Suggestions commonly asked for

[Bad_Brett]

Alright, I have a few things on my wishlist, and I figured it would be best to post them here, without starting a new thread...

Map Generation:

• (NML) Probabilities for i.e houses are confusing. Houses with no tile_check and p=1 will always be much more common than houses with p=15 and a basic tile_check, such as "must be next to a road". My guess is that the game picks, let's say, 10 tiles for the first house and 150 tiles for the second house and does the tile_check only after that. At the moment, you basically have to set the probability to 15 for every house with a tile_check if you want to see them in-game.

Roads:

• Certain road types (not available to the player) can only be build in certain town zones. At the moment, when a new road type becomes available, cities will mostly build them while expanding, so you end up with dirt paths next to skyscrapers and paved road next to sheds.

Stations:

• Basically any property that makes stations different, such as:
  • Cost
  • Cargo capacity
  • Cargo payment
  • Cargo ageing
  • Coverage

Trains:

• Curve speed mod for 45 degree curves

New Objects:

• Ability to disable foundations (i.e modifying terrain causes objects to be removed rather than placed on foundations)

• Ability to hide new objects from the minimap (i.e eye candy such as animals that are auto-dozed)

• Ability to randomly spawn new objects (i.e animals after dozing a large area)

[jfs]

You'll have to expand on the "Curve speed mod for 45 degree curves" thing, and how it differs from the "realistic" acceleration model setting for the game, and the "tilting" flag for trains in NewGRF (property 27 bit 0).

[Wahazar]

Roads:
Certain road types (not available to the player) can only be build in certain town zones. At the moment, when a new road type becomes available, cities will mostly build them while expanding, so you end up with dirt paths next to skyscrapers and paved road next to sheds.

I agree. My proposal is here:
viewtopic.php?p=1249960#p1249960

[Bad_Brett]

You'll have to expand on the "Curve speed mod for 45 degree curves" thing, and how it differs from the "realistic" acceleration model setting for the game, and the "tilting" flag for trains in NewGRF (property 27 bit 0).

Ok... Since I've mostly worked with nml, my knowledge about the core game mechanics are pretty basic, so forgive me if I'm completely off... But my understanding is:

- Tilt flag gives a 20% speed bonus in curves (not very useful in most cases)
- The new nml variable "curve_speed_mod" is great, but only works on 90 degree curves (i.e when there's a 90 degree difference between the engine an the last wagon... correct me if I'm wrong)
- Realistic acceleration [kind of] does what I'm looking for, but affects _all_ engines

So basically, there are three main properties that affect an engine's performance: Speed, power and tractive effort.

Things like purchase cost, running cost, reliability decay and even length come in to play as well, but in my opinion, not enough to actually make a big difference. Being able to tweak the curve speed loss för each engine would be another cool property to make the engines more unique.

Ideally, I would like to able to set a max speed. I.e:

4-4-0 American
Max speed: 50 mph
Max curve speed: 50 mph

2-6-2 Prairie
Max speed: 60 mph
Max curve speed 20 mph

I think this could lead to some interesting gameplay choices. I mean, the Prairie surely looks the better option, but on a track with many curves, the penalty could really hurt. The player would also get an incentive to improve existing tracks and perhaps invest in a tunnel and so on.

[Eddi]

on the problem of curves:

currently, a single 45° turn counts as "straight track". so does an S-bend (45° in one direction, and 45° in the other direction).

the reason for this is that these are very common track layouts, and penalising them with no way of mitigation doesn't create good gameplay. in the original acceleration model, where every elevation change would grind the trains to a halt, no matter how much power you throw at them, the only optimal solution is a completely flat network. by introducing a flat curve speed, you're recreating the same problem, where you build only straight lines.

in order for curve speed to be a useful addition, you need game mechanics for wider curve radius, switches, etc. and these are difficult to model in a grid-based world

[skc]

in order for curve speed to be a useful addition, you need game mechanics for wider curve radius, switches, etc. and these are difficult to model in a grid-based world

In Locomotion you could specify different curve radii, but the track construction method is/was significantly different. I don't know how you'd be able to merge the Locomotion-style curves into the TT-style of track placement, without significantly crowding the construction interface.

[ChooChooTrain]

Something I have wanted for a long time.

It might stir up some controversy.

But in programming you often get help from the machine writing boilerplate-code. That is the basic stuff you always need te get something working.

In OpenTTD I would like some kind of template so I can place farm-stations with a few mouseclicks, and I could focus on the fun stuff- solving the bigger puzzles.

I find myself building a lot of similar stations to get serve the farms and it is repetitive, and takes the fun out of the game.
The fun is in solving the bigger puzzles, connecting main lines, adapting to the land. Not in building 30 identical farm-stations.

In my ideal OpenTTD I could select something I have built, save it as a template, and then clone it later at another location.

[odisseus]

The idea is already quite old, and there have been several attempts to provide this functionality (this one is probably the most recent).