New building brainstorm

[WPandP]

Not knowing what the limitations of the game engine are, here are some suggestions of mine for buildings that could add to the game.

First off, I have seen that warehouses set for 1 demand are an effective way to get a cargo to move long distances, where it will be relayed from one train to another. The low demand is enough to create a price differential, but low enough that the loads don't get consumed but rather wait around for the next leg of their journey.

I mentioned in another thread that I thought stations ought to have this low-demand built in, to collect the nearby loads. Well, rather than mod all the engines to have low demand, I propose a different method.

Create freestanding lineside buildings, similar to the service tower, which have this low demand. You'd build them next to your station. They would be like building your own warehouses. Call them "YARDS". I would break it down into a few different types, each of which has demands for certain kinds of cargo:
- Classification Yard = basically all the stuff that moves in boxcars, etc.
- Marshalling Yard = Ores, logs, oil, pulpwood
- Icing Platform = refrigerated cargo, like meat, cheese, produce, alcohol
- Grain Elevator = grain, corn, rice, sugar
- Stockyards = livestock

As for graphics, maybe you just alpha-out most of the service tower and let it be mostly unseen. Or, if you can substitute the 3dp files of other structures then I guess you could find a house or farm and repaint it. A more elaborate thought I has was to take a large station (the persian large station looks like it will work well) and use its large base, paint that to resemble yard tracks, and hide all the walls and roof in the alpha channel. But, then I think you'd end up with a station that functioned as a station, and I don't want that; I just want something that creates a little demand where you need it.

What is the benefit of this? Often I find a region with a lot of, say, coal mines, all where the price of coal is $0. There is no way for me to collect that coal with one train, for profitable delivery by a later train, and if I don't have a station in the right place, all those extra coal loads will just walk on by. It's the lack of the old RRT2 drop-shipping options. But if I can build a marshalling yard next to my station, then all that coal would start flowing towards a point, enabling me to collect and deliver it.

Has anybody tried making a lineside structure?

[Orange46]

Simulating yards would be a more interesting way to go.

Since you brought up water towers, can they be incorporated into the stations, and the same with maintenance sheds. If so, then could all sorts of upgrades be incorporated into the stations, such as a branch line upgrade that increases the stations radius, storage yards as noted above, silos and stuff as in RT2. Station size would then be used to reflect something else, say retention time for passengers (like the post office) or number of passengers that can be retained. The freight yards would perform that function for freight

Can a new class of station be developed that has a one square bigger radius than the large station. Alternatively, could all stations placed within a city use the city's squares as their zone (as in SMR), instead of the current radius system? For non city stations, could they continue to use the same system, or could there be just one small radius station for industries and whatever.

If add on buildings are the way to go, then could we increase the city size so as to not crowd out the houses and industry that are the main reason for the city to exist. A larger station radii would also help toward this end.

[WPandP]

I like the idea of being able to have larger city radius. But I think this just comes back to the overal scale of the map - I prefer to work at a closer-in scale, where the trains really have to travel between one town and the next. This is part of the reason why I am thinking of small-demand-yards, because once you get spread far enough apart, the economy model starts to break down, and traffic doesn't flow.

So, I think you should be able to adjust the city radius, perhaps as an overall map scaling factor, similar to overall building density. I doubt this is something that can really be added to RRT3, though. I'm trying to think of things that are actually feasible in the game engine.

To get a really big metropolis, I guess you can just place a bunch of cities close together, with similar names like "South Anytown", "Downtown Anytown", etc. It would be nice if you could re-map one city onto another, like you can with territories, so that a single city name would apply to a grouping of five or so.

As for increasing station radius, the yards I am proposing would effectively do that, at least for freight. I don't think they need a bigger radius for passengers anyways, because passengers really do demand multiple stations in convenient places rather than just one large regional terminal. A "yard" like I suggest would draw certain types of freight to it, so even a small or medium station might work for freight (seems realistic).

[Orange46]

Mostly, I was throwing out alternatives, as I have no idea how the game is programmed or what is feasible. I thought that stations might be progamed as clones of each other, with just a different radius for each. In that case, it should be easy to either add a 4th clone or up the radius of each station. As for adding on buildings to the station as in RT2, that might not be easy - or it might just require a few lines of code and more memory. If memory is the hold up, it's time I (and people like me) buy a new pc or at least more memory anyway. I bought my current one the week RT3 came out and for the purpose of playing RT3 (fortunately, I got the right graphics card) and RT4 or an upgraded 3 would suffice for me to make the plunge.

I love the vast distances in RT3 and want to see that continue. But, because RT3 is so large, there's room for bigger stations. I get frustrated sometimes when confronted by bigger cities by not being able to get everything within the radius, especially when rivers run thru the city. This problem will get worse and affect more cities once we start adding yards and stuff. Also, although the express might be flexible where they want to go, they're not supposed to initiate travel if they're not in the station 's highlighted area. (Am I wrong?) And, I hate the thought of bulldozing anything so as to fit in a station, let alone trackside buildings - but that might just be me. Hmmm, I wonder if we could have a little switcher running around in these "building" - just kidding.

So, a big map allows for big cities and they would still be far apart, especially since RT3 can accomodate some very large maps (the Africa mod from years ago used to bog my system down after I played for 20 years - but I'm not sure if I ever tried that map after I discovered how to increase my virtual memory).

So, are you thinking of intracity traffic? We do need much more traffic on our lines, and intracity traffic could do the trick.

[WPandP]

Intracity traffic would happen if you model a metropolis as multiple small game "cities", all within close proximity. Visually, they would all blend in together, and it would be realistic to have all these outlying suburbs.

In that scenario, express traffic would generate within each station's capture area, some of it wanting to move to other locations in your metropolis. This is feasible without any modification to the current game.

What I am talking about, though, is a mod building which does something far different - it would draw freight towards it, as if it were a demanding industry, but really just be a collection point. Warehouses work this way currently - just set up a warehouse with a 1 per year demand, and cargo will flow to it and sit there. The problem is that the warehouse is not a structure that the player can build during the game.

So, a freight yard as a lineside structure would mimic the warehouse in that capacity. You'd still need to locate the yard somewhat central to the producers you are trying to capture, and if there are major obstacles for that cargo you might still need to send off a spur and a little station. In fact, with the yard bumping up demand a bit, one would be able to run profitable "mine turns", i.e. trains that just collect the loads from a bunch of mines and drop them at the marshalling yard. Such a low-speed, high-traction (usually in the hills) job is the role that engines like the Shay were designed for, and back in RRT2 with its drop-shipping I was able to optimize them for that purpose, with faster mainline engines on the more level route from "yard" to delivery point.

[WPandP]

UPDATE:

I tried a little test last night, and the concept seems workable. I created a new building called "MarshallYard" based on the Service Tower, using the S.T.'s .bty file and the house.bca file. The House gave me a long list of partially demanded cargoes, which I replaced with the names of cargoes I want to attract. The Service Tower was supposed to give me a building that must be build alongside tracks.

I was able to place the building in the editor, but not during gameplay... I suspect this "buildable" aspect is controlled by the .bca file, since one cannot build houses. And, it also was not limited to trackside locations, in fact it sits up high on its deep foundation, which the 3dp model includes so that the service tower doesn't float in midair (it gets placed at the same height as the track). By not being tied to the track location, it just sits tall.

However, the small-demand concept works! It created an effective relay point, to which coal would begin flowing even in a scenario where there is no coal demanded. When coal demand was introduced, it began acquiring a value at the relay point which was slightly higher than nearby squares, so it would still "warp" the pathways of loads that were walking towards the demand. But, it only works this way if you are picking up the loads it collects - it won't collect a huge mountain of loads for you. Which is a good thing, because you are thus still required to run the "mine turn" trains - it won't do that work for you.

I'll keep ya posted; now I need to figure out what needs to change to make it be buildable within the game, and how to make it a lineside building. Then I'd need to figure out how to skin it.

[Orange46]

Sounds neat. I'm using a warehouse (unbuildable, as you noted) for this purpose in a farm collection scenario I'm playing around with. I'm not sure how well it's working, but the scenario seems to work. Your "hump" yards sound much better.

[WPandP]

It might not be all that critical that it be a lineside structure, because for it to be any benefit to the player it will need to be adjacent to a station anyways. Perhaps being free to place it anywhere will make it easier to locate one in a crowded downtown.

Thus, I can conceivably use any building model as the basis, not just the lineside ones. Got any ideas as to what would be good? I'm picturing perhaps modeling it as a yard control tower, but I can't think of any skinny two-story boxes - the service tower may actually be closest in terms of shape, even though it has a round top. I may have to look through some of the houses, see if one of them has a tower-like feature, so that the rest of the building could be made invisible. And, of course, I have to make it something that can be built during the game.

[jedgarthomson]

What is the benefit of this? Often I find a region with a lot of, say, coal mines, all where the price of coal is $0. There is no way for me to collect that coal with one train, for profitable delivery by a later train, and if I don't have a station in the right place, all those extra coal loads will just walk on by. It's the lack of the old RRT2 drop-shipping options. But if I can build a marshalling yard next to my station, then all that coal would start flowing towards a point, enabling me to collect and deliver it.

Has anybody tried making a lineside structure?

You've probably used this tactic before, but I have found that in a situation like the coal mine situation you described above, that I can build a new large station that covers as many of the mines as possible and the coal will collect and be available for shipping, even if the price at the station is also $0, as long as the mines are within the green automatic collection area of the station. I usually label the station with some name like Coal Collection Depot Number One, etc., but I guess you could call it a Marshalling Yard if you wanted to and it would serve the same purpose.

I have also done things like creating a separate railroad company to handle collection from a series of separated farms, mines, etc., and have that company bring the product to my railroad station for interchange. If you do this, there are two main things you have to watch for. If you see a a situation where something like this is developing on the map, before you lay any track in the area, go into the editor and make it a new territory, being sure to include the city to which you are going to build your own railroad station. Then give access to this territory to your company and when you create the new industrial collection railroad, to that company also. After you lay the track and build the little collection stations for the industrial railroad, deny that railroad access to everything but that limited territory and turn it over to the AI, which should then merrily collect product for you and bring it your own station on your line, plus pay you a small track usage fee everytime it does so.

Hope this isn't too repetitive for you old hands.

[WPandP]

Thanks for the tips- I hadn't thought of creating a territory-limited company just to haul raw materials.

The problem I am wanting to address is when coal loads are being generated far enough apart that even a large station doesn't catch them... and anywhere you do build a collection point station, it still has $0 value so nothing can actually get moved there. I want to have coal being produced at one end of a big map, demanded at the far end, but I don't want to have all my trains being forced to make the full overland trek just because that is the only way they can make money.

The Marshalling Yard basically just creates a drop-shipment point, so that loads can be moved in relay fashion. Warehouses do work this way currently, but they have two problems: first, the player cannot build them, and even then they are limited to predetermined scenario formulas for what they demand. Second, the smallest amount of demand they can have is 1 load per year, and this is enough that they occasionally make their local cargo price higher than it is at the remote destination. The miniscule 0.05 per year demand I tried out on the Yard, by comparison, never results in prices higher than just a few bucks more than the price at the mine, far less than at a demanding industry.

[bombardiere]

Well, a very long time ago I made a new building for this purpose. I called it as a depot and posted it at Hawk’s old forum. Back then there wasn’t any interest for this kind of building and I didn’t finished it. I think it is now lost due the hacking at old forum. I’ll see if I can’t dig it up from own files.

I wasn’t happy with the building as it created many problems. First due some problems with the window in the game, I was only able make it accept 8 different cargoes. Secondly it messed map’s economy. Similarly with the warehouses. I tested a market town concept placing a warehouse, which demanded all kind of farm product. However, even with 1 demand prices went up too much and as 1 demand was easily met, the warehouses upgraded and town growth high. 5star cities in 10 years.

However, that 0.05 demand might be interesting. It might offer a possibility to balance it with in the economy. Still it would require so many buildings that I am not sure is it worth while.

BWT This is just a personal observation, but I think that RRT3 is oriented towards local traffic. In my games, the passengers are not interested in to travel distant cities. (Even if large) I have toyed with an idea to convert Troops to Intercity passengers. But it would require too much work for me to bother.

[WPandP]

I haven't been using all of the cargo slots, but by basing it on a house I am able to get more like 20 cargoes demanded. I was breaking the yards into different types so that you don't get a single catch-all building that is useful in all situations, and the actual number of cargoes demanded at each yard won't be more than about 10 at most this way. Right now, I typed in about 5 different ore-type demands and left the rest all reading "goods"... I ended up with a building that demands 0.05 goods per year, plus 0.05 goods per year, etc. That is, it doesn't aggregate that into 0.75 goods per year, but rather lists them all separately. In the final version, I would just edit all those extra demands out, but I want to test it a bit more and see if multiple-listings like that really does increase demand (and thus skew the economy more).

I went looking for a decent 3dp file to use as a yard tower, and I hit upon the medium-sized southwest station. I started alpha-ing out pieces of it, trying to get it down to just a platform (on which I could paint track) and a tower... but I hit a snag. Some of the textures on the tower are also used on other walls, ones which I want to be invisible! DRAT! back to the drawing board.

[jedgarthomson]

Warehouses do work this way currently, but they have two problems: first, the player cannot build them, and even then they are limited to predetermined scenario formulas for what they demand.

You can build any kind of warehouse you want anywhere you want from the editor, with any cargoes you want. Just open the editor, click on Port/Warehouse cargoes, and go to the first available warehouse down the list that has no attributes. Do what you want with it for cargoes, give it a new name so you remember it (like "8 Distant City"), then go to "Distant City" in the cities part of the editor, activate "warehouse" under industries, then choose "8 Distant City" as the correct warehouse. If the AI doesn't build one there in a reasonable amount of time, go back in to the editor, find warehouse number 8 (it will actually be the seventh one in the list at the bottom of the editor after ports because there is one further up in the list separate from these), click on it and build it where you want it. Check the cargo formula to be sure it is the right one, if not, just doze it and find the right warehouse.

[jedgarthomson]

BWT This is just a personal observation, but I think that RRT3 is oriented towards local traffic. In my games, the passengers are not interested in to travel distant cities. (Even if large)

One thing I have done to take advantage of this characteristic of local traffic orientation is to create an overlapping series of what I call "Route" trains. Let's say you have cities A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. The route for train number 1 would be "A,B,C,B,A,C". Notice that that covers all possible routes between cities A and C, as the train will automatically go from C to A as the last leg. The route of train number 2 is then "C,D,E,D,C,E". If you keep going in this fashion you will find that cargo will gradually move, albeit slowly, through this series of overlapping routes from one end of the system to the other, provided there is some price differential.

[WPandP]

jedgarthompson wrote:

you will find that cargo will gradually move, albeit slowly, through this series of overlapping routes from one end of the system to the other, provided there is some price differential.

Right you are; I generally run a similar three-station overlap on my trains for the same reason. However, the problem I am addressing is the "price differential" clause in your statement. After 1950, coal at the far end of a map will have $0 value, and for something like half the map it will stay down there. To get it moving requires that there be some small adjustment in its value. I've tried setting up warehouses as coal relay points, but the fact is that the 1 per year demand they impose is just too much; I end up with coal that frequently does not want to move along to the next relay point, plus all the money-making trains are the ones going from mines to warehouse (yard), while the mainline coal drags that get it over to the steel mill barely make anything. This is unrealistic - the local mine turn out to be the money loser, and thus cause you to want to use cheaper engines like the camelback or shay, while the long-haul drag ought to bring in the cash and thus justify a heavier engine like a Big Boy or a DD40-X.

UPDATE: I finally do have a BCA file now that treats my MarshallYard as something player-buildable (i.e. an industry) while still having the house-style light demands. The only problem is that the in-game name now appears blank; I have no idea why this is, but it seems like it should be fixable. I've been using the "Customs House" 3DP and DDS files, in lieu of some other customized yard tower, because I found that ready-made building hiding in my RRT3 installation.