Ship Queen Elisabeth II OP? (Pak128) :: Simutrans Suggestions

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Pupique

7 Sep, 2022 @ 3:45pm

Ship Queen Elisabeth II OP? (Pak128)

Hello guys, so I've been playing Simutrans for a while but this is the first playthrough that I invest heavily on ships. All was going well, until a new ship "Queen Elisabeth II" was introduced.

For those who don't know, the ship has these settings:
Cost: 816,815
Operational Cost: 38.89/km
Capacity: 2100
Speed: 53km/h

It may not seem that impressive, unless you compare it with its predecessor, the Gripsholm:
Cost: 338,261
Operational Cost: 41.33/km
Capacity: 1900
Speed: 32km/h

So Queen Elisabeth is not only cheaper to run, but it is also faster and has slightly more capacity. The bigger problem here is that the ship is too fast, meaning that you will earn too much. Of course, this could be combatted by meddling with speedbonus.tab (and I did), but it will be impossible to balance it since all other ships are much slower, meaning that the others would never run a profit if you tried to balance the speedbonus using only Queen Elisabeth as a parameter.

The screenshot I took serves as an example of how broken the ship actually is. It is pretty obvious the time when I purchased her en masse, as my Account Balance grew rapidly after being somewhat stable in the years before.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2860067604

Therefore, my initial question stands: isn't this ship too OP? I really need to use better ships than Gripsholm since it stops to run a proper profit from 1950 onwards, but Queen Elisabeth simply breaks the game.

Also, is there a proper way for me to modify the ship myself? I'd like to tinker with it in order to balance it to my standards.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm using Pak128.

Last edited by Pupique; 8 Sep, 2022 @ 6:26am

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Showing 1-10 of 10 comments

Roboron [developer] 9 Sep, 2022 @ 3:04pm

What about increasing the (operational) cost instead? What do you think is a good number?

Pupique

9 Sep, 2022 @ 3:30pm

Originally posted by Roboron:
What about increasing the (operational) cost instead? What do you think is a good number?

I don't think that adjusting just her operational costs wouldn't suffice, since her speed is way out of line when compared to other ships. Unless you'd be willing to heavily increase her operational costs (by 75%+, for instance), in which it would maybe balance her back to normality.

I believe that decreasing her speed by 10 (to 43km/h) would make her more in line with the freight ships that carry goods heavily affected by speedbonus (such as the fluid and car ships, both have their speeds around the 40km/h mark IIRC). I may be wrong though because I only played up to 1978, maybe other faster ships may appear.

Also, taking her speed (even after adjusting it to 43km/h) and capacity into account and comparing it to Gripsholm, I'd wager that increasing her operational costs by 25% (to 48.61) would be good.

Roboron [developer] 13 Sep, 2022 @ 9:41am

Okay, listen. You can modify the vehicle yourself because pak128 is open-source, but you will need to know how to compile a pak file.

There is a page explaining the process in the wiki

=> https://simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/en_doPak?page_ref_id=463

But I will give you specific instructions.

1. Sources for Queen Elisabeth II are at https://github.com/simutrans/pak128/tree/master/vehicles/ships-ferries
2. Download the .dat and .png files
3. Download makeobj from https://sourceforge.net/projects/simutrans/files/makeobj/60-6%20for%20123-0%20up/ (if you are on Linux you will need to compile it yourself, please ask for more instructions).
4. Put everything in the same folder. Then run makeobj from a commandline as following:

./makeobj pak250 queen_elisabeth_2.pak queen_elisabeth_2.dat

(Yes, ferries are size 250 actually and not 128). After that you will get a .pak file that you can add normally to your addons/pak128 directory and test in-game.

There's also an online makeobj at http://simutrans-germany.com/online_dat/?page=fileupload but I sincerely recommend you to use the command-line tool instead, if you have any interest in pak modification/creation.

If after some modifications you think you have got a more balanced version*, please reach back so we can add your modifications to pak128. Work on balancing is very appreciated, and pak128 is not precisely the best balanced pakset.

*Take into account that, as Queen Elisabeth II is a real ship, some parameters like speed may be as they are for realistic reasons.

Pupique

14 Sep, 2022 @ 7:16am

Originally posted by Roboron:
Okay, listen. You can modify the vehicle yourself because pak128 is open-source, but you will need to know how to compile a pak file.

There is a page explaining the process in the wiki

=> https://simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/en_doPak?page_ref_id=463

But I will give you specific instructions.

1. Sources for Queen Elisabeth II are at https://github.com/simutrans/pak128/tree/master/vehicles/ships-ferries
2. Download the .dat and .png files
3. Download makeobj from https://sourceforge.net/projects/simutrans/files/makeobj/60-6%20for%20123-0%20up/ (if you are on Linux you will need to compile it yourself, please ask for more instructions).
4. Put everything in the same folder. Then run makeobj from a commandline as following:

./makeobj pak250 queen_elisabeth_2.pak queen_elisabeth_2.dat

(Yes, ferries are size 250 actually and not 128). After that you will get a .pak file that you can add normally to your addons/pak128 directory and test in-game.

There's also an online makeobj at http://simutrans-germany.com/online_dat/?page=fileupload but I sincerely recommend you to use the command-line tool instead, if you have any interest in pak modification/creation.

If after some modifications you think you have got a more balanced version*, please reach back so we can add your modifications to pak128. Work on balancing is very appreciated, and pak128 is not precisely the best balanced pakset.

Alright, thank you for the instructions! I'll do that and let you know once it's modified and tested. May take a while though because I like testing everything to see if it's all fairly balanced.

I forgot to note, however, that I've heavily modified simuconf.tab and speedbonus.tab to make the game more challenging, meaning that my balancing will probably not match the vanilla experience. Still, once I have such changes done, I'll let you know. Thank you!

Originally posted by Roboron:
*Take into account that, as Queen Elisabeth II is a real ship, some parameters like speed may be as they are for realistic reasons.

Yeah, I thought as much. In fact, her IRL speed is even higher than in Simutrans (59km/h). Even though I'd like to maintain the ship's speed, I might be forced to tick it down or it'll be hard to balance it when comparing to the other ships (unless I give it a grotesque operational cost or I balance ALL other ships... would have to test it to see which alternative is best).

Roboron [developer] 14 Sep, 2022 @ 9:24am

Don't worry, take your time!

Pupique

24 Sep, 2022 @ 6:38am

Hey Roboron!

I've tried following the steps you suggested, but the command line is giving me the following errors:

\makeobj pak250 queen_elisabeth_2.pak queen_elisabeth_2.dat
Makeobj version 60.6 for Simutrans 123.0 and higher
(c) 2002-2012 V. Meyer, Hj. Malthaner, M. Pristovsek & Simutrans development team

Writing file queen_elisabeth_2.pak
Reading file queen_elisabeth_2.dat
Warning: tabfile_t::read: No data in "Simutrans object file"
Warning: tabfile_t::read: No data in "Compiled with SimObjects 0.1.3exp"

You know how to fix it? Thanks in advance!

Roboron [developer] 5 Oct, 2022 @ 12:26pm

I've used the very same version of makeobj (60.6) and I did not fin any issues (although I compiled makeobj myself).

Strange. Are you sure the queen_elisabeth_2.dat file is correct? You should be able to open it with a text editor to see if it is not corrupted...

Otherwise I can only suggest that you try with a different version of makeobj (maybe that was wrongly compiled) or the web tool I linked earlier.

Pupique

15 Mar, 2023 @ 10:50am

Hello Roboron!

Sorry for being away from the discussion for so long. I managed to make MakeObj work now and I've packed a modified version of the ship.

In the end, I followed your advice to just tune the ship's operational cost. For it, I simply compared its speed and capacity with Gripsholm's and multiplied it by its base cost. From it, I got two values: 68,51 (which was calculated by adding the two additively) and 75,66 (same but multiplicatively).

However, when I put it in the game's folder, the game said that the vehicle is duplicated (naturally), so now I wonder: how can pack it among all other ships? That's because Simutrans comes with all vehicles of the same type packed together.

Roboron [developer] 17 Mar, 2023 @ 11:52am

Good question! You have two options:

a. Include the new ship in pak128 sources, replacing the old, then compile the whole pak. This would effectively replace the object.
b. Or just change the name! Of course, this will not replace the old ship, but instead you will have both the old and the new you made.

Last edited by Roboron; 17 Mar, 2023 @ 11:53am

Pupique

18 Mar, 2023 @ 5:51am

Originally posted by Roboron:
Good question! You have two options:

a. Include the new ship in pak128 sources, replacing the old, then compile the whole pak. This would effectively replace the object.
b. Or just change the name! Of course, this will not replace the old ship, but instead you will have both the old and the new you made.

I went B for now because I don't know how to replace the ship in the pak file LOL However, as time went on, I duplicated some ships to change their goods in order to make them useful before 1900, so I'll stay on B for a while more because I don't wanna repack for every change I make.

In the end, though, I ended up going bankrupt while meddling with speedbonus HAHAH so I'll start a new game to see if my rebalancing will work.

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Simutrans > Suggestions > Topic Details

Date Posted: 7 Sep, 2022 @ 3:45pm

Posts: 10