Making TTD feel more like a game?

[AlphaCentauriBear]

Here is my conceptual view on this.

There are two roles in trading cargo: a) industry manager who wants transporting cargo from one place to another, b) transporter.
Transporter wants payment proportional to the distance, which is fair.
Manager wants to pay as little for transportation as possible. Therefore, generally, they want to deliver cargo to the closest similar industry.

That is a logical system. Manager tries to minimize transportation distance. Whereas, transporter tries to choose proper transportation mean and optimized network to get paid by distance transported and quick transportation but incur minimal expenses.

Unfortunately, in this game player plays both roles. They choose how far to transport and then they get paid by distance. Essentially, they rob the cargo owner by giving them not the cheapest delivery option. That is what makes players building cross map transportation network instead of optimizing delivery routes to be shorter, as it would be in real life.

[jfs]

As an industry owner, what I would be interested in is a regular flow of cargo delivered (or picked up), and having as little outstanding cargo as possible (cargo "purchased but not delivered").

Otherwise you would need a more complex economy where the player company is actually a broker, who buys and owns cargo from the producing industry, and sells to the customer industry. Similar to the A-Train games. Some cargo would also need to age (spoil), like various perishable goods.

[AlphaCentauriBear]

As an industry owner, what I would be interested in is a regular flow of cargo delivered (or picked up), and having as little outstanding cargo as possible (cargo "purchased but not delivered").

Otherwise you would need a more complex economy where the player company is actually a broker, who buys and owns cargo from the producing industry, and sells to the customer industry. Similar to the A-Train games. Some cargo would also need to age (spoil), like various perishable goods.

You are absolutely, irrefutably correct here! That is also a consideration too. However, this is going little off topic.

I was responding to _dp_ who criticized my attempt to not rewarding longer routes. In my mind "making shorter routes" is a better (more interesting) game than "making longer routes". In his/her min mind it is an opposite.

My passage above is an attempt to prove that original game breaks the economy by allowing player to be a transportation network planner but not charging them for longer hauls. Thus rewarding longer routes without reason.

[_dp_]

To me this discussion ended with a reference to real life. You need to do way more than just disrecarding distance to have any semblance of the real world economy in the game.

[AlphaCentauriBear]

I was referencing real life for explanation of the mechanics only. I don't really care if game resembles real life or not.
I am also not defending my position nor trying to convert anyone. People have different taste in games.

[LaChupacabra]

In my mind "making shorter routes" is a better (more interesting) game than "making longer routes".

I would prefer if the game didn't focus solely on short or long connections. Neither of them reflects reality well. Moreover, in the case of short connections, as _dp_ writes, you would have to do more than just eliminate the effect of distance. Otherwise, the game, especially multiplayer, would be incredibly boring - everyone would only build short connections. An important change needed would be a significant reduction in the number of processing enterprises. Without this change, where there is almost always a processing company next to the mine, players would have no real incentive to made any longer and more complex lines. Another change that would be useful with this approach would be to limit the acceptance of goods by cities, so that the player does not use the simplest method to deliver an entire large production to one small city just because it is closest.

Personally, I see three other possibilities for how the game's economy could be made more sensible.

1. Make the player a producer (newGRF)
Nothing new, the previously mentioned Buy, Process, Sell and Caribbean Industries newGRF have such economy, but I think it's quite interesting. Since many players feel like industry owners in this game, let them pay for raw materials and make money on products. Here, just like in the case of the reverse distance effect, to make it more interesting and not for the player to deliver everything to one city, these could have a limited acceptance of deliveries proportional to the size of the city and the more products were delivered, the lower the prices would be.

2. Increase the importance of subsidies/contracts so that they become the main or most attractive form of earning money. (new features in game)
Then, as is the case in reality, the player will look for and want to pursue the most attractive offers that suit him. Currently, there are several problems with subsidies which make them unattractive:
A. They are very rare, usually 1-3 a year for the entire map - for it to make sense, there would have to be at least a dozen or several dozen offers; this should depend on the size of the map and the number of players.
B. They only apply to very short, unattractive connections - to avoid it being boring, the offers should also apply to much longer connections
C. There are no offers if cargodist is enabled.
D. Their default duration is very short. For subsidies/contracts to make sense as a basis for economics, their duration should be long or even unlimited.
E. For subsidies to make sense, basic transportation rates should be much lower to the point of being barely profitable.
F. Browsing through one long list of offers would be tedious - offers could appear directly in the city or enterprise window, which would make it easier for the player to observe offers in the area he is interested in. Additionally, a bell icon could be added, thanks to which the player could be informed about offers he may be interested in. It would also make sense to have a map icon that, like in the case of the cargo flow legend, would show subsidized connections on the gameplay or/and mini map.

3. Make that passengers, mail and other industrial cargo have a predetermined transport direction (upgrade for cargodist).
Currently, cargodist only distributes cargoes in different directions when there is a choice. A player who plays using this feature will always earn less than one who avoids it and builds isolated A-B connections. A player who knows the consequences of expanding the network usually doesn't do it or loses more or less motivation to build bigger things.
The change would mean that each city and each enterprise would designate the directions in which it expects transport, with the city or enterprise being the first to designate the direction, and only then a station from those that are available or "any" if there is none. Due to slow changes, the calculation of directions could take place quite rarely, every 2-3 months (4-6 minutes), which should not constitute a significant CPU load, especially if the calculations could be transferred to another thread.

[AlphaCentauriBear]

3. Make that passengers, mail and other industrial cargo have a predetermined transport direction (upgrade for cargodist).

Yes. That is what I was talking about as taking industry manager role from the player. Player should be given the freight on delivering so much cargo from - to.

[jfs]

As the game is implemented currently, it also somewhat penalizes vehicles that do not make at least one delivery every year, which also limits the viability of long routes. At least the vehicle statistics become more difficult to interpret.

[luk3Z]

Simple Cargo Profit:
https://bananas.openttd.org/package/newgrf/4b490101
or
Simple Cargo Decay Override:
https://bananas.openttd.org/package/newgrf/53536303

Simple Cargo Profit does the concept right but adds some unclear multiplication parameter (...)

Instead using "Simple Cargo Profit" you might want to use "Cargo Payment & Decay Override" viewtopic.php?t=89763

[AlphaCentauriBear]

Instead using "Simple Cargo Profit" you might want to use "Cargo Payment & Decay Override" viewtopic.php?t=89763

That is the second line you didn't include in my quote. Sorry, I probably put the mod name wrong.

Simple Cargo Profit does the concept right but adds some unclear multiplication parameter.
Simple Cargo Decay Override is also adding known parameter but this time it x10, which is just huge.

[Svartypops]

I love games!

How about you "complete" a town when it has all the possible <things> being delivered to it?
"Goods" isn't specific enough in this context because you have goods from refineries or printworks etc. You would need plastic goods, printed goods etc.

I know there are mods for lots of industrial stuff and I'm not that interested in it - I am suggesting something in between with the aim of making it a game like the OP requested.

So once you have a town "completed" something good happens, but you have to keep the supply of things constant or a bad thing happens.

Eh... ye I need help now.

[odisseus]

That sounds pretty much like a City Builder script. There are quite a few of them here on the forums.

[kamnet]

So just "goods" isn't good enough, but you don't want to add mods which offers more than "goods"?

I'm very confused.

[odisseus]

For what it's worth, there is no rule that says a town cannot require other cargoes to grow, such as coal, steel, livestock... It's just that these cargoes aren't accepted by (unmodified) town houses. The game script would count the cargo that's delivered to any of the town's industries.

[Eddi]

i'm fairly sure scripts cannot (easily) count individual cargos, but only the "town effect" of a cargo, of which there are 5:

• passengers
• mail
• goods
• food
• water

each of these groups can contain multiple cargos (like, tourists. or different foodstuffs), depending on NewGRFs, but you cannot distinguish between them.