular (or: dynamic) /time/ schedules to avoid such a mess.

I would appreciate it if TTD would get more realistically in this way (not only with different passenger destinations and passenger timetables - that would just be a start! I mean, even an industry needs to schedule its good transportation - it's not very often as it is in TTD, that the factory produces and produces, and only if a grateful transportation corporation builds a station next to it, the goods are transported to the next processing factory), but probably that will always remain a dream.

(end of quotation)

[athanasios]

You are right. I hope you are not right in your last sentence!
It is true that these are very hard to implement. But the point of automatically adjusting the number of cars of a train according to industry production, might be something not so hard for a patcher to do. And would make the AI more clever too.

[White Rabbit]

Don't forget to alter the costs of infrastructure, like tramways, overhead wires, maglev tracks, etc.

[Tekky]

Well, and here we go. The following text I've written on a discussion site on the OTTDwiki, and because it was partially off-topic there and because someone sent me to this thread with my ideas I will re-write them here.

Hehe, I was the one who sent you here

[Expresso]

How about changing how towns grow (link to thread in suggestions forum)? Instead of a town growing around its center, it should grow around its stations. This gives the added bonus of irregular shaped towns.

[athanasios]

So the fool AI that builds an airport serving only one building will not be so fool after all?

[DaleStan]

Possibly. Provided the fool AI builds an airport that accepts passengers.

[patter]

What about (and sorry if its already been mentioned) Corporation Tax? Your company would pay a percentage of the income or profit every year to the national government, possibly with additional costs for owning land within the city (do companies pay taxto operate stations now or is that just a UK thing)

[Noldo]

Corporate Tax would need better accounting, but not technically impossible. Not sure if people would like it though.

[kilo.dollar]

I think a tax system would be good so there is an incentive of making reasonable returns, but structured maybe as follows:
First 5 years of operation = 0%
5-10 yrs = 5%
10-15 yrs = 10%
15+ yrs = 15%
To make it interesting there could be rebates for funding buildings and/or new industries. These rebates could be by way of tax rebate (you get a 2% cut of your tax rate) or maybe get 5% of amount you had "donated" off your tax bill.
Maybe have town ask for donations to expand and rather than town being against demolishing of buildings, they impose an additional tax for that, which they then use to develop other areas away from stations of those demolishing their infrastructure.
Or maybe BOOT (Build Own Operate & Transfer) Towns build their own, say, airports. We pay to land, and after sometime they then sell them to whoever can afford. Would make planes affordable early in the game.
Maybe this is too much for just a Transport game.

[MeusH]

Socialist.
I'm with flat tax rate, maximum 8%-15%. No discounts. Ever.
So, are we going to have another patch setting related to taxes?

P.S. We may add The Euro Bonus! When € is introduced, you pay 30% taxes, you are forbidden to build anything unless you bribe local authority. Local investigators no longer reveal unsuccessful bribes. The one who plants more trees wins. Everyday newspapers prompt you about global warming. You need to autorenew all your vehicles every two years. If you do bribe, you don't need to autorenew

[rav]

you forgot the new competitors with outdated vehicles, that come into the EU after the Euro was introduced also, because of this the map should grow over time