New road and rail system questions

[Greebo]

The patch notes for 3.03 patch 5 state that road length no longer affects convoy speed.  Previously a new convoy would set off IIRC every 10 minutes just as the previous one exited at the end of the road. If the road was made longer the convoy just went faster to get there in 10 minutes. So if this is no longer the case how does road length affect the system? If there is still one convoy per road at any one time then at a given speed a longer road would mean less supplies/time. Does this mean there are now multiple convoys evenly spaced on the road or do less frequent convoys each get proportionally more supplies to make up for that? If there are multiple convoys I guess a longer road would mean more supply convoys to hit at any one time than a shorter road.

Also what is going to be the effect of destroying these new convoys on field rebuild times?

Are there any rules or guidelines for roads etc on an MA terrain? Can we cross two roads, run them near to each other or other fields? Is it OK to place non-strat roads or rivers on an MA terrain just for visual effect? Is there likely to be an FPS issue with overdoing the number of non-strat roads in an area?

[bustr]

Just answered my own question. Rivers are supply paths and will generate tugs with barges. There is no property box to check saying a river is now a generic terrain object. Unless Hitech says you can manually lay rivers anyway and use them as terrain features, I'm still on the hook for hand building the rivers I will place bridges over for GV combat.

Still with create all, only roads and tracks are created. Wonder what happens then if I run a river past multiple fields and lay down roads by hand at each of those feilds? Wonder if that will cause the TE to CTD. I suppose I could lay down a river track lined up end to end, one for each airfield the river runs past to generate supply barges for each field. At that point what is the farthest distance the river can be from the field and the barges still supply the field? And what happens if I run a road to those same feilds with the supply river running past them?

When I ran create all for roads, it deleted the river I was testing near one of my test airfields. Yeah this is a lot of test terrain gymnastics.....

[Greebo]

While testing is always good I'd like to know what the official HTC MA rules/guidelines are for roads, rivers and rail before editing the things into my terrain 160 times. I have in the past spent many hours creating stuff for an MA terrain that worked fine offline only to be told "no, you can't do that because....". It is kind of off-putting when that happens.

[bustr]

Here is one answer from Hitech to how you set a road or river as static and not resupply.

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There is a check box visual only, then they will not effect strat in any way. And nothing will automatically travel down them.

HiTech

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Maybe we need to post his answers to our PM's here to collect all of his instructions in one place.

Here are answers so far to my questions.

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1. It is a simple as create all roads.

2. Then check for errors occasionally one will travel over a square object and you just have to make it go around by moving a few points.

3. Build the clutter mask, this removes treas and grass from all roads/rivers/trains .

4. Build terrain and you are finished.

Any thing else you do is simply esthetic, I.E. you may not wish them to go straight up a mountain.

HiTech

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The create all button will wipe out the rivers, but if you Create Roads only then only all roads are wiped out, and similarly with Create Trains.

HiTech

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Btw you also can delete a road and then simply create it by hand, look at an existing road that was auto created to see the setting in the properties dialog to make it a field supply or a strat stupply.

HiTech

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Here is how to use the spline from setting a road segment to enhance the capabilities of the bulldozer tool. Delete the road after you click on plow terrain. He wrote bulldozer, he meant the plow terrain button.


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You all ready can do that, simply create the spline road, set the alt of the terrain at the beginging and end of the path, press bull doze.

HiTech

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Before and after setting a road then plowing the terrain. Inland I raised a small hill above 500ft as the end of the spline path.

[bustr]

I don't know if I convoluted several functions and just needed to move a GV spawn object away from a road object then bring it back closer after running a build. I've run into that a few times with other objects.

I placed a spawn next to a road I was experimenting with about 100yds away. When I opened the test terrain offline the spawn did not show on the CBM. When I moved the spawn's circle edge 1\2 mile away from the road, the spawn showed in the CBM. Then I was able to increment the spawn circle edge back in to about 1000ft away.

[bustr]

You cannot use it as a chain saw to remove trees from a tile by laying down a path, running the mask, then deleting the path. The trees will be gone but, when you try to exit the arena your game will CTD.

[Greebo]

I played around with a river this morning. To create it I just changed the property of one of my roads to river and positioned it so it ended in the sea next to its base. The button to randomise its width worked well. Then I tried to eliminate the highly visible seam where the river joined the sea. In the time I had the best solution seemed to be to create a narrow inlet with the coast spline tool and place the end of the river into the centre of this inlet. Then use shift-scroll wheel to adjust the width of the end of the river to match the coastline on either side. I also played around with the colour and alpha settings for the river to get it to match better to the ocean. It wasn't perfect as the wave and blended coastline effect ends where the river starts but it looks a lot less jarring than just butting the river up to a straight coastline.

I also placed a couple of bridges across the river, I'm curious as to what will happen when the barges run under them.

[hitech]

Convoys spawn every 10 mins, and there can be multiple convoys running on the road. This was one of the changes that was made to the 3.0 engine so that the host can create objects dynamically.

HiTech

[bustr]

This is looking like get everything finished on the terrain down to all the fields and spawns. Then run create all roads\track. Then add any none supply paths for cosmetics. Fix where you need bridges, elevation changes, and route changes. Then run the mask. Or after any futsing you do even if it's not related to paths, just touching up clutter or moving a spawn, rerun the mask then run build. I lost a convoy road I built over a bridge becasue I didn't run the mask after I finished it even though I had run the mask previously and there was no trees anywhere on that road or in the river under the bridge. It doesn't seem to affect the train tracks unless running a path road\track over a bridge makes that path susceptible to being removed if the mask is not run after that and for anything anywhere on terrain you make any changes of any kind.

So once we lay down resupply paths to keep them in place do we have to run mask before running build whatever we change or update?

Greebo even with a flat topped bridge, you add many splits into the a segment to get the path level with the road bed on the bridge. I just tested that.

[Greebo]

Convoys spawn every 10 mins, and there can be multiple convoys running on the road. This was one of the changes that was made to the 3.0 engine so that the host can create objects dynamically.

OK so the only issue with making paths different lengths in an MA terrain would be that a longer road might contain two convoys to hit at any one time but a shorter one might only have one. So as long as all three countries' paths have roughly the same length as each other it should not matter how long they are.

Are there likely to be any issues with paths crossing one another, even if its a non-strat path?

Would it be possible to have a "Show Paths" option for the make map utility? Might be nice to see all the roads, railways and rivers on the clipboard map.

Shame its so fiddly to get a convoy to run across the bridge bustr. Personally I don't think I'll use bridges for that though. My main use for the rivers will be to place them between spawn points and fields so I can use bridges as choke points.

I played around some more with the river I made. First I checked that the barges would run below a bridge and they do. They just ignore the object, even passing through the piers if the bridge arch is not centrally placed. Next I stopped a jeep on the bridge above the barges as they passed below and this was fine too. The only issue I got was when I drove the Jeep through one of the bridge arches. As it passed below the bridge it teleported onto the top of the bridge before teleporting back onto the ground on the other side. I think I'll just make sure there are no land-locked arches on my bridges.

I also played around some more with blending the end of the river into the sea by placing a bridge on the join, it takes your eye away from the mismatch fairly well. I was going to post a screenshot but this forum does not allow uploading of HTC server screenshots. A sky blue river colour with about 50% alpha and a featureless green terrain colour seems to give a reasonable match to the sea.

[hitech]

Are there likely to be any issues with paths crossing one another, even if its a non-strat path?

The only thing I can think of would be performance issues, I havn't tested to see how far the system can be pushed. The one point that could be if you have lots of long roads is the number of simultaneous convoys/trains/barges in the entire arena. I believe the limit is around 10k objects so with 255 fields that would be about 40 each.

Would it be possible to have a "Show Paths" option for the make map utility? Might be nice to see all the roads, railways and rivers on the clipboard map.

I assume you would just wish a line like spawn points?

Shame its so fiddly to get a convoy to run across the bridge bustr. Personally I don't think I'll use bridges for that though. My main use for the rivers will be to place them between spawn points and fields so I can use bridges as choke points.

I might be able to make a tool to do that.

uploading of HTC server screenshots.

The next time you need to do that, upload it in the screen shot forum, and link to the image here.

HiTech

[hitech]

Also a few versions back we added some lake objects. These are just flat water polys of different sizes that you can then use with portions under the terrain to create lakes.

HiTech

[Greebo]

I wasn't planning on very long paths, but it would help to know how fast the trains, trucks and barges travel. That way I could work out the distance between convoys for each and so how many will be running at any one time.

Maybe have a grey line on the map for railways, brown for roads and blue for rivers, or just make the colours settable. It would add a bit more interest to the clipboard maps and might encourage players to go after the convoys.

So can these lakes can be included on an MA terrain? It is just that they are not in the TE's cut down object list when "Show all Shapes" is unchecked and I thought that only objects in the reduced list could be put into an MA terrain.

BTW I notice that the "bas0" AA gun and "revetment0" shapes are in the cut down object list, so can these go into an MA terrain now?

[bustr]

The water objects don't visually play nice with the terrain. At least the mask clears out trees even under the water object. For the sake of transitions, it would be easier if you had a add segment that the edges were closed loop splines you can pull the boarder out into random lake shapes so the lake is the same object as the river running into our out of it. And or another segment that in the center of a river run you could tag that segment then pull it's boarders out into a lake fed and emptied by the remaining two ends.

Here is a quicky test of the water object and a river path together.


Kind of ugly how the higher you are you see the base 1x1 object and not the finished lake shape.

[Greebo]

Here's my screenshot showing the river to sea transition: