here are my 2cents:
Balancing the gameplay in terms of economy:
- first I have to state that I realy like this idea, and I thought about it when I played TTD.
- I read somewhere that TT is building game, at therefore it is not supposed to have economy model close to reality, but instead economy model that supports the building process. I agree only partialy, as I think that there could be a parameter "hard economy" just like game settings (easy/medium/hard)
What is "hard economy"?
- expencive terraforming, and I mean expencive with big "E". Even if you are a multimilionare you have to think if you are going to chop down the hills.
- expensive road/rail construction : this would force you to reuse the same road/rail by several vehicles/trains. Now it is about how fast can you build separate tracks for every train to minimize traffic jam, but I prefer to have more complex and sofisticated solution.
- higher road/rail maitanance costs : if one train on one track makes more money than maitanance costs of everything (rail, station, train, wagoons, and interest from loan needed to build/buy this) than there is no need for "cutting down the costs". But when you calculate that you need to have at least 3 trains on the same track to start making money, then you will probably do it.
- difference between road and rail costs - for shorter distances it should be better to use road vehicles. Together with previous two points this could lead to rail and road combination, not directly connecting everything to main rail line. The difference could be based on how fast you can get your money back from investment - prefering road building (together with city roads reussage and lower construction costs and maitanance costs of vehicle stations/depos)
- one big advantage for road transport could be made by placing roads between cities in process of map generation (random or customer made)
- airports are also problem - I read somwhere here that in multiplayer games on big maps everyone uses only air transport. We would probably have to raise costs and maitanance of airfields and airplanes even more, compared to higher rail/road costs from previous points. Also coal transport by air should be elimanated...
- ships should became an alternative to trains/airplanes in high distance transport. While not cheap to buy, they should have lower maitanance costs than planes, and virtualy no construction costs.
There are some realy interesting posts in thos thread, is there any list of sugestions with status? The .pdf file in first post is being updated?
I feel that I'm little lost here in OpenTTD, I don't understand the concept of patches. I will download and play(test) the new build and enjoy TT
In this thread we are discussing about Economy and Balancing or am I wrong? Many issues are brought on the table. Whoever has an itch to fix something in a temporary way immediately, is free to do so. Me no.
