Simutrans Forum Archive

(Sorry for the not too descriptive title, please give it something different if you can)

Title:
Industry creation should pay attention to the budget of the current transport companies.

To understand this, i think you will need this story...

--Story starts--

So i started a game with just small cities, and a single power plant on an 512x512 map with a huge lake in the middle in pak64, starting at 1930. You can guess that it was insanely hard to somehow make a growing transport company in these conditions.

So i started servicing the power plant, and from the revenue i started servicing two of the cities building local bus (at first horse carriage) systems, and a rail line between. I mean that these were the important actions. So then slowly the cities started growing, but it was still insanely hard to stay afloat.

And finally there was the point when one of the cities grew large enough to open a market and the necessary industry: a car shop. But... The COAL for the iron foundry was waiting in the OPPOSITE CORNER of the map. (As i later found out) it cost more than 500K money to build up the rail line around the lake (Both the coal mine and the power plant was far, and very high above the lake, so i did not think it suitable to use ships, or to build a line with three changes), and that time there was no any engine which could generate revenue from this line. And it did not stop here. The next city soon grew large enough, and opened a material wholesale. But it also required steel from the iron foundry, and even though a coal mine opened nearby, it was not connected to the iron foundry.

So pratically the whole thing was doomed needing more than a million at once to start operating any of these chains.

--Story ends--


So i would like to suggest somehow involving the current budget of the transport companies when opening an industry chain. Even in the real life industry would not start out if it was sure that there will be no way to build up the necessary infrastructure.

I just meant a very rough guess based on the current budget (The money the players have), and the distances of the factories.

So something like adding together all the distances what the new chain would have, and determining if this can go comparing this after some simple scaling to the amount of money the players have. Nothing complicated. Of course it is possible that somehow an "impossible" chain is created, but at least much less probable this way (It would eliminate cases like mine when i needed to cross a whole 512x512 map to complete the very first chain opened in the game...).

Just guessing... Multiply the total amount of distance between the new chain's factories (If one member has multiple suppliers, use the nearest only) by 500, and check this number against the amount of money each active player has. If none of the players have at least this amount, do not build it. (Maybe it is better to compare instead to the monthly profit, or somehow combining the current amount of money and the profit).