highway travel

[T-shirt]

When travelling on high ways the speed of (motorised) vehicles is very good. The problem with traveling distances is that the vehicle will stop at every settlement along the way and will only travel on by character interaction.

1. I suggest characters can select any settlement linked to the settlement they're in by highway to travel to with a motorised vehicle. And no settlements between the starting settlement and the destination is stopped at.
2. For non-motorised vehicles (bikes and cart) and for travellers on food only the direct connections remain selectable as travel destinations.

A short and simple suggestion. Might be complicated to program though, but that should be no reason not to accept it.

[psymann]

Why should it be different for non-motorised vehicles?

psymann

[Chris Johnson]

But how do characters know which other locations exist or whether there are routes between them and if there are that these are highways ?
Also how will you handle cases where the road has been degraded to a lower level without causing a CRB (and that is in the pipleine along with
building and vehicle destruction)

And programming complexity and overhead is always a consideration for accepting any solution

[Rusalka]

Lets see... Wouldn't it require constructing a beltway?

The fact that vehicle stops annoys me as well, but I can't imagine how to solve this problem. How you program your car, when you don't know the way? Do you?

[T-shirt]

Never mind. Send it to rejected please.

[Jos Elkink]

This is actually fairly close to how I imagined to implement railroads. There I thought you could decide whether or not to add a station to a particular location, and you only stop at stations, or perhaps you can even select the destination from the whole line.

I would prefer to reserve this for railroads, though, to give them some additional advantage over just being yet another way to travel ...

EDIT: Moved to rejected for this reason - but it still means that in basis it's a very good idea ... I mean, I thought of it as well, so it must be good

[T-shirt]

Even more path upgrades? Now from highway to railway too? Isn't that a bit of an overkill in upgrades?

[Jos Elkink]

No, it would not be an upgrade, it would be a different system altogether ...

[Sicofonte]

About automatic travelling for non-train vehicles:

- The driver of the vehicle (who sets the travel initially) can choose only destinations known by him/her (already dynamically named).

- All the route must be choosen by the driver, not just the destination (1).

- If the destination is not reachable due to no proper ways are
, it can't be known by the driverand of course reachable by the vehicle.

- It would be nice to be able of blocking a way (project "building stone/wood/timber/sand... barricade") and to wait asleep drivers with automatic travelling to get stucked in the town... and you having a crowbar.


(1) Choosing a route:
When initiating an automatic travelling project, the interface of the would present the neighboring known destinations from the current last one, initiallly the place where the vehicle is (route still empty).
The player select the desired destination (with radiobuttons?), the interface adds it to the route and asks the player again, giving the option to end the route and start the travel, or to cancel the project anyways.
I repeat: only already labelled places would appear, so no one could arrange a route to a place that s/he ddooesn't know.




About trains and railways:

GREEEEAAAAT! I want to see traincrashes! It would be nice to be on a town, lazing about, and suddenly to see a bunch of corpses and lots of stuff runing down the railway.

[Piscator]

GREEEEAAAAT! I want to see traincrashes! It would be nice to be on a town, lazing about, and suddenly to see a bunch of corpses and lots of stuff runing down the railway.

I don't know if "nice" is the right word.

[T-shirt]

The terms used for various types of highways (such as autobahn, autoroute, expressway, freeway, and motorway) vary between countries or even regions within a country. In some places a highway is a specific type of major road that is distinct from freeway or expressway; in other places the terms may overlap. (source: Wikipedia)

In Cantr the highway is the most advanced road. A freeway or expressway is the most advanced type of highway. I recon a Cantr highway will be a realworld autobahn, freeway or expressway.

On a highway you do not end up in a town centre, but when nearing a town, you have the option to take the off-ramp or continue on the highway.

But how do characters know which other locations exist or whether there are routes between them and if there are that these are highways ?

In Cantr you cannot just leave a place in a certain direction, you have to select where you travel to. That's a major difference from real life. I can hit the highway without knowing where I will get off or, when I do know where I want to get off, which settlements I will travel along.
This is no big deal, but as you corectly pointed out, a character will have to know the destination to be able to travel there. Every road in Cantr leads to another settlement. Even when you don't know the settlement, you will know where a road leads. That's how Cantr works.
In my suggestion you will know the highway network. Not because you know those settlements, but because that's how Cantr works; you have to select your destination to be able to travel. Besides, road improvement projects are huge projects and a result apart from the upgrade can be the highway network information.

Also how will you handle cases where the road has been degraded to a lower level without causing a CRB (and that is in the pipleine along with building and vehicle destruction)

With my suggestions I can't take into account all possible changes in the game that might influence this suggestion. But to answer your question; all characters know what settlements are connected to a road network (standard is two settlements and one road) and when a network changes that information will change. I don't see why this should be a CRB apart from the glitch in Cantr where you have to travel TO somewhere instead of FROM somewhere. When a degrading project finishes the highway network will be changed on all settlements in that network.

[Chris Johnson]

Which IMHO is a suggestion for an huge CRB. So basically if I land one of my english speaking characters on a tip of an large island heavily developed by the poles, that character gets to see the complete road network of that island (or at least the highway sections) , not only indicating routes between places the char has never seen but probably pointing to the larger population centres . All this without visiting any of the places, or even speaking to locals in the place they landed or looking at a map ?

[Phalynx]

Which IMHO is a suggestion for an huge CRB. So basically if I land one of my english speaking characters on a tip of an large island heavily developed by the poles, that character gets to see the complete road network of that island (or at least the highway sections) , not only indicating routes between places the char has never seen but probably pointing to the larger population centres . All this without visiting any of the places, or even speaking to locals in the place they landed or looking at a map ?

Come on these foregners can see it all from their helicpoters anyway... learn to chill dude!

[Marian]

I don't really know if something like this is neccesary, but I could see it working sort of like boats do. There would have to be two options, one for the regular road and one for the 'freeway'. You start off toward 'unnamed location' and then whenever you get near a town there would be a chance to "park" there. (just like docking, only it moves you from the highway to the regular road at a different percentage depending on how close you were when you parked.)

Otherwise you just keep on travelling through and follow the highway as far as it goes. (I guess if you ever hit a place where there were two highways it would stop you at the town where it branched so you could pick which way to go from there.

But then again this all seems pretty complicated, and I don't see anything wrong with expecting people to wake up long enough to click a road the way it is now.

[T-shirt]

Which IMHO is a suggestion for an huge CRB. So basically if I land one of my english speaking characters on a tip of an large island heavily developed by the poles, that character gets to see the complete road network of that island (or at least the highway sections) , not only indicating routes between places the char has never seen but probably pointing to the larger population centres . All this without visiting any of the places, or even speaking to locals in the place they landed or looking at a map ?

You see what settlements the road leads to. Just as you can see it for paths and other roads already. This is the breach in Cantr itself. Without having seen the end of the road, you know where it leads. This is not a breach of my suggestion.

Besides, you will not see the complete roadnetwork. You will see all unknown locations that can be reached by this highway. You won't see the distance, nor their placement on the island. (mayby knowing which locations are only one step away may prevent slow travellers from dying from hunger, but that's a reason why my suggestion was for motorised vehicles only).

In real life when you access a freeway, signs will tell you where the road leads. Signs are part of the roads. At least it is for paths. So why should it not be for highways?

An highway network is an belongs to an advanced society. I don't see the problem in this information being available in an area where travel is that develloped.