Design Document Comments

[aarona]

I've compiled a list of things in the DD which either need clarification, expansion from a programming perspective or other features which are possible.

The danger is we come up with a game which is realistic and sensible but not playable because its too boring, or far too complicated without any sense of cohesion.

NOTE: The author of this list does not necessarily believe in all of these ideas, but believes that they are (realistically) possible and might be attractive to a particular audience.

1.2 Basic Agreements
Time in seconds

Should there be two categories
a. Time in seconds - for reference to "real" times
b. Time in days - for reference to "game" times


1.3 Configuration
The Game is configured via a set of spreadsheets.

This section should be updated to reflect the decision made at the meeting of 15/6/06, namely that we will now be using Lua to define the game configurations.


1.4 Folder Structure
TE-conf-industry-entities

I don't really understand what this is supposed to be.

If some directories only will contain one file, perhaps it can just be included in its parent directory.


1.5 Scale

[Example: My home city of Perth, Australia has 1.5 million people in 5,386 km^2 (73kmx73km if it were square). ]

I think we need to play with the idea of scale to reflect game scaling and model scaling. For example we know in real life there are trains with almost hundred carriages, and in TT this would almost reach the next town.

I dont think we should go with a perfect scaled model, we need to keep the "gameness" about it.

The whole, "well lets just have bigger maps" is good in theory, but in practise we should have competition for resources/industries, and we need to remember the bigger the map, the more the memory it eats up and we need to make sure our servers can handle x frames per second updates.


1.6 Sets, groups, random choice
Groups

Form lists based on the same cargo. Hence when you look at the list of all Coal hoppers you wont then need to refit. It will already be done when purchasing.


2.1 Size

<rant>
65536x65536x1 short = 4.3 GIG!
Please think realistically people, this is 256 times the length of one TT map, SQUARED!

If we implement this then we are not programming properly.
Besides, it would take aaaaaages to create a random map.
</rant>


2.4 Rivers

What does it mean that ships can travel in rivers if maximum slope is 0,1%? (What about locks?)
Also some large ships should not be allowed to go into "shallow" rivers.


2.5 Terrain Types

Are we going to go as far as to say that river-front land in cities are worth much much more than in the middle of a desert say?


Chapter 3

If its deleted, then delete it
And reorder it in the process.


4.1 to 4.4

<no_offence>This whole sections needs to be *properly* thought out.</no_offence>
Not just from the set creators point of view (static data) but the programmers point of view (static and dynamic data).

I suggest using TTD + Patch as a basis and then adding onto that (the Wiki of set-creating is a good place to start).


4.5 Cargo Class - Raw materials

In RT2 they have "catalyst" materials such as fertilizer which, when added to a farm (a primary industry) produces more grain, should we go for something like this?


4.11 Route Planning

We need a forum on this and a decision on the best way forward. The three options are a good basis for moving forward with discussion.


5.1-5.5 Industries...

Again, this section falls under the same category as 4.1 to 4.4.
However the descriptions in this category are more specific.


5.4 Industries...

Should industries represent a higher order economic model? Should we go for, higher production -> more jobs -> more town growth in a direct sense (ie factory has profits of 1.1 million) or abstract sense

(ie factory outputted 500 cars -> high level of growth).

Local "invisible" transport competitors. Cut our profits, ensure industry might not go bankrupt which otherwise might lead to massive job losses.

This factors into economic booms on a national (invisible) level but has local effects too.

This could perhaps be in the "fluctuating" economy type-model.


5.6 Seaports

Massive seaports in big cities could be of major importance for economy, ie exporting iron ore to China and getting back cheap steel


5.8 Local Authorities

Local - but what about State and Federal? Can over-rule Local decisions with lobbying, or good cause.

Example State govt wants goods connection from A to B but A doesn't like you but has no choice. (revenge )

This also removes the moral debate of bribes (if any exists?!?) while keeping a back-door open away from building billions of trees.


6.3 Track - Grades

2m - 4% -> 2m in 50m


6.4 Tracks - Switches

Disasters: Sabotage -> Derailment?


6.5 Tracks - Curves

Disasters: Speed limits, stupid drivers -> Derailment?


6.6 Tracks - Signals

Different eras have different signals, thus we cant expect the early 1900's to have sophisticated control mechanisms for high traffic lines. I'm not just talking about sempohores but the ability to communicate with the next switch house, or traffic signal. (We don't need specific definition but perhaps an abstract model such as signal lag)


6.8 Stations - General

Stations can have signals in them, thus one double length platform can support two trains.

Stations can have designated platforms, which can be separated by signals.

Trains can have lines (names, numbers, letters, colours) these can be assigned platforms at stations.
This also goes for the discussion relating to vehicular scheduling.


6.9 Stations - Platforms

Platforms for industry cannot be used for passengers and vice-versa.


6.10 Stations - Movement

We need to ensure that *MU's do not enter a depot with passegers!


7.4 Roads - Intersections

Trafic signals
Possbile car-truck or truck-truck crashes


11.1 Reliability

Need a mathematical formula for interpolation.
What does 2% chance of a breakdown mean?
2% per year, per day, per frame?

New model max reliability should have mathematical formula too.


11.2 Life Span

The reliability can be linked to how many of that kind you have. For example, if you have many of one type of train then you will have many engineers who know how to service that model properly hence it will be more reliable than an old train which no one knows what to do with.

Naturally you cant flog a dead horse...


11.3 Wrecks

Grade crossing can be separated into City and Country. City has boom gates or whatnot, country may

only have signage (depending on state rules and regulations + costs).

RV's with full loads in a crash are more damaging. eg oil truck crash with train transporting

explosives -> big boom!


12.1 Stock Market

Depending on the financial accuracy of the game the stock market could consist of industrial/commercial companies you supply to (is this conflict of interest or insider trading).
Again this is a higher order modelling, something which people may or may not be interested in.


12.5 Fares

We need to ensure diagonal to diagonal fast train services are avoided (i.e. transporting top value goods the furthest distance). ie Industry favours cheaper services.


12.8 Ratings - city

Loyalty bonuses, such as first company to connect city A to B.


General comments:

With some games you can spend most of your time doing boring things like updating old stuff.

Proposal
- Do nothing
Gradually lose profits

- Do minimal
Keep profit levels constant, but dip with competition etc.

- Continue expanding
Profit goes up but it gets harder

- Replan, renetwork, "smart" play
The goal!


Flame away...

[XeryusTC]

I've compiled a list of things in the DD which either need clarification, expansion from a programming perspective or other features which are possible.

The danger is we come up with a game which is realistic and sensible but not playable because its too boring, or far too complicated without any sense of cohesion.

NOTE: The author of this list does not necessarily believe in all of these ideas, but believes that they are (realistically) possible and might be attractive to a particular audience.

1.2 Basic Agreements
Time in seconds

Should there be two categories
a. Time in seconds - for reference to "real" times
b. Time in days - for reference to "game" times


1.3 Configuration
The Game is configured via a set of spreadsheets.

This section should be updated to reflect the decision made at the meeting of 15/6/06, namely that we will now be using Lua to define the game configurations.

A settings file will probably look something like this then, the file used in this example is an actual configure file for TRoS.

1.4 Folder Structure
TE-conf-industry-entities

I don't really understand what this is supposed to be.

If some directories only will contain one file, perhaps it can just be included in its parent directory.

This means which sub folders the main TE folder will use, it could contain the following folder structure (note: this is only for people that don't have the DD, the mockup in the DD is different):

Code: Select all

bin  // Contains executable files
data
  trains  // Contains information about trains, new train sets will also be added to this directory
  road vehicles // Same as "trains" but then for RVs
  // Other directories here
src  // Only available when you download from CVS?

This should be defined good as TE has to know where it needs to look for game files.

1.5 Scale

[Example: My home city of Perth, Australia has 1.5 million people in 5,386 km^2 (73kmx73km if it were square). ]

I think we need to play with the idea of scale to reflect game scaling and model scaling. For example we know in real life there are trains with almost hundred carriages, and in TT this would almost reach the next town.

I dont think we should go with a perfect scaled model, we need to keep the "gameness" about it.

The whole, "well lets just have bigger maps" is good in theory, but in practise we should have competition for resources/industries, and we need to remember the bigger the map, the more the memory it eats up and we need to make sure our servers can handle x frames per second updates.

Map size isn't only defined by it's X and Y size, but also by the amount of industries/towns.
The scale of TE will be very easy to edit as we can resize the 3D models, this would enable us to have a TTD scale, a real life scale or something in between, the player would be able to pick the scale he/she prefers.

1.6 Sets, groups, random choice
Groups

Form lists based on the same cargo. Hence when you look at the list of all Coal hoppers you wont then need to refit. It will already be done when purchasing.

We could have a LoMo like system, a wagon accepts multiple goods and you can define what it picks up when you give the orders. It won't cost the player money to do this.

2.1 Size

<rant>
65536x65536x1 short = 4.3 GIG!
Please think realistically people, this is 256 times the length of one TT map, SQUARED!

If we implement this then we are not programming properly.
Besides, it would take aaaaaages to create a random map.
</rant>

Having something that is 4GB is a bit useless, no one wants to have such big maps. This size would only be viable when we have a multi server system, every server could store a 8196x8196 (or bigger) part of the map and you will only be connected to one server at the time.

2.3 Water
We probable want the user to choose a minimum water height, some player might want to play without water but want to have a very mountainious map, other might want to play with only a few isles although the seas can be very deep so building bridges is very expensive

2.4 Rivers

What does it mean that ships can travel in rivers if maximum slope is 0,1%? (What about locks?)
Also some large ships should not be allowed to go into "shallow" rivers.

Rivers can be sloped a little as water flows down. If the gradient is >0.1% then you would have to use locks.

2.5 Terrain Types

Are we going to go as far as to say that river-front land in cities are worth much much more than in the middle of a desert say?

Terraforming should be more expensive in an artic climate then in a temperate climate. Artic should have big hills and mountains and players should terraform a way through them.

4.1 to 4.4

<no_offence>This whole sections needs to be *properly* thought out.</no_offence>
Not just from the set creators point of view (static data) but the programmers point of view (static and dynamic data).

I suggest using TTD + Patch as a basis and then adding onto that (the Wiki of set-creating is a good place to start).

I agree with this, although some things are thought out quite good (like 4.4).

4.5 Cargo Class - Raw materials

In RT2 they have "catalyst" materials such as fertilizer which, when added to a farm (a primary industry) produces more grain, should we go for something like this?

It could add A LOT to gameplay, I think that it is a good idea

4.10 Warehouses
If this is going to be implemted then we might want to have a maximum amount of cargo that a normal platform can store, this would force players to use warehouses.

4.11 Route Planning

We need a forum on this and a decision on the best way forward. The three options are a good basis for moving forward with discussion.

I agree, there are some nice ideas in the DD but maybe we can think of better ways.

5.4 Industries...

Should industries represent a higher order economic model? Should we go for, higher production -> more jobs -> more town growth in a direct sense (ie factory has profits of 1.1 million) or abstract sense

(ie factory outputted 500 cars -> high level of growth).

Local "invisible" transport competitors. Cut our profits, ensure industry might not go bankrupt which otherwise might lead to massive job losses.

This factors into economic booms on a national (invisible) level but has local effects too.

This could perhaps be in the "fluctuating" economy type-model.


5.6 Seaports

Massive seaports in big cities could be of major importance for economy, ie exporting iron ore to China and getting back cheap steel

We could have inter-server exchange: a player (player A) wants to sell cargo to another player (Player B) on another server (they don't know that they both want it). The server of player A (server A) sends a message to the masterserver that someone sells cargo to another player. The masterserver sends this message to all connected servers and players could see this message, to avoid irritation players should request it first, this could just be checking an option in one of the many GUI windows. If the masterserver finds a buying player (player B) then the player can discuss a price and start selling cargo to each other.
Note: this is just a quick thought, it needs to be worked out correctly.

5.8 Local Authorities

Local - but what about State and Federal? Can over-rule Local decisions with lobbying, or good cause.

Example State govt wants goods connection from A to B but A doesn't like you but has no choice. (revenge )

This also removes the moral debate of bribes (if any exists?!?) while keeping a back-door open away from building billions of trees.

I don't think a state or federal authority would be needed, having authorities overrule each other isn't a good idea IMHO.

6.4 Tracks - Switches

Disasters: Sabotage -> Derailment?


6.5 Tracks - Curves

Disasters: Speed limits, stupid drivers -> Derailment?

Disasters are a good idea .

6.6 Tracks - Signals

Different eras have different signals, thus we cant expect the early 1900's to have sophisticated control mechanisms for high traffic lines. I'm not just talking about sempohores but the ability to communicate with the next switch house, or traffic signal. (We don't need specific definition but perhaps an abstract model such as signal lag)

You mean that you will later get something like long distance pre-signals, a train could change it's path 2 junctions ahead if it's route is blocked/going to be blocked by another train?

6.8 Stations - General

Stations can have signals in them, thus one double length platform can support two trains.

Stations can have designated platforms, which can be separated by signals.

Trains can have lines (names, numbers, letters, colours) these can be assigned platforms at stations.
This also goes for the discussion relating to vehicular scheduling.

Station numbers/names/letters/colours could be usefull if you use different platform lenghts, you could set a train to prefer only one of just a few platforms and it will try to go to one of those platforms first end try another platform that isn't in the list when one of the prefered platforms isn't available.

11.1 Reliability

Need a mathematical formula for interpolation.
What does 2% chance of a breakdown mean?
2% per year, per day, per frame?

New model max reliability should have mathematical formula too.

The max reliability will be set by the author of the vehicle, TE will only edit it if the vehicle is getting old.

11.2 Life Span

The reliability can be linked to how many of that kind you have. For example, if you have many of one type of train then you will have many engineers who know how to service that model properly hence it will be more reliable than an old train which no one knows what to do with.

Naturally you cant flog a dead horse...

Maybe we could use a max age, this will influence the amount of (max) reliability the vehicle drops every month/year.

11.3 Wrecks

Grade crossing can be separated into City and Country. City has boom gates or whatnot, country may

only have signage (depending on state rules and regulations + costs).

RV's with full loads in a crash are more damaging. eg oil truck crash with train transporting

explosives -> big boom!

Planes that are about to crash could try to avoid cities, rail and road and tries to crash in unused land or farmland. If it crashes in farmland the production of the farm should also go down.

12.1 Stock Market

Depending on the financial accuracy of the game the stock market could consist of industrial/commercial companies you supply to (is this conflict of interest or insider trading).
Again this is a higher order modelling, something which people may or may not be interested in.

I think that people should be able to buy shares in other transport companies and in industries (those that don't produce raw materials), the value of someone's shares is determined on the amount of improvements on transporting cargo of a company, or on the amount of cargo that a industry receives/produces.

12.5 Fares

We need to ensure diagonal to diagonal fast train services are avoided (i.e. transporting top value goods the furthest distance). ie Industry favours cheaper services.

Diagonal wil be relative as TE will be a 3D game and the camera allows A LOT of movement.

12.8 Ratings - city

Loyalty bonuses, such as first company to connect city A to B.

Relations could randomly change from time to time when a city gets a new friendly/hostile major.

General comments:

With some games you can spend most of your time doing boring things like updating old stuff.

Proposal
- Do nothing
Gradually lose profits

- Do minimal
Keep profit levels constant, but dip with competition etc.

- Continue expanding
Profit goes up but it gets harder

- Replan, renetwork, "smart" play
The goal!


Flame away...

[aarona]

A settings file will probably look something like this then, the file used in this example is an actual configure file for TRoS.

Thats fine

This means which sub folders the main TE folder will use, it could contain the following folder structure (note: this is only for people that don't have the DD, the mockup in the DD is different):

Code: Select all

bin  // Contains executable files
data
  trains  // Contains information about trains, new train sets will also be added to this directory
  road vehicles // Same as "trains" but then for RVs
  // Other directories here
src  // Only available when you download from CVS?

This should be defined good as TE has to know where it needs to look for game files.

I like this much more. Its a very typical file structure nowadays.

Map size isn't only defined by it's X and Y size, but also by the amount of industries/towns.
The scale of TE will be very easy to edit as we can resize the 3D models, this would enable us to have a TTD scale, a real life scale or something in between, the player would be able to pick the scale he/she prefers.

Okay.

We could have a LoMo like system, a wagon accepts multiple goods and you can define what it picks up when you give the orders. It won't cost the player money to do this.

Lets say we have been carrying chemicals in a liquid tanker for a number of years, are we then allowed to use it for oil without incurring any refitting costs? I would think there would be some overhead in this situation, but I wouldnt mind a generic definition until it starts being loaded with something. (Perhaps there are situations where a cost is incurred, and some where its not)

Having something that is 4GB is a bit useless, no one wants to have such big maps. This size would only be viable when we have a multi server system, every server could store a 8196x8196 (or bigger) part of the map and you will only be connected to one server at the time.

This is becoming very MMORPG-like. Is this the direction we want this project to take?

2.5 Terrain Types

Are we going to go as far as to say that river-front land in cities are worth much much more than in the middle of a desert say?

Terraforming should be more expensive in an artic climate then in a temperate climate. Artic should have big hills and mountains and players should terraform a way through them.

Oh I meant like in Sim City where some zones have a higher land-value due to location, crime, etc. So building in these areas would be much more expensive.

I agree with this, although some things are thought out quite good (like 4.4).

Yes 4.4 is good.

We could have inter-server exchange: a player (player A) wants to sell cargo to another player (Player B) on another server (they don't know that they both want it). The server of player A (server A) sends a message to the masterserver that someone sells cargo to another player. The masterserver sends this message to all connected servers and players could see this message, to avoid irritation players should request it first, this could just be checking an option in one of the many GUI windows. If the masterserver finds a buying player (player B) then the player can discuss a price and start selling cargo to each other.
Note: this is just a quick thought, it needs to be worked out correctly.

If you can do this without it being expolited by someone, then it sounds good.

I don't think a state or federal authority would be needed, having authorities overrule each other isn't a good idea IMHO.

No its not a good idea. It happens here in Australia all the time

You mean that you will later get something like long distance pre-signals, a train could change it's path 2 junctions ahead if it's route is blocked/going to be blocked by another train?

What I'm kinda getting at is that communication from signal to signal was slower using telegraphs (in the olden-days), etc, instead of modern electronics. Signal boxes were manned by people hence having one every km over a 100km track isnt workable.

11.1 Reliability

Need a mathematical formula for interpolation.
What does 2% chance of a breakdown mean?
2% per year, per day, per frame?

New model max reliability should have mathematical formula too.

The max reliability will be set by the author of the vehicle, TE will only edit it if the vehicle is getting old.

What I mean is, when you say an engine has a 50% reliability, what does this *actually* mean. Will it break down on average once every week, once every year? Once every service? I think we need to have a standard (such as probability of breakdown every month = (1-reliability))

Diagonal wil be relative as TE will be a 3D game and the camera allows A LOT of movement.

Okay, whats the geometry of our maps? Square? Rectangular? Cylindrical? A Torus? Spherical? If its square/rectangular than corner to corner is the longest distance. We need to discourage corner to corner transport unless its a special circumstance.


I'm trying to think in the way of "how will we actually code this?", not, "whats the general idea". Which is where I currently see the DD.

[uzurpator]

I've compiled a list of things in the DD which either need clarification, expansion from a programming perspective or other features which are possible.

Jolly!

Should there be two categories
a. Time in seconds - for reference to "real" times
b. Time in days - for reference to "game" times

1 Day = x seconds * game speed factor

This section should be updated to reflect the decision made at the meeting of 15/6/06, namely that we will now be using Lua to define the game configurations.

Indeed

[Example: My home city of Perth, Australia has 1.5 million people in 5,386 km^2 (73kmx73km if it were square). ]

I think we need to play with the idea of scale to reflect game scaling and model scaling. For example we know in real life there are trains with almost hundred carriages, and in TT this would almost reach the next town.

I dont think we should go with a perfect scaled model, we need to keep the "gameness" about it.

The whole, "well lets just have bigger maps" is good in theory, but in practise we should have competition for resources/industries, and we need to remember the bigger the map, the more the memory it eats up and we need to make sure our servers can handle x frames per second updates.

Haven't we agreed on this like 20 times now?

The numbers in the DD are _geometric_ only.

Density of object on the map is helluva different issue. Besides displaying a metropolis like Perth will put any known computer to its knees.

Form lists based on the same cargo. Hence when you look at the list of all Coal hoppers you wont then need to refit. It will already be done when purchasing.

This chapter is about classes, not objects.

A class of group X contains 20 subtypes of X. If you want 40 instances of subtype X.4 then simply you buy 40 instances of it.

65536x65536x1 short = 4.3 GIG!
Please think realistically people, this is 256 times the length of one TT map, SQUARED!

If we implement this then we are not programming properly.
Besides, it would take aaaaaages to create a random map.

Game _SUPPORTS_ not _FORCES_ 65x65k map. 8x8k map will realistically need 4-8gigs of ram to store.

And a 8 core 2.6 Ghz opteron rig to play.

Are we going to go as far as to say that river-front land in cities are worth much much more than in the middle of a desert say?

Modify the base cost by other factors. Detail really...

<no_offence>This whole sections needs to be *properly* thought out.</no_offence>
Not just from the set creators point of view (static data) but the programmers point of view (static and dynamic data).

I suggest using TTD + Patch as a basis and then adding onto that (the Wiki of set-creating is a good place to start).

This section is a rough description. Once we are near the actual implementation we will make it much more precise.

In RT2 they have "catalyst" materials such as fertilizer which, when added to a farm (a primary industry) produces more grain, should we go for something like this?

Production function - it is already supported :>

We need a forum on this and a decision on the best way forward. The three options are a good basis for moving forward with discussion.

Once we get to the actual implementation...

Again, this section falls under the same category as 4.1 to 4.4.
However the descriptions in this category are more specific.

Once we get to the actual implementation...

Should industries represent a higher order economic model? Should we go for, higher production -> more jobs -> more town growth in a direct sense (ie factory has profits of 1.1 million) or abstract sense

(ie factory outputted 500 cars -> high level of growth).

Local "invisible" transport competitors. Cut our profits, ensure industry might not go bankrupt which otherwise might lead to massive job losses.

This factors into economic booms on a national (invisible) level but has local effects too.

This could perhaps be in the "fluctuating" economy type-model.

Once we get to the actual implementation...

Massive seaports in big cities could be of major importance for economy, ie exporting iron ore to China and getting back cheap steel

Once we get to the actual implementation...

Local - but what about State and Federal? Can over-rule Local decisions with lobbying, or good cause.

Example State govt wants goods connection from A to B but A doesn't like you but has no choice. (revenge )

This also removes the moral debate of bribes (if any exists?!?) while keeping a back-door open away from building billions of trees.

Once we get to the actual implementation...

2m - 4% -> 2m in 50m

True. The "unrealistic" slopeness is to exagerrate the effect of hills since, relistically, we are not going to have 120 car trains and the whole world will be forced to be more 'compact'

Disasters: Sabotage -> Derailment?

Jolly.

Disasters: Speed limits, stupid drivers -> Derailment?

Jolly

Different eras have different signals, thus we cant expect the early 1900's to have sophisticated control mechanisms for high traffic lines. I'm not just talking about sempohores but the ability to communicate with the next switch house, or traffic signal. (We don't need specific definition but perhaps an abstract model such as signal lag)

Not all signalling technologies will be avalible from the beginning of the game.

Stations can have signals in them, thus one double length platform can support two trains.

Stations can have designated platforms, which can be separated by signals.

Trains can have lines (names, numbers, letters, colours) these can be assigned platforms at stations.
This also goes for the discussion relating to vehicular scheduling.

Once we get... (you know the rest of the story )

Platforms for industry cannot be used for passengers and vice-versa.

Obviety is clear, isn't it.

We need to ensure that *MU's do not enter a depot with passegers!

Once we get...

Trafic signals
Possbile car-truck or truck-truck crashes

Once we get...

Need a mathematical formula for interpolation.
What does 2% chance of a breakdown mean?
2% per year, per day, per frame?

New model max reliability should have mathematical formula too.

In real world reliability of 50% means that in the current moment on average 50% of all vehicles in this class are not operable.

The reliability can be linked to how many of that kind you have. For example, if you have many of one type of train then you will have many engineers who know how to service that model properly hence it will be more reliable than an old train which no one knows what to do with.

Naturally you cant flog a dead horse...

Once we get...

Grade crossing can be separated into City and Country. City has boom gates or whatnot, country may

only have signage (depending on state rules and regulations + costs).

RV's with full loads in a crash are more damaging. eg oil truck crash with train transporting

explosives -> big boom!

Once we get...

Depending on the financial accuracy of the game the stock market could consist of industrial/commercial companies you supply to (is this conflict of interest or insider trading).
Again this is a higher order modelling, something which people may or may not be interested in.

Jolly! One thing I always missed in TTD is the financial aspect of RT series.

We need to ensure diagonal to diagonal fast train services are avoided (i.e. transporting top value goods the furthest distance). ie Industry favours cheaper services.

Cargoes have destinations. No other protection needed

Loyalty bonuses, such as first company to connect city A to B.

Once we get...

With some games you can spend most of your time doing boring things like updating old stuff.

Proposal
- Do nothing
Gradually lose profits

- Do minimal
Keep profit levels constant, but dip with competition etc.

- Continue expanding
Profit goes up but it gets harder

- Replan, renetwork, "smart" play
The goal!

Once we get...

[aarona]

Once we get to the actual implementation...

Which for some parts is now.
I can't see why we have to wait until we get there, because, as is happening now, I'm spending most of my time asking questions about specific points rather than having a solid document in front of me from which to work on.

Apart from this I generally agree with most of your comments.

Topic locked and processed. Please wait for the new DD to arrive (09112006).