Server 8 official change proposal

[ST2]

Basically this ideia came up in a game in server #5
1: Start Date - 2 ideias where on the table: keep the same (or 1970) or 1985. Move to a value above 1980 is to get Turner Turbo loco from the beginning, instead of CS2400 for 7/8 years
2: End Date (in case nobody wins it) - in both cases of start date and due the decrease os station/train sizes, necessary to extend it a bit
3: Maximum station and train length - proposed 14 tiles size for couple reasons. 1st. Relieve the load on the server (and therefore in clients too) caused by pathfinder and industry loops (some good wiki reads for players that have problems connecting to servers when game is already in advanced ages). 2nd. Easier to avoid industry blocking (or even the 50% free space stuff and unused station lanes), atm it happens recurrently because of stations size and necessary tracks to serve all lanes.
4: Max train number - Due the spread decrease: 500 (or even 450)
5: Max road vehicle number - related to pont 4. The main ideia is to make players use RV's in short transfers instead of trains, leaving the trains for the main lines or longer transfers.

Already saw some ideias about towns (size, number/ growth), peacefull for me... Don't need to talk about it... again But decreasing number of towns and with 1 industry per town (false for multiple_industry_per_town), will generate less industries so, I'll prefer tune the initial_city_size and/or town_growth_rate values
About the goal... just keep it

[alex879ro]

Basically this ideia came up in a game in server #5
1: Start Date - 2 ideias where on the table: keep the same (or 1970) or 1985. Move to a value above 1980 is to get Turner Turbo loco from the beginning, instead of CS2400 for 7/8 years
2: End Date (in case nobody wins it) - in both cases of start date and due the decrease os station/train sizes, necessary to extend it a bit
3: Maximum station and train length - proposed 14 tiles size for couple reasons. 1st. Relieve the load on the server (and therefore in clients too) caused by pathfinder and industry loops (some good wiki reads for players that have problems connecting to servers when game is already in advanced ages). 2nd. Easier to avoid industry blocking (or even the 50% free space stuff and unused station lanes), atm it happens recurrently because of stations size and necessary tracks to serve all lanes.
4: Max train number - Due the spread decrease: 500 (or even 450)
5: Max road vehicle number - related to pont 4. The main ideia is to make players use RV's in short transfers instead of trains, leaving the trains for the main lines or longer transfers.

Already saw some ideias about towns (size, number/ growth), peacefull for me... Don't need to talk about it... again But decreasing number of towns and with 1 industry per town (false for multiple_industry_per_town), will generate less industries so, I'll prefer tune the initial_city_size and/or town_growth_rate values
About the goal... just keep it

I agree with St2 on every point except the fact that 450 trains would be too few. I have this feeling for 500 trains too. I suspect that 600 trains would compensate for the length reducing. But let`s see some games first and then we shall decide.

[Batt]

1. Start date - 1985 is optimal. Players should not start with monorails, it's not in the 'long-run' style, but 30 years with slow trains as it works now it's too much and wasting player's time.

2. End date - 2090 is reasonable. New players should be able to win it too, right now it's painful to see how a lot of effort goes nowhere and the players who work there for hours can't score any points. Maybe we could change the date to 2080, since the goal is lower than on #5.

3. Max station and train length - 14 is nice to try. 20TL is something most of N-Ice players got used to (servers #3 and #5), but it's worth to try new setting and new possible designs for a long run. Reduced load on a server\clients is a key thing too.

4. Max train number - 500 and not less. With the same production rate we will need 50-60% more trains to fill the gap, because train length goes from 23 to 14. Later we can adjust this number further.

5. Max R.V. number - 250, why not. It's a minor change, since IMHO road vehicles aren't that useful.

6. New goal value? No!
5bil goal - It's not an 'N-Ice long-run server'™. Game will end too soon, since even with 10bil goal one person did it in 35 years.
15bil goal - Some players already complained that 15bil on #5 is too high for them. IMHO 15bil and 10bil servers in da house is nice, people can choose what they prefer. Also, since we're lowering the TL, it should decrease the average income too.

And implement it as soon as possible, please 

[Cossack]

I like the idea of a 5billion goal. The goal would be reached more often and those who aren't capable of winning are more likely to get points this way.

[alex879ro]

I like the idea of a 5billion goal. The goal would be reached more often and those who aren't capable of winning are more likely to get points this way.

Cossack, the idea if you cannot reach a goal is trying harder. Bringing the goal down is not an idea:)....at least not a good one:P

[geo]

1. Start date - 1985 is optimal. Players should not start with monorails, it's not in the 'long-run' style, but 30 years with slow trains as it works now it's too much and wasting player's time.

2. End date - 2090 is reasonable. New players should be able to win it too, right now it's painful to see how a lot of effort goes nowhere and the players who work there for hours can't score any points. Maybe we could change the date to 2080, since the goal is lower than on #5.

3. Max station and train length - 14 is nice to try. 20TL is something most of N-Ice players got used to (servers #3 and #5), but it's worth to try new setting and new possible designs for a long run. Reduced load on a server\clients is a key thing too.

4. Max train number - 500 and not less. With the same production rate we will need 50-60% more trains to fill the gap, because train length goes from 23 to 14. Later we can adjust this number further.

5. Max R.V. number - 250, why not. It's a minor change, since IMHO road vehicles aren't that useful.

6. New goal value? No!
5bil goal - It's not an 'N-Ice long-run server'™. Game will end too soon, since even with 10bil goal one person did it in 35 years.
15bil goal - Some players already complained that 15bil on #5 is too high for them. IMHO 15bil and 10bil servers in da house is nice, people can choose what they prefer. Also, since we're lowering the TL, it should decrease the average income too.

And implement it as soon as possible, please 

i agree with u, Ai

[Geert]

i am glad to see the server changes.


but why is city growth set to slow?

and i think its bad reward for players who try bring water and food to a small city and see it grow every 48 days (even if they do everything right)

the cities are very small to start with, i think this kills the fun of city building in the dessert.

why dont you set it to normal?

[alex879ro]

i am glad to see the server changes.


but why is city growth set to slow?

and i think its bad reward for players who try bring water and food to a small city and see it grow every 48 days (even if they do everything right)

the cities are very small to start with, i think this kills the fun of city building in the dessert.

why dont you set it to normal?

Because the normal size of the city (on which pax routes don`t become so easy to make) is about 800-1000 at the start of the game. And the normal town size is about 200-600 . This is the town size which would make pax routes the same as industry routes. On average , on some servers (the ones which we modified), for some reason , the average town size was 3000-3500 and the average city size was 5000. Unacceptable.....way too easy. So in the case of server 8 , we modified the Initial_city_size to make it more small, and since they still a bit too big, we also modified the town_growth_rate so we can slow them a bit down.

Can you deny that lately, u started to like making pax lines and starting with airplanes?

Now an average city size at start is about 1200-1500 and an average town size is about 500-800, so still a bit big.....but not so enormeus as they were.

[Geert]

Well as you know i dont need pax lines or airplanes to start a server.
I agree with the city size, its oke not to have the ability to build airplanes at the start. But airfields can be build from 4000 pop.
So with the biggest cities say around 2000 pop you dont have airfields (maybe 2 small ones)
the biggest cities/towns have about max 37 houses in town.

Cities then grow every 48 days as maximum speed. Without pre-build roads that means average 3 houses a year untill you hit the 50 houses mark. (I did some simulations on offline maps)
I think the combination of the size of the starting cities and the slow growth nerved citybuilding and pax to death on s8
maybe you and I and a few others are still able to grow some bigger towns with patience. But less experienced players will be discouraged after a few years not seeing it grow.

City building is one the things i like of the dessert and now you killed it........ (pretty much)

[alex879ro]

I understand what u complain about, and you`re not the first one. Growth_speed was not a parameter that we wanted to change. We just wanted to make cities more smaller. The main problem is that when we decreased Initial_City_Size to a minimum, it`s still not enough to bring Cities under or max 1000 and towns to 200-600.
Given the fact that we got more complaints last night, you have my word that in a couple of days, we will find our solution to make size smaller and then restore the town_growth to it`s size.

Our problem was that the towns and cities were simply too big. It`s like having all industries 400 tonnes production at the start of the map

[poida84]

perfect  

[poida84]

City building is one the things i like of the dessert and now you killed it........ (pretty much)

with patience city building is quite interesting though having to wait say 10years for it to reach 4k is just not right we need those larger airports to get the extra cash i maxed to 2m per year with just the commuter planes.... either increase city growth a notch or bring extra planes say to 50-60? just my opinion...

i do agree they were way too big befor im sure you can tweak it a little look forward to the changes in coming days