Big ships bad?

[ccomley]

Been playing with add-ins for the first time and picked one which said bigger ships with more realistic payloads.

Forgot I'd done it until I ordered my first oil tanker and couldn't understand why it was sitting at an oil platform showing 1%... then realised, it's coz "wait for a full load" is going to take it several game-years, which is not really very realistic, and the oil company's going to rate it as "poor" and probably take my oil rig away.

Instead i have it visiting several platforms in a loop before returning to the refinery, with no "wait for full load", so it just takes what's there at each visit.

It's still showing a loss for every game-year so far. And the production levels at the rigs are not ramping up at the rates I've previously expected.

I'm thinking I'll un-install this one (whichi, presumably, I can't do within this game) - unless I'm missing a trick?

[ccomley]

Playing with Timetable options to have the supertankers stay at each platform for N days before moving on - currently trying N=35 but it's taking a while to test the plan!

[FLHerne]

Try FISH instead, it has nice big ships (for high-producing industries or trunk-haul) but also some nice tiny ones. NewShips is good too (not on the in-game content though, try here).

[SquireJames]

Another "solution" , although I believe the bigger ships GRF alters all ships, would be to have a few smaller ships ferrying the oil from the rigs to a buoy (in TTDP) or a dock (OTTD) and then have the larger tanker wait for a full load there, similar to what you might do with trains and mines.

I agree with FLHerne though too; FISH is a very good set

[ccomley]

THanks guys.

The bigger-ships GRF I'm using has replaced the tankers with big ones, there's no smaller option. Otherwise I like the idea of feeder/bulk, as with trains. Though you'd still end up with the big ship making a loss most years then one big profit.

I'll let you know how the timetable delay thing goes in this game as I presume I can't change it now, I'd have to start over.

[ccomley]

Given up.

Tried lots of combinations of things, nothing I could do made the "big" tankers profitable. Nothing I tried made the oil rigs "happy" so production levels stayed low, which meant the big ships were even less profitable. And the trains serving the oil refineries were loss making too coz the ships just don't bring in enough oil.

It MIGHT work if you had "regular" sized ships serving the individual platforms but then transferred to a bulk carrier to sail all around the map. But the round-the-map voyage would take several game-yesrs whch means even if over-all profitable, each ship would show a huge loss most years.

[BlueDeath]

If you have wide seas in your scenario ships might be helpfull.
For a land-like scenario trains might be the best alternative to do "across the map expeditions". Useing a dock to transfer ship -> train. For getting higher results at oil rigs make shure to have enough ships to visit them frequently (timetable to wait between approx. 100 and 1000 ticks).

[ccomley]

If you have wide seas in your scenario ships might be helpfull.
For a land-like scenario trains might be the best alternative to do "across the map expeditions". Useing a dock to transfer ship -> train. For getting higher results at oil rigs make shure to have enough ships to visit them frequently (timetable to wait between approx. 100 and 1000 ticks).

Exactly so - the problem here is the ONLY tankers available in the "Big Ships" NGF cost millions of quid and hold 10 billion or 20 billion litres of oil. The NGF author claims this is "more realistic" but the problem it it's not, when considered in proprtion to the rest of the game.

With "normal" tankers I assign one per oilrig, it goes to the rig, waits until it's full, then goes to the dock to transfer/unload and repeat. I add hovercraft to service the passenger/mail load of the rig, which keeps it happy and production goes up. With these 10-bil-barrel ships, wait-till-full would take 50 game years or something crazy, and the only other alternative is to have a tanker visit each rig in turn, possibly stay a few days, then move on full or not - I've tried different delays at each rig, different numbers of ships visiting, different numbers of rigs on each ship's route, nothing works.

It is, I fear, merely a duff NGF, and I'll be removing it!

[BlueDeath]

just another question:
are you useing default industries?
Aditional Industry-Packs might have higher rates and beeing fitting...

[ccomley]

just another question:
are you useing default industries?
Aditional Industry-Packs might have higher rates and beeing fitting...

Yes, and, I suppose so, but I'm not sure. I think I won't experiment. It ruined a whole game which was going well up to that point. I shall seek out a new "bigger ships" patch that doesn't throw away the standard ships, then I can experiement with a mix and, if it doesn't work, just stick with the regular ships.

[kamnet]

just another question:
are you useing default industries?
Aditional Industry-Packs might have higher rates and beeing fitting...

Yes, and, I suppose so, but I'm not sure. I think I won't experiment. It ruined a whole game which was going well up to that point. I shall seek out a new "bigger ships" patch that doesn't throw away the standard ships, then I can experiement with a mix and, if it doesn't work, just stick with the regular ships.

I would suggest trying the FISH set.

[ccomley]

I would suggest trying the FISH set.

Cheers - someone else mentioned it, I have a note to try it out.

[ccomley]

Having a play with FISH now - much more sensible set of sizes/shapes.

Interesting that most of the new ships are configured for goods, so you have to start by refitting them. I wonder if this is what's putting off the AIs from using them? Or am I just running with AIs that don't do ships?

[kamnet]

AIs that use ships will typically use the cheapest ships available. I recently found an AI that decided in 1950 it was going to haul lots of FIRS sand and stone by 19th-century wooden sail ships.

[Kogut]

Having a play with FISH now - much more sensible set of sizes/shapes.

Interesting that most of the new ships are configured for goods, so you have to start by refitting them. I wonder if this is what's putting off the AIs from using them? Or am I just running with AIs that don't do ships?

Ships are the least profitable type of transport so only some AIs are coded to use them (NoCAB is an example) and usually ships will be used if everything else failed. I guess that AI selected the fastest ship, not the cheapest (or maybe it is a bug in AI - it would deserve a report to relevant thread on http://www.tt-forums.net/viewforum.php?f=65).

[Eddi]

you can asumme that AIs know how to refit a vehicle, as that's certainly not limited to ships.

[Kogut]

you can asumme that AIs know how to refit a vehicle, as that's certainly not limited to ships.

It is not true, some AIs are unable to do this (I remember unrefitted HEQS vechicles supposed to carry mail).

[ccomley]

Having a play with FISH now - much more sensible set of sizes/shapes.

Interesting that most of the new ships are configured for goods, so you have to start by refitting them. I wonder if this is what's putting off the AIs from using them? Or am I just running with AIs that don't do ships?

Ships are the least profitable type of transport so only some AIs are coded to use them (NoCAB is an example) and usually ships will be used if everything else failed. I guess that AI selected the fastest ship, not the cheapest (or maybe it is a bug in AI - it would deserve a report to relevant thread on http://www.tt-forums.net/viewforum.php?f=65).

Taken alone, yes. But all the oil is offshore - any land based oil fields seem to dry up early on - usually before I can build to them anyway. So bringing oil ashore to feed a refinery and thence trains taking goods to towns is a major profit element. And then you need to run passengers around the rigs to keep them productive.