Old suggestions were usually quite interesting, but all had some serious flaws, so I was thinking about system which wouldn't have any of them.
Final idea came when I was changing travels code to make it work for horseback riding. It appeared that it's not so hard to add special ability for some vehicles, which is core of this suggestion.
Suggestion is about a new vehicle type: train (fueled by coal) and new road type: railroad (improvement of expressway, so road would then be called "expressway and railroad").
I've got impression that trains should be preferred mean of transport for long distances, but giving it just higher speed than car won't make it useful. Hmm, and there goes my idea.
Trains move just like cars, but when they reach destination then they automatically look for other railroad in destination location and use it to continue the travel. It means, when we have railway...
For example:
A----B----C
Distance between A and B is 50px, train has speed of 75px per tick.
Train starts in A, comes to B. It automatically continues travel from B to C and goes another 25px, so it's pretty near of C. People in train would be notified that they pass location B. People in B would be notified that train has passed their location.
Probably some of you already see one or two problems.
1. What if there are more than 2 railroads coming from the location?
2. What if we have railway: A----B----C----D----E and A, C, E are big cities where we'd like to always stop?
There's one answer for both. Solution is introduction of a special object which can be called railway platform and forces train to stop and not continue the journey. It should be built only in big locations to not lose train's special speed boost.
Building a platform when there are 3 railroads coming from one location wouldn't be necessary, but without it train would select random of 2 railroads, which is usually unwanted
In the following situation platform in location B is a good idea, however it makes travel between A and C as slow as when using normal vehicle.
Code: Select all
A----B----C
'--D
In such situation it might be better to remove railroad from B to D and connect C and D.
It should also be possible to stop train in the nearest location by setting its speed to less than 100%. It might be sometimes useful to make a stop in the wilderness.
Of course railroads should be expensive (iron+wood) to build. They should also require maintenance once a few decades and be disassemblable.
Trains should be expensive and consume coal. They should have big cargo capacity and have speed similar to fastest cars.
Why I think my idea is better than older ones? (if you don't know them then this point may be unclear)
- no teleportation, so you can see people who really travel
- no extensive automation
- railroads come along normal roads, so it's possible to create one main line and a few branch lines. Railroads can be reused if planned wisely
- my idea doesn't have problem of determining railroad distance like it is in idea of creating direct railroad between cities (shortest path between two points is not always possible)
- and another difference with idea of direct connection between distant cities - no magic OOC knowledge about distant locations is needed to build a railroad
- it's self-balancing. In ideas where it's possible to connect everything with everything, people would try and finally manage to do it. Here it's possible, but unwanted to build railroads and platforms everywhere, because it'd make trains useless. With this idea I think big cities would try to have as little stops as possible, while small towns would try to prove they are important enough to have one.
Some limitations and problems:
- you have to build an expressway to build a railroad (not a big problem. Expressways are expensive, while railroads even more expensive)
- it's not necessary to build a platform if city has just one railroad coming from them
- whole train must be just one vehicle (without separate railroad cars and locomotive), because it's impossible to have multiple vehicles linked together. But it'd be like that for any serious train suggestion
* to reduce problems caused by thing above it might be possible to add special lock (separate from vehicle lock) which restricts driving a train to a keyholder
Suggestion contains some technical stuff, because together with inventing it, I was checking which ideas are able to be implemented.