more consistent vehicle group management

[sulai]

I have worked out a concept on how to make the group management more consistent to the game, and how to extend the capabilities of groups. Because the better the group handling, the better and more convenient you can mange a huge amount of vehicles.

So there are groups now where you can put your vehicles in.

What about computer-generated groups that contain vehicles that match the same properties, like

• use the same station
• have the same shared orders
• match the same vehicle property (age, profit, reliability, ...)

[*]are on the same network

This would help a lot managing large amounts of vehicles. Some examples:

• use "replace" on all vehicles that have a certain age and machine type
• profit last year of all vehicles in a group

A detailed, picture-illustrated concept for this feature suggestion can be found here: http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php?title ... ehicleList

What do you think about it?

[Diadem]

Seems like a very good idea. I heartily second this!

I usually end up manually adding trains to groups based on stations. An lot of work with 1000+ trains! And because I group like that I can't group anymore based on other properties, such as type of resource carried.

If this were added it would thus not only save me a lot of time, but also allow to group in other, also useful, ways.

[Yexo]

Very good idea. I'll see if I can write a patch for this, but don't expect anything before next week.

[sulai]

I heavily reworked this Idea. It covers networks and user defined groups, which is much more powerful yet harder to implement.

http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/User: ... ehicleList

Yexo, I like your engagement

[Yexo]

One of the main problems I can think of now, is the following. You have a Kriby Paul Tank train in Group 1 and Group 2. Be that standard groups, user-defined gruops, stations groups, whatever. Now you set autoreplace for vehicles in group 1 from Kriby to Chaney 'Jubilee' and autoreplace for group 2 from Kriby to Ginzu 'A4'. The vehicle enters a depot, to what type should it be replaced? Or should autoreplace be remembered per vehicle, and only the last autoreplace order being considered (that is, as soon as you set the autoreplace order for group 2 it overwrites the autoreplace for vehicles that are in both group 1 and group 2).

[sulai]

(...) or should autoreplace be remembered per vehicle, and only the last autoreplace order being considered (that is, as soon as you set the autoreplace order for group 2 it overwrites the autoreplace for vehicles that are in both group 1 and group 2).

I would prefer this idea!

I just added your concept to the wiki page:

• Slightly change the autoreplace behavior: first, there is no global auto replace. If you want to replace all trains you choose the group "all trains". Second, all vehicles in a group are "assigned" to be replaced by a certain machine when using the "replace" command. This means: giving the replace command to vehicles in a group overwrites their current replace-assignment. Because of this you can replace the same vehicle type (eg "Kirby Paul Tank") by different machines types just because they are in different groups.

Another idea which would be easier to implement: allow "global autoreplace" and enable "protect from global auto replace" only to the category "groups" (or "tagged vehicles"). They have the same behavior like groups have right now in V0.6.0. Anyway I like the first idea better

[Daz]

I agree with the idea. What i wish for is sub catagories in the groups, for example:

City 1:
-Buses
-Planes
-Trains:
--Passengers
--Goods

[Yexo]

First patch is attached here. It allows you to place vehicles in more than one group. There are still some problems:
1) If autoreplace for an engine is set in two or more groups the vehicle is in, it'll pick a random one (actually it'll pick the one from the group you put the vehicle in first, be you can't know which one that is).
2) You can create infinite autoreplace loops, set group 1 from kirby -> ginzu and group 2 from ginzu -> kirby. Now add a kirby train to both groups. As soon as it enters a depot, il'll be replaced with a ginzu. The next time it enters a depot, it'll be replaces with a kriby, etc.
3) There is no way to remove a vehicle from a group except "Remove all vehicles from group"

The next things to code:
- Add proper autoreplace support: I'll store the engine to autoreplace in the vehicle instead of the group, so the last autoreplace order you give will be in effect.
- Add a remove vehicle from group button.
- Change the vehicle management window to not only be able to show groups, but also stations/shared orders.
- Allow autoreplace on station/shared orders groups.

Edit: forgot to attach the patch.

[sulai]

Hey Yexo,

Great work so far! Keep on it!

Did you have a look at the "user defined auto-group" concept on the wiki page? I think this is worth being implemented. I also put a lot of "transport network group" stuff there, but it's probably too hard to implement.

Greetings!

[Yexo]

Hey Yexo,

Great work so far! Keep on it!

Did you have a look at the "user defined auto-group" concept on the wiki page? I think this is worth being implemented. I also put a lot of "transport network group" stuff there, but it's probably too hard to implement.

Greetings!

Yep, I've seen it. But it is a little too much work now. For that, I'll first have to update my progtammable waypoints patch (actually rewrite nearly all of it) and use the rule system from that patch. The network-group stuff is way too complicated to implement proper.

[sulai]

I just worked out some mile stones.

Yexo, Your patch allows the trains to be placed on many groups. I like it, but I would like to have the old group behavior, too. The solution: create the categories "tagged groups" and "multi groups". Where tagged groups behave like those we know from 0.6.0 and multi groups behave like those from your patch. Categories contain groups and can be selected by that dropdown menu I proposed.

- Add a remove vehicle from group button.

Why not just ungroup vehicles by dragging them to the "ungrouped vehicles" group? Its most intuitive.

Please have a look at that "road map". I would like to hear your opinions. You can also change the wiki page (click on edit) to add your additional notes.

[sulai]

Hey guys.. have a look at these screenshots / patch: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... &start=160

[init]

If you are into group management, I have another suggestion: Make it easier to add vehicles to a group. I just found the ability to add all vehicles that share orders into one group, and that is really useful. However, sometimes I want to create groups of very many vehicles that do not share orders, but doing that for hundreds of vehicles isn't really feasible, since it amounts to dragging and dropping each vehicle into each group. That can hardly be done speedily, quite the opposite, especially since the group list font is so small. You are likely prone to drop vehicles in the wrong group after dragging a couple of dozen into a group.

It would be much more handy to be able to e.g. click "Create group from selected...", and then just click each vehicle once to add it to the new group. It's still a lot of clicks, but I'd highly prefer many clicks instead of many drag-drops.

Another suggestion, and this should be pretty straight-forward to add, is to just add a "Create new group from all ungrouped..." button. Since you're usually building one route at a time, this would be an easy way to make a group of all vehicles when the route is completed. Combined with the "Add all shared" that is already in the game, this would make group management infinitely easier.

And finally, some group statistics would be useful, such as number of vehicles as well as profit this and last year. The latter two are already shown in the vehicle list of the selected group, so it should amount to a simple sum of those for all vehicles in the list. The former is just a count of all entries in the vehicle list.