traffic prizing and train realism

[randknu]

I regularly see screenshots of TGV locomotives and eurostars hauling long coal trains.... And i think that is just stupid!

To fix this i recommend setting commodity prizes steady for commodities that does not perish over time ex. for coal, wood, oil, goods, and so on.

In real life a power plant needs a steady supply of coal, the coal will burn just as well if it's been transported over 6 months as in 2 days. Besides a TGV locomotive would not be properly geared to haul a lot of tonnage anyway so it would not be able to pull that much.

My coal trains husles along at 112 kph. even that is a bit high realisticly speaking but certainly better than 300+kph. Which is just stupid.

Also maybe limit more freight cars' speed.
Maybe a better realistic acceleration will take the gearing and drawbar pull to limit acceleration.

Many new locomotives are specified as having a huge amount of pulling power from the start. but from experience in my job as a train engineer 4 axle electrics starts slipping at around 200KN even on dry rails. even if they specify a maximum of 350KN. That's just an example but you get the idea.

[sc79]

While it may not be realistic, its obviously fun for some people, and I'd rather have the option of different play styles than be forced into a single one.

That said, try some of the other train sets (I'm using NARS2.0 atm), as they address many of the 'issues' you mentioned.
Also, just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to; you can always restrict your own trains by only using certain engines, or heavy use of the freight multiplier setting, etc. What other people do shouldn't matter, even if it might bug you

[JamieLei]

Many train sets, for example the US set, UKRS set and 2cc set do have the option of Wagon Speed limits, which you can turn off by a patch (the default setting is on). Typically, freight cars aren't allowed to go faster than about 80mph, although some of the more advanced goods wagons can go faster.

Sometimes when I play, I enable them but most players prefer the pleasure of seeing their coal trains shuttling around at 200mph and seeing how efficient they can make their network. Again, it's up to each player how he wants to play - the great thing about OpenTTD is the vast multitude of patches such that each player tunes the game into what he wants.

[belugas]

randknu, I do understand that because of your day-job, you might find that the OpenTTD reality bears little resemblance with your reality.
But remember, it is a game that is not meant to be a carbon copy of it.
Read the text in my signature, you might find more reasons for the differences.
Restricting people's game play based on realism is sure a no-win position, and no dev (i do sincerely hope so) will ever make that switch.
Some have done it in the past, but it was ... an error...

[Conditional Zenith]

Indeed, trying to make the game a clone of reality is too much work and will make the game not much fun. However just because some people whinge when something is made more realistic doesn't mean everyone hates it. There are people who play with NARS or DB set or something like that, and then set the freight multiplier somewhere in the 5-10 range. This both adds hard speed limits to cargo wagons, and means that the fast passenger engine hasn't got the power to pull heavy goods. And some people do like being able to play like that. There's also industries (see ECS and PBI) with stockpiling where you can't send all the goods of one type on the map to a single industry, which many people like. Trying to force that playstyle onto everyone else is a bad idea though.

[Ajnag]

I think one thing is interresting:

... i recommend setting commodity prizes steady for commodities that does not perish over time ex. for coal, wood, oil, goods, and so on.

As said before, it would be stupid to force players to play in this way, so it would have to be a patch option (someone interested in coding? I can't code). But it would be good for the gamers of us who like a "reality-like-painfully-hard-challenge" (or something like that )

Why I think this might help or even be fun:
Allowing some goods to be actually transported an unlimited (or much longer) time would allow to make long distance mommoth transports more profitable even with slow vehicles (especially ships).
In current games when I play with wagon speed limits, I sometimes have trains with a lenght of 40, including 2-5 engines depending on the available engines (DBset). But those trains make no mammoth income, even if trans are traveling the whole distance of the map, unload, reload and travel back again (no empty run).
But if I disable the speed limits, the income for those trains jumps from around 100k p.a. to about 10.000k p.a.. And that is with the same annual delivery of non-expiring-goods, just because they travel twice as fast.

Ships make almost NO money at all (even using cargo modifier for ships) on those distances. On a map with huge oceans and several small islands, it is in any game far more profitable to build bridges for trains that cost several billions, instead of building ships hauling 10k t.
Some may build only planes in such case, in a "real" economy that would be suicidal for the air-traffic.
That said I love ships, but I don't use them in OTTD, since they are almost useless (in terms of making profits).

I understand the resistance against the urge for more realism in OTTD, but I love the option to patch it that way.

[DaleStan]

... i recommend setting commodity prizes steady for commodities that does not perish over time ex. for coal, wood, oil, goods, and so on.

As said before, it would be stupid to force players to play in this way, so it would have to be a patch option

That wouldn't work. GRFs can control cargo payment rates, so a GRF would have to be written to make this happen.

[Ajnag]

ok, in any way, thanks for thinking this over.

If it is a grf or a patch, I would not care. Maybe i n summer, if I hae time, I might learn to code a grf, but until then... If no one else will do it or is interested, I just wait.

[Jarekexe]

I agree about the coal thing - the price should not decrease with time as this material doesn't get any worse with time. Same with iron, oil? Don't know about the wood?

And regarding realism, iv'e got only one thing to say (show):

http://pics.nase-bohren.de/reality.jpg

[Conditional Zenith]

And regarding realism, iv'e got only one thing to say (show):

http://pics.nase-bohren.de/reality.jpg

We've had that one before

[michael blunck]

I regularly see screenshots of TGV locomotives and eurostars hauling long coal trains.... And i think that is just stupid!

Such things are indeed horrible. Even for a "game".

To fix this i recommend setting commodity prizes steady for commodities that does not perish over time ex. for coal, wood, oil, goods, and so on.
In real life a power plant needs a steady supply of coal, the coal will burn just as well if it's been transported over 6 months as in 2 days.

AFAIK, this is already the case in original TTD. At least to a certain degree. Delivery prices for cargoes like coal or iron ore are decreasing only by a small degree over time, in comparison to prices for food or goods.

IMO, a small decrease for raw material prices makes sense, because even the most patient consignee wants to receive his order one day or the other. Moreover, the game needs variable delivery prices to enable some sort of "competition" or "assessment".

Besides a TGV locomotive would not be properly geared to haul a lot of tonnage anyway so it would not be able to pull that much.

My coal trains husles along at 112 kph. even that is a bit high realisticly speaking but certainly better than 300+kph. Which is just stupid.

Also maybe limit more freight cars' speed.
Maybe a better realistic acceleration will take the gearing and drawbar pull to limit acceleration.

All this can be achieved by using a custom train set implementing proper tractive effort for locomotives and speed limits for freight wagons. I´ve set up such a set (the DB set) already 4 years ago for TTDPatch which, already at that time, included a realistic kinematic model for train movement, speedlimits for wagons, and weight multipliers to simulate long freight trains even on a limited network. Today, most of this should be also achievable in OTTD, but o/c not with the original train vehicles.

Many new locomotives are specified as having a huge amount of pulling power from the start. but from experience in my job as a train engineer 4 axle electrics starts slipping at around 200KN even on dry rails. even if they specify a maximum of 350KN. That's just an example but you get the idea.

Well, in locomotive design for train sets, I usually take the max starting tractive effort and the hourly max power into calculation (data from manufacturers or railway companies). However, the calculation cannot be as exact as the real life behaviour, mostly due to the actual state of the rails, or other small parameters of train kinematics which have been omitted from the kinematic model.

I agree about the coal thing - the price should not decrease with time as this material doesn't get any worse with time. Same with iron, oil? Don't know about the wood?

Prices of cargo don´t decrease with time. It´s the delivery prices which go down if the time for delivery takes too long. This isn´t only "realistic" (in that way that in so-called "reality" delivery prices would also drop if delivery takes too long), but it´s a quite natural game feature.

regards
Michael