My opinion is that the problem is not Microsoft or Google. The big problem is monopolies.
Or better to say: the blind followup by the m****es ...
Within the last 10 years I had only two occasions when a map had been totally misleading - both of those events I got a google map send and just relied on that. OK the US might be better, but in Germany it seems quite crappy
We all get lazy using the search engines. There are othes beside Google like Altavista or http://clusty.com/ , and others more ... Google is getting evil (nonetheless the are saying they would not) as they are offering nearly all possible services by now. This is inevitable! Sad but true ...
Transport Tycoon ... early 90s ... I did not like the creation of wagons at the station and the overtaking/running of trains ... and there had been a very low limit of max trains (can't remember ...)
I play rectangular maps with a good portion of water ... (not too big for my system, but still good to use all means of transport) - 128x640 What category should I sacrifice my vote?!?
Also, please consider whether there is a need for an "endless" number of subtypes with different paint applied ... More useful would be filling the gaps in the list of available vehicles.
But again Christiansen, please read the information about creating suitable graphics and try ... yourself. This might take a while, but will help!
What about if a player wants to run an express train through it... ?
Express trains have to slow down too ... allowed speed is/should be a function of the head wind. From the aspect of proper traffic system layout mixing of different speed trains is not ideal anyway. You could - in case you feel the slowdown too problematic - use a byp**** system. As its done in reality.
Also, I have noticed that, whilst a weight limit parameter is included for plain track and road, is it not, somewhat oddly, included for bridges or tunnels: it is for bridges, in particular, that weight limits are likely to be useful. I shall have to set about adding that to bridges, but that will involve a re-versioning of the pak files.
... thats a side effect of thinking ... most of the time not thought of , ugly isn't it?
Hi, as soon you have friction --> wheel flange is touching the track ... you will have a real serious problem. In normal operation the wheel flange should never touch the rails. Railroad wheels are conical and directly connected, so in curves the different radius (resulting by shifting the touching region of the conical wheels) keeps the train on track. Trains having a side motion around the needed wheel position - this is stabilizing the movement.
Problems coming up when trains are to slow in a banked track (such tracks are then not planned for being slow ), or when moving over switches (most people know the ugly sounds...). Switches are an important reason to slow down traffic. In Germany we had some wheel defects on high speed trains. The main candidate to have caused to much stress on the wheel/axle structure are likely the switches and worn out tracks from other traffic. All other countries have their high speed trains completely separated from normal commuting and freight train system ...
As said above the tilting trains are purely for p****enger comfort - to compensate for centrifugal force. The human sense of balance does not allow too much force to the side ... Miscomfort will prevent people from traveling such trains. Even when 95% could not determine why it is feeling peculiar ... Tilting of trains is not necessary for goods transport. Any good to be carried needs anyway to be packed properly ...
Speed limit to be applied on freight trains are caused by weight (stress on track, needed energy to accelerate and braking distance). Sure not forget the stress on the vehicles ..., but less important ...
hmmm, the various pak sets will impose significant issues ... I would the suggest to give the pak sets a unique fingerprint (also separating the versions) which can be checked and the network game restricted to those commom paks. A proper fingerprinting would also enable to identify missing or conflicting paks when loading existing games. The Simutrans console could this way tell "pak set xyz is missing and needed to load this game".
Another point is that the network mode must be started before the pak sets are loaded. At the moment the pak sets are loaded during the Simutrans start up
maybe there had been some horse carriages ... Please don't forget the pak had been cleared from objects with no proper copyright definition. That way some "beloved" items can get lost ...
in the words of economics it is "forever", therefore costing "more than anybody can spend" truly makes the places unreachable - thus people unhappy. This is why Simutrans show the "unhappy" p****engers. I don't understand your suggestion as to remove those. What I understood that you want a different balance of short, medium, long distance and the not reachable places (the forever unhappy people whining that nobody takes them to heaven/mars/Paris or where ever you think of). This is a very good and useful plan.
The "takes forever" was written more in the context of the suggestion of "isochrone mapping" ... I like this idea too. imagine you select a city on the map and you can see where the people/post can go to in a certain time. also show places where there is no connection to ...
The problem is, if there isn't a transport link between two towns, there is no way of measuring how long that it takes to get between those towns...
no connections --> takes "forever"
During my last years at University I had been dealing with Operations-Research problems ... There are interesting problems to find the "best" routing. Most of the time you will have to restrict your efforts to "good" as "best" will lead to too much cost for that calculation ...
That applies to network routing also. You will never get the certainty that all the packets we send around take the same path.
The idea of isochromes to validate the p****enger routing on a Simutrans game is great, but might be a little difficult to calculate. What could we use? The best connected stop of a city or the worst connected one ...
To attract more American players a American pak would be of more use. These units are more on low level awareness - i believe. But starting in 1930s and all vehicles are European ...
*ironic mode on* advertise on Obama.com *ironic mode off*
James imho we need more an Americam look (maps, buildings, vehicles) than everything else to get more Americans playing and that way get reviewed in public.
prissi, clearly yes, when the first waypoint is not reachable, then there is nothing to show --> "route not found". But as I understand: the request is for testing all the route. So the test could go waypoint by waypoint and for example mark the "reached" waypoints green within the schedule. In case an error occurs the test could go backwards through the waypoints list to narrow the area of problem ...
In my opinion, it can be confusing. You'll buy a vehicle, you'll ****ign a route, and because of the vehicle itself or part of it, you will see the dreaded message "Vehicle such and such can't find a route"... Perhaps it is a hidden behind-the-trees piece of inadequate track. It often happens with electrified lines.
For each vehicles, it should also be added information about on what ways it runs (interface change).
Could be avoided if schedule is done first - then the set of possible vehicles reduced by the routing on available tracks/roads/ways. From my experience I never run vehicle without a schedule - schedule free vehicles are not maintainable ...
I had forgotten about seasons as well. My first idea (which is usually not the best), is to redraw the moisture map whenever the seasons change. That is if you want the moisture content of the tiles to change with the season and I'm guessing you do.
Maybe simplify that way: - to have the wind just blowing west to east - recalculate the moisture map per season (can take the sun elevation of prissi's eternal wishlist into account) - cities also warm up locally so they can be changing the moisture map too (including skyscrapers influencing the airflow)
To recalculate on every building activity (landscape forming, bridgebuilding, planting trees, ...) might be of too low relevance justifying the additional CPU time. When the needed workload is really small it could go to a monthly recalculation.
The argument its "just 2% more" is in my regard dangerous. There is such an amount of little wishes "with just 2% more workload" that its possible to add up to too much We have already the overtaking of vehicles included and numerous more ...
Additionally, I am keen on the idea of a revenue penalty (a sort of opposite speed bonus) for p****engers, mail and goods travelling from overcrowded stations, as well as capping the total number of p****engers/mail/goods that can accumulate at an overcrowded station, to make handling overcrowded stations more challenging (the idea being to make it easier to avoid station overcrowding than it is now, but more of a problem when it does occur)
Think that this is a good plan ...
I have one problem with capping the overcrowded stations: it renders the problematic stations to a cryptic status at the moment.
Those station should get an additional flag like "rejected p****engers/goods". This would help the network designer (player) find out where problems are hidden.
This is helping out with one part of Christiansen's topic. But still - Christiansen - I would like some feedback on the language/communication issue coming up here. We are a community and are willing to help further. A little more effort eases the progress we have achieved so far and we intend to continue!
It will make the game much more complicated to play and objects to make
Can you make your idea more ... simple ?
I find it interesting but to heavy
I don't think it will be too heavy - it more will show the lack of suitable vehicles ... In my actual game I had to use steam engines to form a money earning subway with enough capacity ... I doubt very much that real people will enter such tunnels on free will
Now I see that there are a few Polish speaking people here. But puzzling - and certainly not enough to justify an own Polish board - those are single word, one times posters posts. I will support your wish (even though I can't read Polish) when it is credible enough that there is a real use for it.
As you are a group of 5 or six persons, important to promote this proposal would visible activity, e.g. a Polish Translation or the creation of Polish pak objects.
Not true! Every player can load or unload at a public station. The only way to connect two players networks is having public stations in between. In other than public stations indeed no "foreign" player can load or unload.
upppps, think I need to play with the set of different "players" - thanks for the hint!
2) The first picture shows the loading bay in grey, the last one in player colours. This normally means that the first shows a station owned by "the public". However, this shouldn't prevent goods from being routed there.
As far as I know the player can not load at public (or other players) station ... So after creating or linking the industry (what has to be done as public player): switch back to "human"
, ugly isn't it? 
