Ekranoplan

[Zephyris]

Sooo... I was bored and have just made lots of aircraft sprites, so I thought I would try something more unusual! I have been designing some ekranoplan based on this diagram. I am very happy to code this set myself (or this bit of whatever set this ends up in - it will probably have to use the new OpenTTD vehicle pool) but I am looking for someone to research the statistics of these vehicles, is anyone interested? I am away for a week now so feel free to fight it out in this thread

[Zephyris]

These sprites are only provisional, they will be tweaked and 2CC added... I also understand that there are severe limitations on the speed of ships but oh well!

[trainboy2004]

Cool stuff. I guess it will be divided into the ship category.

[LaDoncella]

are those things supposed to fly?

[trainboy2004]

Nope, they are more or less hovercrafts.

[DJ Nekkid]

hydrofoils?

[SquireJames]

They are ground effect vehicles, that is to say they fly but they fly maybe 15 to 20 feet above the water. They are an extrapolation of hovercrafts I suppose, however I don't think they work particularly well over land (too bumpy) unlike hovercrafts, which can pretty much go anywhere.

[Zephyris]

As SquireJames said; they are aircraft (they fly with no contact with the water) but cannot fly more than a few metres into the air thus are limited to very flat surfaces, ie. calm water. In OpenTTD/TTDPatch they will be coded as boats, with severe restrictions on their speed through canals. As for cargo capacities etc. I have very limited knowledge, especially as they were soviet military vehicles originally, but know the largest could carry ~200 tonnes at 250 mph.

[Simozzz]

...but know the largest could carry ~200 tonnes at 250 mph

You not right. KM1 can carry 300 tonnes at 500(!) kmph.
Grigory aleady want to make GRF with KM, but ship speed limit (127kmph) stoped him.

[DJ Nekkid]

bummer

i guess you need to write a patch that allows \b*'s for speed (perhaps also for RV's?) zyph

[richk67]

Hi Zephyris - very nice Ekranoplans.

Could you knock together a .grf with them coded as aircraft, but with the misc bits set to "sea-plane airports only". I could then use it as a test .grf for my NewGRF_ports seaplane airports. That would be really cool

[minime]

a patch that allows \b*'s for speed

You could try setting the real speed using CB36. Internally the speed is stored in a word, and callbacks can return up to 15 bits. This works for setting vehicle capacities greater than 255, so it should work for adjusting speed as well.

perhaps also for RV's?

There's already a secondary speed property for road vehicles, that raises the cap.

[DJ Nekkid]

that _is_ a good idea

[Wile E. Coyote]

a patch that allows \b*'s for speed

You could try setting the real speed using CB36. Internally the speed is stored in a word, and callbacks can return up to 15 bits. This works for setting vehicle capacities greater than 255, so it should work for adjusting speed as well.

Unfortunately, it's not working. (Maybe I picked wrong values. Patch devs, please comment?)

And Zephyris, what you think about 2cc?

[Zephyris]

Yup, they will be 2cc. As far as speeds go it is probably best to have them scaled back, purely to make them look more pausible in-game and less imbalancing... It would be good to be able to base their speeds on real life, has anyonegot anywhere finding information about them?

[Eddie]

It would be good to be able to base their speeds on real life, has anyonegot anywhere finding information about them?

There may be some speed info littered around in this article: Link. If not, it's still a good read.

EDIT: This may help even more, Link

[Zephyris]

Mmm, thanks for the links.

I have coded a preview grf for those who want to have a play with the graphics... The vehicles currently have no statistics but with the links I'm sure I'll be able to make some suitable ones up!

[athanasios]

Only thing that worries me is that they 'll make ships obsolete. Unless price, running cost and reliability hinder mass usage of them.

[LaDoncella]

ships have been always obsolete

[Zephyris]

They make ships obsolete in the same way planes do, ekranoplan will have a similarly high purchase price and running cost to aeroplanes. They will also have significantly smaller capacity than ships...