Re: Suggestions for long standing game issues.
Posted: 19 Mar 2023 07:02
And with that said, let's keep this discussion focused on the suggestion and not the individuals posting, keep your passions in check.
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As I know this applies to Station rating, not industry and contrary to appearances, this is not as illogical as it might seem. It's not perfect, but the impact of speed on the rating makes sense. I admit that I also thought about a similar solution, where the speed would have some impact but with taking into account the maximum speed in the current period, but... it would cause other problems. The basic one is transport efficiency in the early years - it is low. In that case, if production levels could be easily increased in the early years, you would have to use a huge number of vehicles - that would look bad and spoil the fun, because instead of developing more connections, the player would focus on one or only few, where production is growing so fast that the entire focuses only on that. In my opinion, in the case of the base game, this element should rather not be changed, and if so, the change should be more comprehensively thought out. This is not a question of dogma, but of specific reservations.
I don't consider the proportionally higher cost of road vehicles a disadvantage. I believe this is appropriate because building roads and sending vehicles over them is much simpler than building railroads. If you changed this balance, building railroads would no longer be look as profitable, and the game would lose more than it would gain. But indeed, perhaps some adjustment in favor of road vehicles would not be a bad thing. Perhaps it would be worth considering adding something like an "Improved default vehicles costs balance" option. Such an option could introduce changes not only in the case of road vehicles, but also other vehicles, and above all aircraft, whose balance is currently definitely broken. With this option will be possible to fix the poor original balance, but without replacing it which I believe is the main argument against any change on this issue.
the general problem here is, how do you differentiate cargos with very few destinations (say, wood to saw mill) vs. cargo with lots of destinations (say, goods)LaChupacabra wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 00:47 a change I'd like to see is to add the effect of the number of transport directions when cargodist is enabled
it's currently generally viewed that we have too many optionssomething like an "Improved default vehicles costs balance" option.
LaChupacabra wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 00:47 Being on the topic of the station rating, a change I'd like to see is to add the effect of the number of transport directions when cargodist is enabled - if the player offers more destinations, the station rating would be correspondingly higher (+10%? +20%?). This would make the construction of a network of connections economically sensible, which currently, unfortunately, it is not at all.
I think what's being suggested here is to take into account the number of destination stations that are already identified as such by the Cargodist algorithm. (For cargo types that aren't managed by Cargodist, this boost shouldn't apply either.) I don't see why it would impose additional computation costs.
I don't see the problem here. The stations already have separate ratings for different cargo types; transporting one type to multiple destinations would boost the station rating for that cargo only, without affecting the other types.
I totally agree with this point of view. However, changing the balance of default vehicles doesn't require changes to the core game; it can be implemented as an add-on.LaChupacabra wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 00:47 I don't consider the proportionally higher cost of road vehicles a disadvantage. I believe this is appropriate because building roads and sending vehicles over them is much simpler than building railroads. If you changed this balance, building railroads would no longer be look as profitable, and the game would lose more than it would gain. But indeed, perhaps some adjustment in favor of road vehicles would not be a bad thing. Perhaps it would be worth considering adding something like an "Improved default vehicles costs balance" option. Such an option could introduce changes not only in the case of road vehicles, but also other vehicles, and above all aircraft, whose balance is currently definitely broken. With this option will be possible to fix the poor original balance, but without replacing it which I believe is the main argument against any change on this issue.
You know. I kind of agree. This is an issue in Transport Fever - where there are no ratings - and you can get swamped by production in 1850-1920 period with no means to really handle the traffic. The solution I am considering there ( provided I'll return to modding it ) is to make the production grow with time. Currently - source industries produce 400 flat rate ( provided no mods ), while I think that starting at 100 and growing towards 400 in later game would work better.LaChupacabra wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 00:47 It's not perfect, but the impact of speed on the rating makes sense. I admit that I also thought about a similar solution, where the speed would have some impact but with taking into account the maximum speed in the current period, but... it would cause other problems. The basic one is transport efficiency in the early years - it is low. In that case, if production levels could be easily increased in the early years, you would have to use a huge number of vehicles - that would look bad and spoil the fun, because instead of developing more connections, the player would focus on one or only few, where production is growing so fast that the entire focuses only on that. In my opinion, in the case of the base game, this element should rather not be changed, and if so, the change should be more comprehensively thought out. This is not a question of dogma, but of specific reservations.
I strongly disagree. The current situation is that of RVs becoming 'worse' as technology progresses and they start as worse in the first place. I also don't get why adding another viable option would make people forget about trains in the first place. On top of that - RVs have their own disadvantages - like dealing with traffic and congestion which can't easily be remedied. Try a game with some of the aggresive AI ( like AAhogx ), force them to use RVs only and see chaos happen.I don't consider the proportionally higher cost of road vehicles a disadvantage. I believe this is appropriate because building roads and sending vehicles over them is much simpler than building railroads. If you changed this balance, building railroads would no longer be look as profitable, and the game would lose more than it would gain. But indeed, perhaps some adjustment in favor of road vehicles would not be a bad thing. Perhaps it would be worth considering adding something like an "Improved default vehicles costs balance" option. Such an option could introduce changes not only in the case of road vehicles, but also other vehicles, and above all aircraft, whose balance is currently definitely broken. With this option will be possible to fix the poor original balance, but without replacing it which I believe is the main argument against any change on this issue.
why'd you bring that up? i have about a dozen ideas about this, but it would be highly off topic.
i think the smooth economy is paid very little attention because most industry NewGRFs will disable this mechanic. And since this is a mechanic introduced by OpenTTD, it won't be subject of the same "don't mess with the base set" mindset as fiddling with the default vehicles. So if you have suggestions here you might actually get anywhere.the smooth industries increase all the time by a bit. In a way - the old style 2x production was, in fact, better in that regard.
i agree, my suggestion in this area is that industries that belong to towns without any company rating will enter a "frozen" state. currently, industries have a 5 year protection period from game start (or industry creation), this countdown should only start if the associated town has had any company interacting with it.Second of all - I'm not an AI. On a large enough map, or dense enough, when one develops one part of a map, the undeveloped part tends to wither away and it is a major annoyance to bring it up to full production.
One potential problem with this approach is that it gives less incentives to suddenly move to another corner of the map. A random industry somewhere you've never been increasing production can often be a trigger for making that place interesting to start building. That's part of what makes the game fun IMHO.Eddi wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 21:46 i agree, my suggestion in this area is that industries that belong to towns without any company rating will enter a "frozen" state. currently, industries have a 5 year protection period from game start (or industry creation), this countdown should only start if the associated town has had any company interacting with it.
In order not to go offtopic...Eddi wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 10:01the general problem here is, how do you differentiate cargos with very few destinations (say, wood to saw mill) vs. cargo with lots of destinations (say, goods)LaChupacabra wrote: ↑24 Mar 2023 00:47 a change I'd like to see is to add the effect of the number of transport directions when cargodist is enabled
counting the potential destinations may be a computationally expensive task.
If the problem is mainly to revive an almost bankrupt industry, why do you want to change the whole mechanism instead of focusing on what you think is the problem?
This was my first post and the first of ideas I presented on this forum. In details it could look different, but in general the possibilities would be similar to those available in the window of local authorities of the city.uzurpator wrote: ↑26 Mar 2023 11:23 I also think that It might be sensible to have an equivalent of the "Do you want to purchase" bankrupt companies for industries. Something like "Flefinbridge sawmill is looking for an investor to reinvigorate the company. Do you want to invest $$$$$" after which the industry will increase production by some random amount.
TL:DR: Because now I understand that the problem is the algorithm itself, and it being based on compound percentages.LaChupacabra wrote: ↑26 Mar 2023 17:19 If the problem is mainly to revive an almost bankrupt industry, why do you want to change the whole mechanism instead of focusing on what you think is the problem?
Why not just increase the chance of production growth when it is low but it is served?
As a separate economy type setting: Why not! While I think the enterprises shutdown acceleration element is a bad idea (quickly clearing the map or too often changing on the map), overall gameplay with lower levels of production can be quite interesting.