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Topic: carts for transport

Ron_of_Nord
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Posted at: Today 06:01

I was thinking this morning on how carts could improve transport bottle necks, having a beast of burden pull the cart (allowing for more goods to move). The only problem is the flag system, maybe such a unit should collect materials until it fills up and takes its load directly to the nearest ( or prefered ) warehouse. The prefered storrage option could be handled by having the cart deliver those goods to the required storage site before moving on. Items that have no prefered storage should just go to the nearest warehouse, albeit by cart.


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Ron_of_Nord
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Posted at: Today 06:06

When I mentioned 'collect goods' I meant collecting from each flag it passes up to a certain distance from its base warehouse. This also brings up a thought as well, instead of stationing carts at flags, maybe they can be stationed at warehouses and dispatched to collect goods when bulk goods are available.


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G8791
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Posted at: Today 06:59

Nice idea. I give it a +1.


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Ron_of_Nord
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Posted at: Today 07:08

Thanks, I'm not sure t the moment wether this should be an add-on or a permanent part of the code base. That's up to everybody to discuss, but an add-on would at least allow the idea to be tested.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: Today 09:31

Not sure about this idea. Building roads is one of the fundamental concepts of this game and if a player has bottlenecks in the road system he just made a failure, e.g. not enough warehouses. I am also not sure if the ware distribution logic will allow this kind of ware transportation.

AFAIK the logic of ware transportation works like sending a letter:

  • as soon a ware get created, the ware get an address to where it should be delivered (another production site, a warehouse)
  • now the complete route to the destination will be calculated and this route will be valid as long the complete route is valid. A (processor intensive) recalculation of the route is only done if the route get cut somewhere (a road is destroyed, a ship has sunk)
  • if the ware has reached the initial destination, the ware is free for another transport

So if you use a cart, the collected wares will need a reset of the wares destination and the path. If a ware's destination was a production site (say a weapon smithy had requested gold) the ware will not go directly to the production site, instead it will be grabbed by the cart, goes to a warehouse, and only then delivered to the production site. If you have another bottleneck on the way, the ware might get grabbed again by the cart, goes to a warehouse, and only then delivered to the production site. If you have another bottleneck on the way, the ware… and now the ware get transported in a round never reaching the weapon smithy (which needs the gold so much).


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: Today 10:22

I think that planning and managing an efficient road network is one of the core aspects of Widelands's gameplay, and this proposal would drastically change that and take away much of the skill and consideration involved. Therefore -1 from me.

This would require a larger code change and could probably not be done as an add-on, unless you want to use a lot of (probably very inefficient) Lua magic and discard wares intended destinations.

  • as soon a ware get created, the ware get an address to where it should be delivered (another production site, a warehouse)
  • now the complete route to the destination will be calculated and this route will be valid as long the complete route is valid. A (processor intensive) recalculation of the route is only done if the route get cut somewhere (a road is destroyed, a ship has sunk)
  • if the ware has reached the initial destination, the ware is free for another transport

Correct except that the entire route is always recalculated at every step of the way, even if nothing changed. And request-supply matching is lazy so it is possible that a ware briefly has no destination.


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