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Hi! I have quite a few suggestions, I’m not sure how difficult these would be to implement…
1. Drivers/operators should be visible on all vehicles. It looks a bit silly to see a stage coach or early train, for example, without people driving it. This could be a randomly skinned person operating the vehicle; they don’t even need to be animated, just sitting/standing there will do. Or new people skins who are wearing different uniforms for specific vehicle types could be made.
2. Option to set which side cars/buses/trucks/trams drive on. I live in one of the relatively few countries in the world that drive on the left, I would love to be able to see this in game.
3. Upgradable/downgradable train stations. Being able to easily add or remove lines/platforms to existing train stations.
4. Build tram lines like rail by placing a single track that can be placed on or off roads and can incorporate switches/junctions/crossovers. Snapping could be used to fix the track in a particular lane of the road or directly in the centre of the road for narrow roads. One length of track could be bi-directional if it was placed in the centre of the road which would still allow road vehicles to drive around them on either side. Tram signals could also be incorporated to cater for this.
5. An option to place gates at level crossings which are dependent on year, and have road traffic actually stop for trains at all types of crossing. Gates in the early years would be manned, while automatic boom-gates could be introduced later on. An option to upgrade existing gates could be made as well. They could be placed similar to how signals are placed and closed/lowered at a specific time before the train actually crosses. For non-gated crossings, road traffic could stop at the crossing if it could be detected that a collision or near miss would occur with the train.
6. Have the ability to adjust the start point of a placed track/road. It’s good to be able to adjust the end point, but sometimes the start isn’t always in the best place either. It would be good to have one of those adjustment nodes for the start point too, with the height adjuster too. The grade setting could be shown as relative to the other end.
7. Subways. Have an “underground” view where subways can be easily built. Elevation changes can be made similar to how above ground currently works.
8. Ability to use the N and M controls for building rail bridges/tunnels. Obviously, this will be limited by grade more than what roads are, but even a small change would make a big difference.
9. Build level crossings by dragging road over rail.
10. Once a passenger/cargo is loaded onto a vehicle, it shouldn’t disappear. Where do they go? Do passengers die or jump off during transit? Does cargo just fall off? I understand when they disappear from the station, they got fed up with waiting, that makes sense.
11. Horse and cart traffic for civilians in the early years.
12. Adjust the height of stations. Obviously, if a road is already there this would be limited a bit, but if you want to build a station first and then connect the road, it’s very useful to be able to adjust the height as needed.
13. Overtaking. Faster vehicles should be able to overtake slower vehicles if safe. Especially on multiple lane roads and all country roads. Probably not on single lane streets.
14. Auto replace old vehicles, providing that the player has enough money and provided that the vehicle’s route passes near a relevant depot.
15. Semi-Auto upgrade vehicles, providing that the player has enough money. Each vehicle type can be upgraded (or not) depending on the player’s choice.
I think these changes would make the game even more awesome than it already is by adding that extra bit of detail and functionality.
Edit: Added 2 more things
My opinion about yours:
- Nice add.
- Very optional IMHO, but great too.
- YES!
- YES!
- Nice add.
- YES!
- I see a lot of work in this, probably trying making a copy of what was done in “Rails in Motion 1” would be nice… As a start (because it was dumb, but it worked).
- Nice add.
- YES!
- Probably disappear for reducing the load in the computer by “packing” it with another common destination travellers (as they share the exact same route).
- Nice add (as I understand it as private traffic).
- Nice add.
- YES!
- YES! I HATE THAT!
- YES! I HATE THAT!
Now my ones:
- The most important one (for me): HOUR, DAY AND NIGHT, WORK AND HOLIDAY time. How to be done? Just check the SimTower / YootTower system .
- Line traffic control offices, with that you can force the vehicles in a line to go to all station evenly (by default) or schedule (in a very simple way) to day/night/holidays to reduce costs. Done by “expanding” a train/tram/bus depot. Depots also should be assigned to a line for avoiding problems when you send all the vehicles to repair. Lines without depots doesn’t work.
- New depot menu, the actual is horrible (unusable) if you have more than 27 vehicles (in a 1200 height resolution), at least put scrollbars and keep the bottom menu all time available!
- In the line menu, put an amount for how many vehicles are in each line (I have lines with 125 cars, so each time I have to count them…)
- Go-to-depot/Go-to-Depot-And-Sell vehicles are marked with icons and this orders can be reversed before happening in the vehicle menu.
- Possibility of construction 2 or more rails at the same time (for avoiding these annoying and time wasting tunnel-in-curvature errors) .
- For tunnels and bridges already built the possibility to “expand” or “retract” the number of rails. Also, the possibility for bridges to change the material.
- When I wipe out an entire town (or all the buildings of a specific type of building) the game crashes. Division by zero?
- Possibility to put signals in bridges. In tunnels also a special menu by clicking that allow you to put a signal for each distance (make it easy, just the normal signal for all the rails).
- The sky is never blue and the sun looks like a supernova. Dystopian sky… Snow in mountains? Something happening in rivers and lakes (wet areas, swamps…) ? Trees growing again in empty forest-type texture areas? Cows? Horses? Farm buildings?
- Put singular buildings (that also can be destroyed and plop somewhere else) like larger-than-normal industry/skyscraper/mall/attraction park or something, to give a unique distinctive to each town.
- You can add expansions to stations like parking lots (then users can come from farther), electric transformers (without that trains run slowly), coal deposits and water towers (trains also run slow without it).
- Rack rail trains + Higher mountain + Ski resorts?
- Long stations are nearly useless.
- Endgame needs all the machines from 1950, not just the last ones. There’s a 200Km/h wagon but no engine!
In my previous post I said that a night/day + holiday/workday would be great and I just wrote “copy SimTower system”. SimTower is from 1990’s so I think that it needs a bit more of an explanation (is quite difficult finding information about this game nowadays).
First, we will set the length of 1 day in the current game as a T amount of time.
actually we have 365/366 T, we will call this new unit of time U and we change it to be always:
365T = 1U
Second, what is the importance of time in this game? Answer: (nearly) NONE, the importance is frequency in seconds. The time is measured in units that we call “days” but they aren’t days at all. If a 200km/h train needs 30 days for travelling 2 cities then it is not wrong, is plainly insulting. With this changes I plan to solve this incoherence.
Third, the new calendar system:
4 “seasons”,
1 “season” = 2 “weeks”
1 “week” = 2 “workdays” + 1 “holiday”
1 “special week” (the last of each year) = 1 “workday” + 2 “holidays”
So we got 4 x 2 x (2 + 1) = 24 new divisions
Fourth, now that we reduced the amount of “days”, the new adjustment with “hours” and “minutes”:
We will change the total “year” time from 1U to approximately 5U. This will give enough time for trains and other transports for travelling in a realistic amount of time.
1 new day will consist of 24 hours, and 1h = 3T. So one of our past “days” now are “20min”.
3T x 24 = 1day = 72.
72 x 24 = 1year = 1728T
So, a new year suppose approximately 5U, this is, 5 times longer.
Finally, the night period can be disabled by default or released later as a cosmetic DLC, just an icon with a moon is enough.
The clock should be in something like this:
01:23 1W, Winter, 1981
08:00 1H, Winter, 1981 <- colored in red for Holiday
08:00 2H, Winter, 1981 <- colored in red for Holiday
…and so on…
Terrible? At all! Less vehicle replacement, more used vehicle models (as cities grow “faster” in total amount of units of time). The only thing to be replaced is that buildings require 2 seasons to be finish at least.
Of course a better calculation can do magic. Probably 4T = “1h”? I don’t know… What do you think?
Boig,
your idea is a rescale of time to an artificial blocks where target is a red color date an night icon ?
I dont understand how this could help game play.
Will help game play in this:
– Coherence between vehicle travel and time spent.
– Diversity in transport usage by the hour and the type of day (residential -> industrial in work days, residential -> leisure for holidays, in two-day holidays the leisure is done to farther places than normal, in morning and afternoon different amounts in each station, at evening in shops but shops are empty in mornings…).
– Possibility of using night hours for upgrading infrastructure and other changes in already in use infrastructure.
In one sentence: You plan the day with your vehicles, better than the actual “let’s buy a lot of them and hey-yah, zero intelligence, millions and millions everywhere, then repeat ad infinitum”.
Just imagine planning the line with the correct amount of vehicles for each moment of the day, probably just 25 and not 125 like now. Just make the game SMARTER in the transport itself, not just in the construction. This game is too easy in the transport itself (bus line from A to B, then rail from B to C and A to C but not the same line, then repeat somewhere else…).
1. Drivers/operators should be visible on all vehicles. It looks a bit silly to see a stage coach or early train, for example, without people driving it. This could be a randomly skinned person operating the vehicle; they don’t even need to be animated, just sitting/standing there will do. Or new people skins who are wearing different uniforms for specific vehicle types could be made.
YES! This has bugged me since I first got the game, my first impression upon seeing the horse drawn traffic was, ‘woa, got a runaway!’ Same applies to the open cab engines and early trams would modelling some kind of generic figure have been too hard? No need for animation but in a game that shows people walking down the street, I don’t understand this obvious omission.
5. An option to place gates at level crossings which are dependent on year, and have road traffic actually stop for trains at all types of crossing. Gates in the early years would be manned, while automatic boom-gates could be introduced later on. ……..
I’m sure this will appear as a mod in due course. Would be nice to have a little signal box next to the gates for a bit of eye candy as well.
10. Once a passenger/cargo is loaded onto a vehicle, it shouldn’t disappear. Where do they go? Do passengers die or jump off during transit? Does cargo just fall off? I understand when they disappear from the station, they got fed up with waiting, that makes sense.
Isn’t this something g to do with the 20 min rule? I’m sure I’ve read that if the journey turns out to be too long for the passenger/item then they just unspawn. I hope this can be fixed.
14. Auto replace old vehicles, providing that the player has enough money and provided that the vehicle’s route passes near a relevant depot.
Managing the updates better is needed but NO Auto replace thank you, I like keeping some old stock sometimes for the nostalgia.
14. Auto replace old vehicles, providing that the player has enough money and provided that the vehicle’s route passes near a relevant depot.
Managing the updates better is needed but NO Auto replace thank you, I like keeping some old stock sometimes for the nostalgia.
Simon,
the auto replacement feature means an option to turn on/off auto replacement on the line. So you would like keep auto-replacement on by default on yout 60 line of cars, but one your lovely mountain view line would have it off, so you keep steam bus for eye candy. Got it ?
Perfect, exactly how it should be. Now I think of it, another economic factor that would be great to add to the game would be tourism. You could then re invent an old branch line as a ‘historic line’ served with older stock that would attract visitors. No clue how difficult that would be to code into the game but being able to keep a steam line running as an attraction would be cool. Would be nice to keep ALL stock available to buy as well so this could be made easier.
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