Topic: Boat transport

Imperio_Centurio Topic Opener Joined: 2016-04-02, 01:25 Posts: 6 Pry about Widelands Location: Germany	Posted at: 2016-12-16, 23:01 If I remember right, in the old settlers I or II game, there was the possibility to build "roads" over short distances of water. It was necessary to set a flag on every border and it was not possible to set a flag on the water and so it was not possible to build side-roads on the water. The distance of the sea routes was limited, maybe to 8 parts or something like that. The sea routes were manned by carriers in a small row boat. A carrier in a small row boat was able to transport one ware like a carrier on a road. I think it was not necessary to manufacture the rowboats. I miss that feature in the widelands game. And I also think boat transport would be pretty nice to watch and it would be a realistic feature. It also will make many maps more interesting to populise, because for example small islands not far away from the coast could be settled even the is not a port space. To make this feature better than in the settlers game and more widelands-conform I would propose following principles for row boat transport: row boats must be produced. The ability to build row boats could be given to the toolsmithy and the shipyard. Needed wares for a boat possibly other people in this forum could propose better than me, maybe one plank and one steel, or two planks. for manning a sea route is needed: a row boat in the headquarter/warehouse an a carrier. The carrier goes with the boat to the sea route where he is deployed like all the other workers do with their tools. sea routes must have a flag at every shore and it is impossible to set flags on the water or make crossings or sideways on the water. That makes sea routes less efficient than roads, the efficiency gets worse the longer the sea routes are. Furthermore length of sea routes should be limited to 6,8,10 parts or something else. Without these characteristics of sea routes some players would outsource big parts of their trasportation system on the water and I think that is something we don't want. That would not look nice and is not realistic, too. to implement the possibility to upgrade strongly frequented sea routes (like strongly frequented roads by bulls/donkeys/unicorns), it should be possible to build bigger boats that can transport two wares at once in the big boat (equal to a carrier with an bull/donkey/unicorn on one part of a road). The big boats only should be able to be produced by the shipyard (maybe using one blank, one log, one steel, maybe using another ware constellation) ships must be able to cross sea routes. Edited: 2016-12-16, 23:02 Top Quote

king_of_nowhere Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35 Posts: 1668 One Elder of Players	Posted at: 2016-12-16, 23:28 in settlers the limit was 4 spaces, and row boats had to be produced. the carrier cpuld transport wares, but not people, so if you wanted to do anything on an island you needed to make a port there, or the buildiers could not arrive. I would not be against such an idea. the only downside is that it would affect the balance on some old maps that were made withoout this feature in mind, but it's not a big deal Top Quote

fuchur Joined: 2009-10-07, 14:01 Posts: 186 Widelands-Forum-Junkie Location: Germany	Posted at: 2016-12-17, 19:36 Boat transport is a good idea. I only know Settlers 1, and there it's like king_of_nowhere says (row boat production, transport of wares only). I just can't remember the distance limit, but it's been a lot of years since I played that game. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think in Settlers you first had to reach the other end of the needed water road by land and then you could build the flag there. That would be a possible solution to the balancing issue of old maps. The downside then is that one can't reach a nearby island by simply building a water road. Top Quote

king_of_nowhere Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35 Posts: 1668 One Elder of Players	Posted at: 2016-12-18, 15:16 fuchur wrote: Maybe I'm wrong, but I think in Settlers you first had to reach the other end of the needed water road by land and then you could build the flag there. That would be a possible solution to the balancing issue of old maps. The downside then is that one can't reach a nearby island by simply building a water road. You could make a flag on an island that you could not reach by road, you just had no way of bringing workers there. however, if you wanted to set a waterway, flag on a small inaccessible island, and from there directly another waterway, you could do so. Top Quote

einstein13 Joined: 2013-07-29, 00:01 Posts: 1116 One Elder of Players Location: Poland	Posted at: 2016-12-19, 09:01 This idea comes every 1-2 years :). I am for this. But making a working program code for this will take a while (enable water roads, enable producing boats, boat carrier, test the routes). einstein13 calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/ backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/ Top Quote