Customize fundamental values, e.g. transport income and vehicle cost

[Reflame]

Hi,

I would like to ask for greater liberty when customizing various aspects of game difficulty.

If you consider them a threat to game balance, a warning could be displayed in the description of the parameter, or they could be hidden under "Expert settings (shows all settings, including the obscure/weird ones)". Btw, sorry if cite the name imprecisely, because I do not know the English name of anything, so I translate back from Czech to English.

(If some of them make the game easier, is that a problem? If so, why?)

Parameters which I would appreciate most:

• Any interest rate, not just 2-4% .
• Multiply transport income by: (And here one can set 0.5, 0.1 or any other number.)
• Multiply construction cost by (any number).
• Multiply vehicle purchase cost by (any number). I use only trains (and no passenger trains), so I do not care about whether it will be separate for ships, roads and planes.

And maybe even:

• "Multiply the cost of terrain actions (lifting terrain, destroying rivers, building over fertile fields...) by..." Because now it is often cheaper (or: almost cheaper) to manipulate with a terrain than to build a tunnel or bridge.

This would be so wonderful in keeping the game interesting, providing with new challenges. Because I prefer a solitaire game (with only a weak AI) and I am running out of ideas (except some that I do not like). For example when I got the idea to set "Vehicles/Physics/Slope" from 3% to 10% and "Multiply cargo weight by" from 1 to 15, it has brought me endless beautiful hours of new challenges - great idea, guys; thanks! Any tip what else I can try? Well, I will post this to a more appropriate forum, but I will appreciate any PM about this.

And then there is a property maintenance upkeep. It can be turned on or off, but I would love to set two numbers. Let's say that "Total property" is a weighed sum of numbers of all my property items (a basic railway segment will have a lesser weight than a station segment or a Maglev rail segment - just as it is now). I would like to set:
1. Multiply the cost per item by...
2. Cost per item doubles every time when the total property increases by ...

When the first one is 2 instead of 1, the cost will be doubled (and the rate of increase will stay unchanged).
When the second one is high, the cost per item will increase only slowly.

I have NOT analyzed whether the cost per item in the current game depends on the total property exponentially, polynomially, linearly, or logarithmically. The last would probably make the best sense, and then the second parameter should actually be: "Increase the cost per item by xxx% every time the total property doubles." I suppose that this increment should be continuos (no sudden jumps) and that it must be additive, i.e. linear, not exponential (i.e. 100 GBP + 20% + 20% is 140 GBP, not 144 GBP obtained as 100*1.2*1.2)

I'll be happy to elaborate this suggestion to more detail if someone tells me that I should.

Generally, is there a reason, please, why these fundamental settings (such as: multiply the transport income by) are not customizable?

Thanks a lot
Reflame

[WenSim]

Just use basecosts. It's a NewGRF

[nihues]

BaseCost Mod 5.0 as last mod on your list is your answer.

I play like you, all costs setting on high, infrastructure cost on, no inflation (that will break your hard game).

3x train weight, 5% slope (testing 1x and 10% seems good too).

And basecosts to do whatever I want, I use like 128x 64x or something like that on terrain/city stuff, 4x-8x on build tracks/roads etc...

2-4x on train maintenance etc.... (heavily depends on train set)

Also, try xUSSR tracks, or nutracks, they are the best balanced tracks depending on track type (costs and maintenance will bankrupt you if done wrong on a hard game).

Also some industry sets are more easy tunned to profit, some are harder (less payment overall)