Cargo weight revamping

[Gumboots]

I'm thinking I should revamp the hopper pack a bit. I already have different colours for different eras, to make era changes obvious, but all hopper cargoes currently share the same skins in each era. I'm finding that it's a nuisance not being able to pick the difference between Coal and Iron hoppers at a glance in some scenarios. This is mainly a problem with the profile icons in the train list, but if I'm going to revamp those it's not much more work to do the actual hopper skins too.

There are only three hopper cargoes in 1.05 (Bauxite, Coal, and Iron) and an additional 2 in 1.06 (Ore and Rock). and they all have to have individual models and files anyway, so colour coding the hoppers by cargoes instead of by era makes more sense. If necessary, I can add something to the lettering on the sides to make eras more obvious.

Colours that would make sense are black for Coal (obviously), rust/brown for Iron (d'oh), red for Bauxite (to match the old WP&P bauxite cars). Grey would probably make sense for Rock. Ore can be just about any other colour (possibly a dull green).

[Gumboots]

Got a quick test set up for B, C and H era coal and iron cars. Much better for tracking loads via the train list. The screenshot shows the C era Coal hoppers. Iron still needs a bit of tweaking for colour balance on the cargo itself, but that won't be hard. Should be able to get a complete set done pretty quickly.

[sbaros]

Will you use liveries of short-lived companies in order to to make eras more obvious?

[Gumboots]

Hadn't thought of that, but could do. It would only be logos or initials though. I hate having country-specific names in the wrong countries.

[Gumboots]

Just had a very belated and idle thought about this stuff.

We have thought that it's probably true that the most cost-effective way of running the game is just with mixed consists, and it's certainly easier on the brain if you don't bother with anything else. We were also a bit concerned about not boosting pax appeal ratings too much, and to prevent making express engines too lucrative.

But, if running a split system is generally less lucrative overall (which we would need to be sure of) then there would be an argument for boosting pax appeal of express locos more than we thought. Or alternatively, dropping the pax appeal of freight locos more than we thought. Mixed traffic locos are probably still going to be awkward though.

Not that I intend to screw with things further at the moment. This is just idle rumination.