Limited cargo acceptance
Posted: 26 Oct 2006 13:50
The thing I like most in OpenTTD is building rail networks. When building the network to get the raw materials, the current economic model makes sense. When building the part of the network that delivers the raw materials to secondary industries, it mainly encourages players to deliver all the raw materials to only few of the all available secondary industries.
Just as raw material industries have a fixed rate of production for each month, I'd like that the secondary industries could process only a certain fixed rate of raw materials each month. Of course this rate could change as time passes (as it changes with raw material producing industries).
As an example, the economic model encourages you to connect all the coal mines to your rail network. This is good. However the current economic model lets you deliver all the coal to just one power plant giving you full profits. Instead the economic model should encourage you to distribute the coal to many different power plants. Obviously some power plants might need lots of coal while some power plants could be smaller.
I've not read the source to see how OpenTTD currently handles cargo acceptance but I think that this change should not be too hard to implement. This would certainly not require extensive modification to the economic model or to other aspects of the game. There are also some details that would need to be worked out, e.g. how much money does one get if one delivers 250 tonnes of coal to a power plant that consumes 100 tonnes of coal each month. Probably it could be assumed that industries have some space for storing incoming raw materials and the price they pay for extra material might be getting lower and lower when the storage space for incoming material gets fewer.
Just as raw material industries have a fixed rate of production for each month, I'd like that the secondary industries could process only a certain fixed rate of raw materials each month. Of course this rate could change as time passes (as it changes with raw material producing industries).
As an example, the economic model encourages you to connect all the coal mines to your rail network. This is good. However the current economic model lets you deliver all the coal to just one power plant giving you full profits. Instead the economic model should encourage you to distribute the coal to many different power plants. Obviously some power plants might need lots of coal while some power plants could be smaller.
I've not read the source to see how OpenTTD currently handles cargo acceptance but I think that this change should not be too hard to implement. This would certainly not require extensive modification to the economic model or to other aspects of the game. There are also some details that would need to be worked out, e.g. how much money does one get if one delivers 250 tonnes of coal to a power plant that consumes 100 tonnes of coal each month. Probably it could be assumed that industries have some space for storing incoming raw materials and the price they pay for extra material might be getting lower and lower when the storage space for incoming material gets fewer.