Please improve ships

[adven_turing]

Two things I would like to see:
1) A ship end station to prevent bunching of ships, especially passengers
2) Ship distribution office. It can't be that difficult to implement.

[Silent_Shadow]

End stations would be nice, but distribution offices wouldn't make sense with ships due to their huge capacities and very slow speeds. I think helicopter/airplane distribution offices would make more sense over the water.

Basic mechanics for ships like being able to carry waste and have automatic replacement would be nice too.

[Lex713]

DO doesn't make much sense and Silent_Shadow explained why already, but ship construction office would be really nice to have

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Lex713:

But ship construction office would be really nice to have

I am not sure a ship CO could out perform an HCO, especially if it had to go back each phase for material and workers, and it could only work on harbors and maybe bridges.

Seems a bit niche to me, especially when you can just build three buildings via helicopters and then be able to move all construction vehicles and material except workers, asphalt, and concrete with a couple ships; free CO and storages are then enough to build whatever on the island while the helicopters bring in asphalt, concrete, and workers.

I think for ships to make a good difference in construction, they need a cheaper harbor for aggregates. This would also be nice for moving heating coal to small islands that otherwise have no need for aggregates and you could bring gravel over much more easily. A ship that could handle small amounts of all types of cargo would be nice too.

[Lex713]

We have unfilled niche of fully water based buildings. And few of them that we have are impossible to build with helicopters.

[Kondylis]

My try with passengers ship and the "one supermarket" concept didnt work:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3025669962

[Silent_Shadow]

Are there that many fully water based buildings? I am aware of the oil rig, but not much else.

Maybe the developers could just create new "mechanism" types for ships and then allow free "buildings" for sea resources. For example:

Oil Rig

• Place a free "oil patch" building on the water with an oil deposit below.
  • Has storage for oil, maybe 200 to 10,000 tons.
  • Has one spot for a working mechanism.
  • Has one spot for visiting ships.
  • Doesn't need power nor generate waste (or does if that gets added).
  
• "Oil Rig" type mechanism.
  • Built at dry dock as a "disassembled" rig.
  • Haul the rig to the oil patch with a "container" ship.
  • Once delivered to the oil patch, the rig automatically is assembled and starts working at the oil patch.
  
• Use oil ships to ferry the oil away.
  • Replace the oil rig after so many years when it eventually wears out to side step the maintenance issues.

Fishery

• Place a free "fishing grounds" on the water.
  • Produces fish slowly on its own, with storage of 200 tons of meat.
  • Has one spot for visiting ships.
  • Doesn't need power nor generate waste.
  • Has a $VEHICLE_LOADING_FACTOR tag with a value of 0.2 to simulate fishing.
  
• Cargo ships come and load fish as usual.
  • Maybe include a specific fishing boat for this.

You could use the same format for dredging sites for gravel, stone, coal, or ore, dumps for waste (if garbage ships get added), and other ship based activities.

[pzkpfw_v_panther_ausf_g]

Actually, I find ships DO usefull depending on circumstances. If not to supply a settlements on islands, then at least to automate my export while keeping reserves at desired level. For ships and planes there is a different threshold of a price change (than land transport). And planes have low capacity (gravel transport via air?). I really had that one run at specific map where I was missing this option. I can use planes DOs too.
Ships BOs to build 1 or 2 buildings? I think heli DOs should be fixed to do that rather than building entire fleet just for that.

[Sim]

One annoying thing with ships right now is that if you want to import multiple resources - the amount loaded on the ships will not be predictable.

For example, I have set my small ship to import 100% of bricks+prefabs+boards.

It came back with:
3t bricks
10t prefabs
25t boards

Would expect the amounts to be 33% or so but they seem to be somehow affected how fast the resources can be loaded (so boards can be loaded fast and so they take up most of the ship space).

[astralsilber]

Originally posted by Sim:

One annoying thing with ships right now is that if you want to import multiple resources - the amount loaded on the ships will not be predictable.

For example, I have set my small ship to import 100% of bricks+prefabs+boards.

It came back with:
3t bricks
10t prefabs
25t boards

Would expect the amounts to be 33% or so but they seem to be somehow affected how fast the resources can be loaded (so boards can be loaded fast and so they take up most of the ship space).

There is an advanced option in the line menue to specify the amount of the different goods, similiar to the warehouses.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Sim:

Would expect the amounts to be 33% or so but they seem to be somehow affected how fast the resources can be loaded (so boards can be loaded fast and so they take up most of the ship space).

Materials have a "loading factor" that influences how fast they load; same for unloading, and both of these vary for different materials.

If you do want reliable cargo splitting for ships, all you have to do is set multiple stops in their line with the % of the ship's capacity you want the material to have, like so:
• Load 10% brick
• Load 15% prefabs
• Load 20% boards
• Load 35% steel
• Load 10% electronics components
• Load 10% mechanical components
• Unload wherever

[astralsilber]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by Sim:

Would expect the amounts to be 33% or so but they seem to be somehow affected how fast the resources can be loaded (so boards can be loaded fast and so they take up most of the ship space).

Materials have a "loading factor" that influences how fast they load; same for unloading, and both of these vary for different materials.

If you do want reliable cargo splitting for ships, all you have to do is set multiple stops in their line with the % of the ship's capacity you want the material to have, like so:
• Load 10% brick
• Load 15% prefabs
• Load 20% boards
• Load 35% steel
• Load 10% electronics components
• Load 10% mechanical components
• Unload wherever

If you use the advanced menu multiple stopps aren´t necessary. Just choose the specific amount of different goods directly in the advanced menu and the ship will load the selected goods up to the choosen limit.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by astralsilber:

If you use the advanced menu multiple stopps aren´t necessary. Just choose the specific amount of different goods directly and in the advanced menu and the ship will load the selected goods up to the choosen limit.

If you use the advanced setup, the ship's load will be always be locked to that, but if you use multiple stops you don't have to do that for every ship you add to a line or replace older ships with. You can also have the ship load different loads for each location instead of being locked to a single one.

[astralsilber]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by astralsilber:

If you use the advanced menu multiple stopps aren´t necessary. Just choose the specific amount of different goods directly and in the advanced menu and the ship will load the selected goods up to the choosen limit.

If you use the advanced setup, the ship's load will be always be locked to that, but if you use multiple stops you don't have to do that for every ship you add to a line or replace older ships with. You can also have the ship load different loads for each location instead of being locked to a single one.

Yeah.. if you want to use it you have to set it.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by astralsilber:

Yeah.. if you want to use it you have to set it.

Yep, but it is rather limited compared to multiple stops:

• Every loading location is restricted to the same loadout, which is not great for cargo ships because they can carry open-hull, covered-hull, dry bulk, refrigerated, and other goods.
  
• Advanced setup only allows for 10% steps in capacity while multiple stops allows you to specify in the single percents, which is great for fine tuning loads.
  
• There is no copy function for advanced setup (that I am aware of), so you have to manually enter it for all vehicles you want running in a line and their replacements. Multiple stops can be copied very quickly by copying the line, and there is no need to clear the advanced setup when assigning a vehicle to another line.

[Sim]

Oh that's Interesting - have not thought about just adding multiple stops on the same location saying how much to load of each resource, thanks.