Kruemelchen's Cookie Jar

[Argus]

"Water Trains" already has NUTS. So the "railway canals" were already here.

[kamnet]

The question of "why a roadtype and not a railtype" is mostly because we're exploring what we can and cannot do with roadtypes.

Based on the argument, I think the main issue is that it might not be possible to calculate buoyancy which is why it's so easy to transport large loads on water.

[Kruemelchen]

I wrote a ~2000 word reply that the forum software just ate, so here's a slightly-frustrated short version:

I love the concept of the Water Way Roads grf, it seems like a nice solution to the lack of support for small inland canals in the game, but I've encountered a few problems:

1. The option to enable Tow Ways and the Ship Cargo Capacity option are both coded as parameter 10 in the nml file. The result is that switching Cargo Capacity to anything other than "Overloaded" disables Tow Ways without warning, and turning Tow Ways on can set Cargo Capacity to the invalid value "5".
2. The only useful-sized Tow Way vehicle capable of transporting coal from year 1650 right up to 2000 is the Wooden Barge. With Cargo Capacity set to "5" (where it ended-up after I switched Tow Ways on when starting my second game) they carry a somewhat-useful 150 tonnes, but with the most powerful towing option (circa 1850) of two horses, the maximum speed on flat of a loaded barge is an unusable 2km/h. It takes around 150 barges to serve the single shortest coal-mine-to-coke-oven route in my current game, and they're losing money. I estimate I'd need 500,000 to 1,000,000 barges to transport all the raw materials on this map (and at least three times as many if I start providing engineering & farm supplies). Sadly, game-engine and hardware limitations prevent me from finding out.
   
   Setting the Cargo Capacity down to "Overloaded" reduces the barge to 90 tonnes, and (as a result I think) raises the speed on flat to an almost-respectable 15km/h, but it still climbs slopes at 2km/h. This inability to climb makes it effectively unusable on almost any route where I couldn't already plonk down a normal canal and use something from Sailing Ships (the other must-have grf for 18'th century watercraft). Even on flat ground the barge is too small and far too slow to compete with a 1st-generation steam cargo tram (40km/h, 72t load).
   
   Historically, inland canals were the primary way of shifting cargo until they were overtaken by the railways. I'd love to see this set with a useful bulk carrier of some sort to reproduce that effect up until powerful locomotives are available in the mid-to-late 19'th century. I think that a barge able to carry 200+ tonnes and move at 20km/h or more (on max settings) would be a good start.
   
   EDIT to add: The main issue seems to be that tractive effort is calculated as 10 x TE-coefficient x vehicle-weight, apparently not including the weight of the cargo. As a 1-ton vehicle, the Wooden Barge could never have more than 10KN of tractive effort, so couldn't climb slopes while carrying much cargo. Increasing the weight to 20 tons and adjusting the pulling power slightly fixes the problem nicely. I'm not going to upload a grf, because the posted source package is missing loads of sprite files (some are totally absent, others are symbolic links pointing outside the source tree to images that presumably exist on the author's system, but not on mine). I copied blank or similar-named images over for the missing sprites, and the results aren't pretty. As the only useful contribution I can make here is a one-line change to weight (I'm sure the author and I have different ideas about the appropriate power level), I don't see any point in posting a patch either.
3. The Ketches are confusing, and I suspect the current selection stems from a copy & paste error:
   
   As of 1849 there are four "Sailing Ketch" vehicles available in the Tow Way depot. Towable and non-towable models introduced in 1600 and 1800. Weirdly the 19'th century version is significantly worse than the 17'th century one: They have identical costs, but the newer one carries less cargo, is slower, and is less reliable. They also have slightly-different cargo restrictions, which make no sense in my game (probably because I'm using AXIS industries and the restrictions were chosen for some other industry set).
   
   Personally I'd make all watercraft either universally refitable or anything-but-passengers unless they're specialized (ferries, tankers, fishing boats etc.).
   
   Finally, and I know this is nit-picking and I apologize for that: A Ketch is a small two-masted sailing vessel with the mainmast in the front, which is what distinguishes it from a yawl (mainmast in back) or sloop (single mast) in the same general size. All ketches and yawls are sailing vessels by definition, so unless you plan to add a motorized version, there's no need to include "Sailing" in the name, especially for the towed version that doesn't rely on sails for power.

Hello cnww

Thank you for your productive feedback!! I'm glad you like using my set and overlooked all these oversights in your game
(I would have loved to read your 2000 words review )

I'll post an update to fix all your issues. Meanwhile, if there is more that you think would be improvable, please don't shy away from making feature requests

As a non-tech person, I have only a limited knowledge of technical matters or naming schemes. But I enjoy drawing and coding, as well as exploring new possibilities within the game. The Water Way GRF I have created to show what's possible, and to code small channels for the use inside of cities or villages. Later, when on a boat trip, I observed how many traces of boat towing are still in existence after a century or more of tight slumber, most towing ways now converted to bicycle roads or lost in the city scape. That made me want to explore the possibility of towable ships in OpenTTD

The most obvious use-case for towing is to tow ships uphill, since ships used to be towed up-stream. However, as you have observed, I haven't quite got it right yet (Even though towing becomes overpowered after ~1940). Also, it is very difficult to translate any form of realism into the game. Especially, since some players prefer realistic values (it kind of works with day length patch) whereas the standard economies need a quadruple of the capacity transported in half the time to be profitable. I kind of tried to cater to both cohorts via parameters.

I would like to hear more feedback from you, if you have, so feel free to answer this post or PM me about that
Also, if you'd want to contribute anything, I'd be more than happy hearing from you

Because of work, I hardly have any time to play OpenTTD these days, lest working on my GRFs. But I will find the time someday, the more if I have yet another crazy idea in my mind

That said, I'm always positive about feedback and contributions, and try to sort things out

p.p.s. Why a road type and not a rail type? That would allow diagonal movement, and there are numerous historical and modern examples of "trains" of several barges towed by a single leading tug. For realism you could prevent most watercraft from being connected to anything, and use callbacks to restrict tug/barge combos to a single water or tow-path engine plus a fairly low maximum number of barges (maybe 5 or 6 barges or a single other towable watercraft). Implementing towing vehicles like locomotives would also avoid the current non-obvious selection method of using refit options, and thus make autoreplace work properly.... Just a thought.

I'd certainly make some or a lot of things easier
Maybe I'll learn how to code trains some day. Meanwhile, it'll be strangely coded road vehicles, unless somebody takes over and just "does it"

[JohnFranklin523]

Welcome back, Kruemelchen!

[Kruemelchen]

New Update of Water Way Roads → 0.4.4

What's new?

• parameter IDs were fixed → due to this, no automatic update of GRF possible
• vehicles are now properly ordered
• capacity, speed, power of all vehicles adjusted to fix issues esp. with towed ships → to update you need to sell and rebuy all vehicles, hence a new game is recommended

Freight capacity has been significantly increased. At the same time, ships should now have a decent acceleration and maximum speed. Power of ships increased as well, it now scales with capacity and speed parameters. This means, towed ships can now travel uphill at min. ~5 kph. This was accomplished by changing the cargo distribution on towed vehicles, as only the weight of the first part of an articulated vehicle is used to calculate tractive effort. Negative side effect is, that barges need to be 3/4 filled to show filling graphics.

The source was also updated and now includes all needed graphics; this was an oversight in the 0.4.3 release

Please let me know if you have any issues with this release.

[Argus]

Why isn't it on Bananas yet?

[Kruemelchen]

Why isn't it on Bananas yet?

Now it's on bananas

[Argus]

Why is an MPS mail car marked as Waterway among normal road cars?
And why can only motor ketches carry passengers? I don't like that, people want to sail without an engine.

[Kruemelchen]

Why is an MPS mail car marked as Waterway among normal road cars?
And why can only motor ketches carry passengers? I don't like that, people want to sail without an engine.

I have no clue, why one of the standard vehicles would be marked as "waterway"... Maybe you have an old vehicle which ID got removed? Try to sell it and buy a new one. Or does it effect a vehicle in your buy list?

For the ketches, I accidentally removed passenger support... I have put it back in and pushed an update to Bananas. Please update to use the sailing vessels for passenger transport again

[Argus]

I also tried it in a new game, no idea what it could be.

[De Funes]

This is a graphic set from Kruemelchen:
viewtopic.php?p=1262660&hilit=Horse+Carts#p1262660

Hi, I am observing an issue with Horse Carts capacity declared when purchasing a vehicle and actual in details after purchasing a vehicle. For illustration - in the attached picture for the Horse Cart "Four-in-hand mail coach" declared capacity for 30 passengers vs. actual capacity 10 passengers, in case of Horse Cart "Two-in-hand mail coach" declared capacity for 20 passengers vs. actual capacity 10 passengers. I don't think any of the initial Horse Carts work well in this regard. EDIT: I don't think 30 passengers could fit in a horse cart at all

Am I doing something wrong? I searched here on the forum and couldn't find anyone dealing with this before...

For testing purposes, this is the only GRF set in the game, set parameters are default. OpenTTD 14.0 (RC1 / RC2).

Thank you for your response.

De Funes

[kamnet]

Towed boats!
With these, you can transport massive amounts of cargo over canals. As refit option, you have various means of tow support available, ranging from humans (available since year 0) up to electric rail (from the 1940s). With the support of these*, boats can travel with enhanced power and speed on Tow Ways!
* selectable for every vehicle separately

I have WaterWayRoad 0.4.5, and in 1840 in Arctic I do not have any of the towed boats in the Towway depot. Could this be a bug?

[De Funes]

I have other bugs in Horse Carts Road Vehicle Set 1.1 - some Horse Carts allow you to refit road vehicle to transport a commodity that may not be intended for it - or the horse cart graphics is missing. After the refit road vehicle, the carriage graphics will disappear and only the team of horses will go on the route. This happens, for example, during the refit of the following vehicles: Six / Four / Two-in-hand mail coach, Four / Two-in-hand stage coach. There are various refit road vehicle options for Horse Carts (goods, livestock, steel, valuables...), but in most cases, graphics for this carts are not available. Graphics are for passengers and mail only…

De Funes