PT & Service Manager (new mod)

[originalfoo]

I would love a mod that integrates with (or just compliments) Real Time to allow me to customise services & PT. It would be spiritual successor to IPT2 and SVS2, and possibly even a bit of DSL3. The goal is to make PT and services a whole lot more realistic without going full TLM (too complex).

Shifts

These would work in same sort of way as RT shifts - sliders to set the times:

• Early morning
• Day
• Evening
• Night

Traffic will start prior to and after an RT shift, so player would need to use slightly different times (offset by an hour or two on the day shift, etc) to get best match for their city.

It would be freaking cool if there was a way to set different shifts for weekends or during events, but that might get confusing?

Routes (public transport)

Currently, routes can be toggled by day or night, but that's about it. I can't easily tailor them to work shifts, I can't change the vehicle per shift. For example, during main part of day, I might want several big busses, but at night I might only want only a couple of transit vans. Or I might want to stop ferries after evening shift.

I love the bar chart feature of TLM, but that whole mod just strikes me as too complex, especially when multiplied by lots of routes.

For each shift, I choose vehicle model (or depot, if applicable - see later) and how many.

Note: Vanilla bus select button would need to be hidden/disabled. or maybe redirected to new vehicle select UI?

Services

Service vehicle buildings get treated like a depot (see later) so player chooses vehicles to buy for that building. The building has shifts, defining which vehicles to use per shift, and maybe some other options depending on service type. It would be great if I could limit a building by district(s) (like DSL3 mod) or range?

Some examples...

Road maintenance:

• I could have road sweepers in early morning and night (you don't see them during office hours usually), and vans during day and evening.
• Would be cool if shifts could define what type of road gets serviced, eg. highway at night, large/medium in morning+evening, small during day.
• The mod could potentially split road maintenance in to categories:
  • Wear & tear (existing vanilla functionality) -- affects vehicle speeds (esp. with TMPE)
  • Cleanliness -- affect land value?
  • Street lights -- if not maintained, they could start flickering?
  • I'm basically stroking my beard while looking at CimTrans assets
• It might be that I have one road maint building for road sweepers, another for transit vans...?

Park maintenance:

• Same sort of thing, eg. nature reserves during day, amusement parks at night, etc.
• Maybe different vehicle depending on park type? A van for city parks, a jeep for nature reserves etc.
• In addition to city districts to service, it could allow granular control over which parks to service?

Garbage:

• Similar sort of thing to road maintenance.
• Would be nice if I could filter shift to certain type(s) of RICO, eg. Day = residential, evening = industry / office, morning+night = commerce, etc. Maybe same sort of thing for landmarks, monuments, parks, etc?

Medical:

• Small medic building: During day vehicles get dispatched from the service building, but at night it could be the 'on call' doctor (employee) dispatched from their home address in their own car?
• Large medic building: Maybe fewer ambulances during night and early morning, more during day and evening.

Cemetery:

• Would be nice to select different vehicle for collecting bodies (eg. hearse) vs. emptying cemetery (eg. coroner van).
• Shifts define if collecting and/or emptying can be performed.
• For example, collect in mornings or day, but emptying can only happen in evenings.

Vehicle select UI

• If AVO present (either version) list is filtered to vehicles that are allowed to spawn
• I think vehicles have milestone unlocks? If so, apply that filtering too
  • Mod option to ignore milestones
• For each vehicle in the list:
  • Vehicle preview image (like AVO)
  • Capacity (passengers)
  • Purchase cost (see later)
  • Running cost (see later)
  • Max speed in km/h
  • "Buy" button (Shift+Click to fill all empty depot slots with the vehicle - see later)

Vehicle costs

I don't think vehicle assets have purchase costs, and I'm not sure if they have running costs.

Defaults could be used (maybe based on vehicle capacity?)

It would be nice to edit those things in AVO (maybe new fork of the mod, or work with dev of the Industries version of AVO?) for consistent and centralised vehicle editing UI = better end user experience.

Vehicle lifespan

This is probably overkill, but just in case...

• Vehicle depreciates value over time; sell price < purchase cost
• Age of vehicle could affect its base speed (see how TMPE does it?)

Depots

Bus, taxi, tram, blimp, ferry...

Currently, depots just magically spawn any vehicle of the applicable category. I find this both strange, and, from gameplay perspective, boring.

I'd like depot buildings to start empty, and then purchase vehicles - creating a custom fleet of vehicles per depot.

Features:

• When depot info panel is open, an icon grid (vehicle slots) appears next to it
• Click empty slot ("+" icon on its background) to purchase vehicle for that slot (vehicle select UI appears)
• For filled slots, some visual indicator of whether it is in depot or out working
• Click filled slot:
  • If in depot, allows you to sell (confirm dlg)
  • If out working, selects the vehicle as if user had clicked it (it's info panel shows)
  • Ctrl+Click 'out working' vehicle slot to sell it?

Non-vanilla depots:

• Train = Loads of suitable building assets - maybe some way to make them functional? Otherwise have to select vehicle(s) per train line.
• Metro = MOM, if available, otherwise vehicle selection per metro line.
• Monorail = nothing yet, as far as I can tell; would need to use vehicle select UI per monorail line
• Others?

Outside connections

Stations/ports that allow outside connections get a vehicle grid allowing me to choose (not purchase) which types of vehicle will visit the station/port. Note that there could potentially be lots of vehicle assets, especially for airports.

It would be great if I could say when station is closed; for example trains are less likely at night.

[originalfoo]

Some notes on the mods this would deprecate:

• IPT2 is rarely maintained and has some issues with Campus patch being reported by users
• SVS2 is rarely maintained and doesn't handle buildings with more than one vehicle type (eg. road + helicopter, or delivery vs. distribution at post offices)
• DLS3 is somewhat maintained but has lots of options that conflict with RT & TM:PE (first and last items on its options screen work fine, everything else is problematic)

Also, Klyte's mods are still having problems with the Campus patch last I checked. So there's very little in the way of solid PT & Service management mods available at the moment.

[kianzarrin]

From discord

@kianzarrin is there any mod that allows us to upgrade buildings like in SimCity? That would be so cool! lets say for your recycling center you have the option of adding several trucks (in which case you can build garages), AND/OR add add more processing factories. For police station you can add more police cars, helicopter pad, detention cells, and other stuff. In CS i think there is much more potential: add more tracks to the train station, cargo train station, or subway. add more entrances to the subway, ... Its basically very customizable way of upgrading service buildings without the need to destroy and replace the building. see https://youtu.be/sdeDi-mmY10?t=320 at 5:20 .

Destroying a building will destroy all attached customization upgrades. moving service buildings would be more challenging (SimCIty does not allow it anyway) I think we can move the main building somewhere else and then allow the user to add the upgrades for smaller price. there could be even some mechanism to automatically go into placement mode.

[originalfoo]

There are sub-building features in CSL so if it were possible to dynamically add 'extension buildings' as sub-buildings to main building then they'd be auto-destroyed (or could be) when main building is destroyed. Would be great to extend out warehouses, or add extra depots, or add a new hospital wing, etc.