Statistics - Add-Ons? Ideas?

[FelixMcGursk]

I'm new here. i've been playing openttd for years now and one thing bugs me - why are the graphs so limited in customization? I'm frequently very curious as to what is working how well in the game, but the graphs don't have a degree of resolution I would like and it's impossible to look at data about the further history of the company. i've searched a little bit for something like this to no success - anybody know any mods/replacements to enable this kind of functionality?

[jfs]

It really shouldn't be too difficult to extend most graphs and other figures much further into the past, question is whether you would want to do it for vehicles as well as that can lead to some explosive growth in the size of the data.
The real challenge is probably to make some good and useful user interface for the data. If you just present some raw data it might not be very useful, you'd need some way to analyse and relate things to get something you can make decisions based on. At some point you'll find yourself reimplementing most of a spreadsheet program and question your life choices

[FelixMcGursk]

@jfs

That's why I'm directing the question here. The GUI has all the elements necessary, and the whole graph system is there, but the number of things you can analyze is pretty low.
I'm wondering if anyone else likes to take a look at their setups closer using more elaborate data visualizations than what is available.

For instance when I'm finished with the game, I would love to somehow separate out info on how parts of the system worked well and/or when they didn't. Not to mention wanting to look back to the beginning of the game to see which industries and combinations yielded the most drastic growth.

[jfs]

Actually no. That's the point I was trying to make above, the current GUI is insufficient to handle any increase in amount of historical data, or amount of data in general. Even just extending the graph window to be able to select between a one, five, ten year period to view data from, would amount to nearly a rewrite, and if you're doing that you may as well make a much more useful UI instead. There's so much more things you can do with the data than just present it raw, that would make much more sense, but it also increases the difficulty.

[kamnet]

Actually no. That's the point I was trying to make above, the current GUI is insufficient to handle any increase in amount of historical data, or amount of data in general. Even just extending the graph window to be able to select between a one, five, ten year period to view data from, would amount to nearly a rewrite, and if you're doing that you may as well make a much more useful UI instead. There's so much more things you can do with the data than just present it raw, that would make much more sense, but it also increases the difficulty.

Would it be better just to write a program that accesses this data from the admin port and compile it in a more suitable format?

[jfs]

Sure but then you have to run your singleplayer game as multiplayer. The admin port is not available in singleplayer.

[FelixMcGursk]

I am sorry, I am really kind of clueless on the subject - so what you're saying jfs, is that it isn't really possible to access this kind data through the available GUI for statistics?
I mean I'm assuming the information *exists* inside the game obviously, but it would be a huge project to extract what I'm talking about, right?

What do you guys think about this idea though? I have been playing this game for years, but I have always been curious about all these various things: like what is an actual distance in squares between stations? What is the optimal distance for a cargo? How did the costs shift over time in relation to train operating costs? How was the efficiency of a particular group of trains? Could I pause the game, take these measurements and calculate how much ROI a hypothetical train line will bring in before I build it?

[_dp_]

What do you guys think about this idea though? I have been playing this game for years, but I have always been curious about all these various things: like what is an actual distance in squares between stations? What is the optimal distance for a cargo? How did the costs shift over time in relation to train operating costs? How was the efficiency of a particular group of trains? Could I pause the game, take these measurements and calculate how much ROI a hypothetical train line will bring in before I build it?

You're not the only curious, hardcore goal players have being studying stuff like that for years. E.g. you can measure distances with a help tool in CityMania client, and the're also shown in vehicle orders. For optimal distance there is a calculator as well. Not sure what exactly do you mean in other questions but there may be something to help with it as well. After all a lot of effort has been put into this over the years. There was even an attempt to make some useful graphs like these http://dpointer.org/data/ttd/stats26/, sadly it's not working anymore though.