Trucking and Resource Transportation

[Vagabond]

Is there a way to represent ore hauling as multiple trips per turn? Perhaps the trucks could make something like 100 round trips per turn, with more or less trips made based on the distance and terrain type. Then you could make each turn a month or year and it would not seem ludicrous that only 1 round trip was made by the truck in that time period?

Or perhaps you could just represent the hauling route to the player by resources per turn delivered. Deliver less resources per turn per truck for longer routes. This way you do not have to give the player any indication of how many trips the truck actually made in a turn, just how many resources it delivered.

[leeor_net]

Have split this thread off from the Population Model thread.

Is there a way to represent ore hauling as multiple trips per turn? Perhaps the trucks could make something like 100 round trips per turn, with more or less trips made based on the distance and terrain type.

This is the general idea I was thinking about. At 100 units of storage per 'truck', 100 trip per turn is probably a lot. We could simply redefine the amount of ore a truck could store, say 10 units or 15 for an upgraded truck. 100 trips would still be a lot though. But still, if we defined a turn as a one month period it would be feasible for a truck to make say, 30 trips, over relatively clear terrain from approximately 15 tiles away. This still seems like a lot to me (300 - 450 units of ore transported per turn per mine?) so the numbers will need to be tweaked -- this is a case where realism may cause complications. We could also tweak the amount of resources a smelter can process per turn and what kind of conversion rate there would be from ore to refined resources.

Or perhaps you could just represent the hauling route to the player by resources per turn delivered. Deliver less resources per turn per truck for longer routes. This way you do not have to give the player any indication of how many trips the truck actually made in a turn, just how many resources it delivered.

I think I like this idea the best and is pretty much what I've started to settle on in terms of how to implement this.

OP1 originally only offered 'automatic' trucking where resources magically appeared at smelters from mines and storage tanks from smelters. This is currently how it's implemented in OPHD but only because it's the simplest method that's close enough to what I want to do without going through the more complex parts of finding and calculating routes. Later on trucking was patched in as a manual thing -- you set trucks to particular routes and then set up the routes on your own by setting 'way points'... basically points along a defined path. This seemed... tedious. And it was. There was also very little indication of what was going on with a particular route if there were problems and there was no way to really know what path trucks were taking.

I still think that OPHD should have some player interaction -- basically every Mine Facility that's built also gets a single truck as part of its construction. These trucks, however, are not directly controlled or manipulated by the player. The mines themselves will find truck routes between the smelter and mine and then how many resources are delivered per turn are based on route length, route difficult and number of trucks assigned. Factories would still be used to manufacture new trucks but these trucks, unlike the way the Digger, Dozer and Miner robots, won't be directly player controlled. T Hey simply sit in a 'pool' of available trucks (given enough warehouse storage space) and players can assign more trucks for a given route. That's the general idea anyway.

[CK9]

You might have already thought of this, but I thought I'd suggest it in case you hadn't.  If you really wanted to simulate a distance factor it would be a relatively simple equation to add in:

(X/(D*a))*N

where:

X is the base rate per truck if the mine was right next to the smelter
D is the distance traveled by the trucks in their route
a is an adjustment constant used to fine tune the equation during the finishing stages of development
N is the number of trucks going between that mine and smelter.

I *think* that would allow you to get an approximation of realism while still just going the easier route of providing the player with a per-turn figure.

[leeor_net]

That's about the right forumla, it's just a matter of fine tuning it. I have a feeling I'll be writing some unit tests to play with these numbers.

[gubid]

Perhaps we don't want to hear this here, but what about making this real time instead of turn based?   This way, the trucks would simply start driving and would take the time to travel.  And that is that.  Are we trying to recreate the original exactly (or nearly) or build a new game largely the same as the original?

If we're going to maintain turn based, then to prevent the 'magic' of the original, I would like to see a truck on the screen and if I click it, its highlighted path and suggested count of completed cycles a turn.  Any fractional movement would be added to set his 'location' for the next round.

As for the material amounts carried, maybe I am over simplifying, but perhaps we could reduce the count of materials being sent back and forth etc.  Maybe something much more straight forward like PlanetBase's version of resource management. Like 3 per turn.  Larger trucks can move 5.  Of a single material.  And why not just common/rare materials, should there be so many types?  I like the idea of those being refined into the other materials.

[leeor_net]

Perhaps we don't want to hear this here, but what about making this real time instead of turn based?   This way, the trucks would simply start driving and would take the time to travel.  And that is that.  Are we trying to recreate the original exactly (or nearly) or build a new game largely the same as the original?

Always happy to discuss any ideas that come through!

I had considered real-time but if I went this route it would probably work more like Outpost 2 where ticks or turns happen automatically after a period of time.

While this isn't intended to be a direct clone of OP1, it is based on it and an important part of the gameplay core mechanics was that of being able to take your time between turns. Kind of like Civilization and other similar turn based games. So doable? Yes, definitely, but it doesn't really 'feel' like Outpost then.

If we're going to maintain turn based, then to prevent the 'magic' of the original, I would like to see a truck on the screen and if I click it, its highlighted path and suggested count of completed cycles a turn.  Any fractional movement would be added to set his 'location' for the next round.

This makes sense though I'm still somewhat undecided on the transport model for the game. Do trucks make several transits per turn as a turn is basically considered a month or does it really take one to three months to traverse a tile?

The general idea proposed was that a route is calculated based on 1) the number of tiles in it and 2) the difficulty of the terrain involved in the route. This would give us a result that we can then use to determine route traversal time.

With this, trucks would end up with much, much smaller amounts of ore being transported vs the 100 units that I'm simulating now. Perhaps one or two units per trip. If a truck could make 50 trips in a turn on a given route, that would mean that a single truck could transport between 25 and 50 units of ore from the mine to the smelter. Which makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, if a smelter and mine are right next to eachother, that truck could make that many more trips.

It's all a numbers game and is one that would need to be played with kind of like what I did with the population though this time it's somewhat more straight forward.

As far as highlighted routes, I completely agree. The idea here is that if you click on a mine, the truck routes will be highlighted from the mine. Generally I would expect each mine to have one route. From here the player can increase or decrease the number of trucks available on a given route. The general thought here is that each mine starts with one truck. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to have trucks built in factories like in the original game or if I'm going to have mines have the facilities to construct their own trucks. I'm leaning toward factories.

As for the material amounts carried, maybe I am over simplifying, but perhaps we could reduce the count of materials being sent back and forth etc.  Maybe something much more straight forward like PlanetBase's version of resource management. Like 3 per turn.  Larger trucks can move 5.

Touched on above.

Of a single material.

Agreed.

And why not just common/rare materials, should there be so many types?  I like the idea of those being refined into the other materials.

Not sure what you mean? I've already reduced it to Common and rare Metals/Minerals. All of the other 'resources' are produced and transported internally in the colony. E.g., power and food and such which all require certain amounts of the refined materials.

This is a significant reduction from the 16 or so resources from the original game. Not sure if I've misunderstood something.