Change of rule 4 (partly "the 50% rule")

[YorVeX]

Occupy at maximum 50% of the space around an industry/town.

suggestions on how to change the rule

instead of working with percentages we could use hard values, as they can simply be counted within the game, so it's a lot more transparent to both players and admins and leaves less room for interpretation. we could say one of these things:

You must leave room around any industry/city for at least one other company to be able to build stations of...

#1	...at least the same size and shape as your own stations covering the same resource.
#2	...at least 5 tiles length with 5 tracks. (the real values have to be agreed on, 5x5 is just a random example)
#2b	...at least 5 tiles length with 5 tracks for loading and another 5 tiles length with 5 tracks for unloading (only if accepted by industry/city). (the real values have to be agreed on, 5x5 is just a random example)
#3	...the maximum station spread in length and width (type !limits to see it).
#4	...at least half of the maximum station spread in length and width (type !limits to see it).

another option would be:

#5

keep the 50% rule but make it get checked by software. admins and players can always type something like "!usage Mousewell Mines" and they get a list of all companies touching its coverage with the percentage from the coverage they use. We could even implement an automatic warning when someone exceeds 50%.

or we can simply leave everything as it is. 

what do you think? any other ideas?

[Geert]

as long as it is possible to build lets say a 20 x 20 station to drop lets wood, and a 20 x 20 to pickup goods at one lumbermill im happy!!


so i go with point 2

[ST2]

as long as it is possible to build lets say a 20 x 20 station to drop lets wood, and a 20 x 20 to pickup goods at one lumbermill im happy!!

so i go with point 2

Geert, so you agree on leave space for competitor build 2 stations of 20x20 plus the rails?

[vitalikk2005]

My suggestion: "Leave enough space around an industry/town for another company to be able to connect it to their network."

For primary industries with production under 300 most people use 2x7 railroad station (terminus or ro-ro) to connect. For higher-production industries (including secondaries) people might want to steal connect with 3 or 4 platforms, preferably ro-ro. For towns, we stress that no one builds roads on all sides of a town, thus preventing other companies to place a railroad station next to it. So, a player should leave space accordingly to this.

Also, considering the possibility of funding clusters of industries as discussed here: http://www.n-ice.org/openttd/forum/index.php?topic=163.0, the following text could be added to the rules: "When funding new industry/town, make sure that the requirements as to the space available around it are fulfilled."

PS. Congratulations on your 100th post, st2. 

[Geert]

as long as it is possible to build lets say a 20 x 20 station to drop lets wood, and a 20 x 20 to pickup goods at one lumbermill im happy!!

so i go with point 2

Geert, so you agree on leave space for competitor build 2 stations of 20x20 plus the rails?

you quote the #1 option

its handy to have a fixed and know amount of space you have to leave that why i like #2

i never said 20 x 20 for everyone

[ZeroIncome]

I agree with Geert, but in addition there should be a seperation between industries like Forest, Coal mine, Iron mine,...(1) and Lumber mills, Power stations, Factory,...(2)

For the 2nd group I think it's acceptable for two 20x20 stations (1 for loading, 1 for unloading). Since you an have that many trains going to 1 industry.

For the 1st group not even one 20x20 station is required. As other players have said a 2x7 or 3x7 station should suffice. As a rule of thumb I'd so only allowed to occupy 1 side of an industry.

Another reason is that industries in the first group cost a few mill to fund, while the second group costs under a mill.

[vitalikk2005]

To clarify my suggestion, i'd like to add that I'm absolutely okay with opponents occupying 90% of space around an industry, as long as I will be able to place my station and incoming/outgoing rails comfortably, if I decide to connect to it.

[YorVeX]

To clarify my suggestion, i'd like to add that I'm absolutely okay with opponents occupying 90% of space around an industry, as long as I will be able to place my station and incoming/outgoing rails comfortably, if I decide to connect to it.

a rule should never need further clarification. of course i am aware that we are still in brainstorming mode and nothing is meant to be final yet 
but just to give you a feeling what things have to be thought of i have attached some example pictures that all show situations perfectly valid by your rule "Leave enough space around an industry/town for another company to be able to connect it to their network." (given they are connected and used properly).

Example 1:

here i was very kind, i even built you a street to the one tile i left for you so you can build the lorry station that i left enough space for. ain't that generous?

Example 2:

now i even gave you enough space to connect a rail station, but only of a very small size compared to what i have constructed there. also i am leaving you barely any freedom to choose size, shape an direction for your station, i rather made you a stencil that limits you.

Example 3:

unlike the first two this is from a real game and when the player was asked to leave space for other players his reply was "but i am leaving space". what he meant is that you could place 2x2 rail stations or simply bus stations everywhere - even in lots of places around the city, so he actually isn't blocking, right? when admins insisted his next offer was: of course when people ask for space i will remove signs so other people can place stations there too.
now that's better, but still forcing all the players to only use the 2 track stations he seems to like.

if you think these are rare or unrealistic examples let me tell you that these things happened so frequently before we had the extra "50% sentence" (and players were always arguing with admins how the rules don't forbid what they do) that they actually were the reason why we decided to add that sentence.

about the coverage area you are right technically it is perfectly sufficient if only one single tile within the coverage area is left free. but that rule could be satisfied coming with maximum limitations to other players whereas the 50% rule has the neat side-effect of also guaranteeing another company some freedom for creativity about how they place their stations.

[vitalikk2005]

My personal inclination is to favour the player who came there first, since he already has made some effort to grow/supply the industry in question. But such fine distinctions in fact constitute the policy of the server (to what extent competition is encouraged), and as such should be decided by server owner arbitrarily.

[YorVeX]

My personal inclination is to favour the player who came there first, since he already has made some effort to grow/supply the industry in question

sure, in less extreme cases it might happen that a player has a 20x20 station there and you only got enough room for another 10x10 station (even when touching only one tile of the coverage area). and we got to ask ourselves if this maybe isn't just OK.

i know that naturally we think it's fair when people who "came first" get an advantage. but in OpenTTD there are some things you should think about:
1. you would discourage later-joiners, especially on crowded maps - the good news is: when this leads to you playing the second half of the 100 game years alone there would be no complaints about blocking anymore 
2. admin calls where players who built at the same spot at almost the same time argue about "who came first" are never easy to handle, with more advantages for first-comers we would increase the number and severity of such conflicts
3. where do you draw the line, only when someone has built his station a year earlier? or already when someone was only seconds faster? is clicking a second faster really something that must be rewarded? this is OpenTTD, not an ego-shooter...
4. even when forced to leave the same building options for a second company players already have an advantage when they are there first (e.g. more space to lead their rails through, on cities they might grow around his station over time and bring more passengers than a station at the edge of it...)
5. even the player who came first can benefit from a rule guaranteeing enough space around "his" industry: he can start with a smaller station without having to worry too much that later he won't have room to extend it to a bigger station, because another player took the space such an extension would have needed

when discussing these things there is one thing you should always keep in mind: limiting of player 1 is done to ensure enough freedom for player 2. you argue that player 2 should have more freedom? fine, but it means you limit player 1. so you rather want less limits for player 1? OK, but now you he can use his freedom to limit player 2.

the goal should be to find a good balance between limiting and freedom for all players (that's a generic idea about laws too).

also i am sure opinions will differ pretty much about whether admins should do any decisions arbitrarily (ZeroIncome is probably already preparing his protest as we speak  )

[YorVeX]

I agree with Geert, but in addition there should be a seperation between industries like Forest, Coal mine, Iron mine,...(1) and Lumber mills, Power stations, Factory,...(2)

For the 2nd group I think it's acceptable for two 20x20 stations (1 for loading, 1 for unloading). Since you an have that many trains going to 1 industry.

For the 1st group not even one 20x20 station is required. As other players have said a 2x7 or 3x7 station should suffice. As a rule of thumb I'd so only allowed to occupy 1 side of an industry.

Another reason is that industries in the first group cost a few mill to fund, while the second group costs under a mill.

yep, that makes sense. so i think if we just take rule #2 and modify it to say "one 20x20 station for loading, one 20x20 station for unloading" that would cover it. for industries where you cannot unload anything it implicitly means that only the 20x20 loading station is allowed. or am i missing something?
i want to avoid making the rule too long, too complicated or having to put a full list of industry types there. even the few players that read the rules are likely to just go tl;dr for such entries and skip over to the next point.

i modified my first post to add this as #2b (didn't want to break the numbering)

[YorVeX]

as long as it is possible to build lets say a 20 x 20 station to drop lets wood, and a 20 x 20 to pickup goods at one lumbermill im happy!!

so i go with point 2

Geert, so you agree on leave space for competitor build 2 stations of 20x20 plus the rails?

remember that the numbers are only examples. 20x20 is more than what is even the maximum size on some servers while e.g. on server 5 it would be the same as suggestion #3. 20x20 isn't much when a regular server 5 player says it while it can sound extreme to server 7 players.

in the end we would probably have to set different limits for all servers. this is the part i don't like so much about that rule, because we would need to provide a list of limits per server. this is what lead me to add #3 and #4 to suggestions, which work around this problem by relating directly to the server settings (that players can see through the GUI or by typing !limits).

[ST2]

There are several options to limit the player A or B giving the same opportunities to these players. So, lets try to make this as short as possible
I'll not include #2 or #2b because due the range of station spread among servers would need "almost" a rule for each one (or a specific value will be too high in some or too low in others).
My suggestions, using guideline options above:

A - Separate treatment of primary industries, secundary industries and towns. Option #4 to primary industries and #1 to secondary ones to keep balanced the space players need close each industry type; In towns could be option #3 (imo, #4 would be acceptable too) or build only on 2 contiguous sides of the town - This includes stations, tracks and player owned roads https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection35708566.png - possible combinations: (1:2) - (2:3) - (3:4) - (4:1). Can be simplified with: build only on 1 side of the town like on this imgs https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection35708566_.png (or using 2 imgs for it: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection35708566_a.png and https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection35708566_b.png

B - Take the towns example of suggestion A and apply it to industries too - examples: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection41455362__.png (1:2) - (2:3) - (3:4) - (4:1) / https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection41455362_a.png and https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/Selection41455362_b.png

C - Make secundary industries "claimable" by companies (since where's the most issues happen, taking the "clusters" ofc) and option #4 for primary industries. For towns could be #3, #4 or some of the above. The option of claiming secondary industries sinked on a previous poll, but there was no forum. So I thought pertinent to bring the matter again to discussion, despite the fact that I've voted on keeping full competition.

D - The option #5 concept itself is not bad ideia... taking the fact that industry area influence have different values for acceptance and deliverance (possible to check in information of each industry tile), wich ones would be taken in consideration? Examples: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/ex1_.png and https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/ex2_.png / https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48606680/ex3_.png (can be checked clicking on every secundary industry tile). Imo this OpenTTD features can dificult a bit the calculation of what is the real space "still" available in a industry area influence. Not to mention the fact that the sum of free tiles around industry area can be more then 50% but not enough to build a decent station/hub and necessary tracks! Taking some technical issues that can create erroneous values and despite all these details... I still like the ideia

the above images are only examples, to convey the idea.

most of the players, when enter in a running game... what they search 1st? (if know about it) The industry list, ordered by production. And ofc, if the highest is a factrory producing goods (and full competition allowed), it's the first place that player will go (guessing) - or biggest town on map. Even if start competing, taking other player goods (in some secundary industry), he can even think on deliver there primary cargo... he can't! Some situations I've seen, that usually separates consciousness players with from the others, doesn't happens more (I think) because players simply don't have room to build. Ofc, there's players that only want the goods (sabotaging situations not included... I mean really to make profit)

[YorVeX]

your screenshots look attractively clear and easy to understand at first glance. however, on second glance it leaves too much room for interpretation:
- where is the center of the city/industry? admins will say here, players will say there, at least for objects not in a simple rectangular shape
- your lines and in general the center might happen to be at the center of a tile - but you cannot use only a half tile, so can players build on this center line too or not?

what i really want to avoid is that admins get dragged into discussions about arguments on tile basis, like arguing about whether tile 152x636 can be used by a player or it is already part of the other side...

about your suggestion C i think we can do a new poll on the forum, as the result was quite close. though i don't know whether the forum is good argument, as polls here get less attention that on the main site. on the other hand when people also discuss it in text here it might increase the quality of their decisions, because they think about it more.
regardless of that i think it's too early, the last poll wasn't so long ago.

[Andreas]

Hi,
I'm quite new to this server but have played on quite a number of other servers.
Let me start by stating that I am in favor of simple short rules, that do not need any extra explanation. More complex rules take a lot of the fun out of a game, and less people will actually read and understand them if they cover a whole page in stead of one or two sentences.

Now here I have some suggestions (some of witch have proven to work fine on other servers.):

For towns:
Completely forbid growing towns by building 'grids' of roads. (brisges/tunnels over/under rails and stations could be an exception. Towns are (at least as far as I know) allowed to build roads for themselves and grow quite well enough if decent services are offered.
This should imo be combined with allowing to build drive through-stops on town owned and  maybe even opponent owned roads.
Off course this brings the risk of buses blocking a town, but this can easily be prevented by forbidding full-load orders on drive trough stops in towns.

Added advantage of drive through stops in towns means less destruction of town roads and buildings.

Where it comes to primary Industries, I actually think that the rule is clear enough if it states that you should build in such a manner that there is enough space for opponents to build a decent station and rails. Primary industries seldom go over 400 units of production, so I can not see any use for stations bigger than four platforms.
I fear that adding space calculations and other similar solutions will be technically difficult to implement and have annoying side-effects.

For secondary industries I have always liked the rule that you should deliver to it first before you can take secondary cargo. off course even this rule has flaws like delivering one truck load a year and still taking goods, but at least it will prevent what ST2 described as people joining a running game and immediately start competition at a factory.

Alternatively I do not have any problems with the possibility of private secondary industries. They are not so expensive to fund, and it is quite difficult to leave decent space around them if you have a large drop-off and another pickup station. (especially when they are Ro-Ro)