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[MagicJuggler]

Good afternoon everyone. Vehicles and other means of conveyance appear to be the main object of most of my discussions, so it seems wise to create a topic that consolidates every idea into one awesome thread.

Base vehicle system: A vehicle is constructed from the build menu like any other building, the main provider being it is a building that is not attached to the ground below it and is affected by buoyancy. Create two new building types: The Wheel and the Oar. Depending on the power transmitted, they generate movement and their size of a wheel can be altered, leading to large z wheels or big oars. Building a vehicle involves building stuff onto the vehicle, with an "Add Part" button, and creating a design that you like until you press "Begin Construction", and a vehicle that is selected through the q menu can be altered. (e.g. swapping out catapults for ballistae, ordering repairs to destroyed walls/floors/etc).

Moving a vehicle requires power. This can either be provided by manual means (horses/slaves pulling the vehicle/powering a central power unit), or wind (sails).

Anchor: An anchor would require a lever, a block of building material, and rope, and a lever to link to. It reduces the relative force of water on an object, stopping it.

Buoyancy: A vehicle's buoyancy equals its total weight, divided by the weight of the water; this means a vehicle will displace into water based on the total weight of objects in it, including other units of water. Vehicle tiles have a height value similar to that of water as a result. This would allow one to model the fact that ships will sink when they've been hit too many times (although this could be delayed in a compartamentalized ship where screw pumps remove water from a floodgated)

Stockpiles: A vehicle can have its own internal stockpiles designated; this can be useful for supply wagons or for providing ammunition for an on-board catapult.

Squad Assignment: A vehicle can be assigned to a squad. A squad assigned to a vehicle will attempt to remain in the vehicle.

Harness/Howdah: A harness attaches an animal to a vehicle for the sake of pulling it.  A howdah is a special kind of harness that also functions as a support; provided the creature (or creatures) is capable of carrying the weight, one can have a structure that is literally built on top of a creature (e.g. on an elephant or war-dragon or some other beast).

Scythes, prows, etc: A special attachment to the sides of vehicle walls that count as an attack whenever the vehicle moves fast enough relative to the target.

Any other ways to standardize vehicles?

[dizzyelk]

You'd have to track weight too, and figure out just how strong a critter is. So one horse can pull a small cart, but, not if its been armor plated. But one elephant could pull a larger armor plated cart. Which also means we'd need barding, after all, your fancy armored ballista cart isn't gonna do much if the horses die...

I like the "add part" thought.

A basic steam engine'd be good for providing power. A chunk of coke'd burn for so long, and you'd need a stoker and coal. I don't see how you'd be able to keep magma hot, so I'd imagine it'd be impractical for a weapon/fuel source. Oh, and I'd imagine a good enough hit'd punch through the boiler, cooking the crew, and maybe even causing an explosion that's be big enough to take out nearby units.

The drivers would have to be military for a warwagon, cause "Urist McDriver cancels drive Deathmobile: Interrupted by groundhog" would suck.

[MagicJuggler]

The idea with add part was initially if you needed to refit a vehicle (e.g. you wanted to outfit catapults on your trade cog, or repair damage to its sides) as well as if you needed to adapt your wagons based on supply-train needs (e.g. when your army marches out to conquer in the later versions, a field-kitchen will be very useful).

As for barding, that seems easy enough; just add a separate size category for the target in question...

Hmm, as for explosives, the ability to create an explosive as a building then attach a fuse to it would be nice. Press "Light Fuse" and run. Placing it on an expendable vehicle could make for an effective cheap sapping weapon (e.g. a petard-boat).

[Warlord255]

I would keep customizeable vehicles out of the picture for now - regular wagons are problematic enough.

[MagicJuggler]

In regards to pathfinding I take? What would you suggest?

[Wang Commander]

Magma could be used to power a steamboat...

On a magma river.

[MagicJuggler]

Assuming of course the steamboat doesn't burn to death.

Vehicle AI:

The biggest issue at the moment appears to be pathfinding in general, and making sure the caravan knows where to go. For non-combat vehicles in general, we should perhaps give vehicles a behavior option to only be able to designate traffic areas as "vehicle-accessible", with the actual vehicle tasks allowed being customizable (e.g. wood-hauling vehicles/goods vehicles/prison vehicles/the wagon with a Dwarf saying "Bring out Your Dead"), so cargo lanes might be of a different route as opposed to passenger routes (assuming each Dwarf gets their own private cart or so). Alternately, traffic zones could be designated as "military-vehicle only" so that certain pathways may only be populated by vehicles assigned to squads.

EDIT: Saving Vehicles

If there is a particular vehicle design you like, you can save it to a list of favorite vehicles, so when you want to build another one, you don't have to create it piece-by-piece again. When saving, you can state whether future versions must be built of the same material, or if acceptable substitutes will work (e.g. whether you want all chariots made of Pine, or if you want a mix of Pine and Tower-cap logs). The game would come with a few vehicles saved already, for those whom are not into customization, and such vehicles would similarly be usable by enemies; Goblin Sieges would be that much deadlier once they bring siege towers and explosive-packed wagons into battle.

[Grumman]

Great idea, and I'd love to see it implemented. One suggestion I'd make is that vehicles can only enter areas at least as wide as the vehicle is long. Otherwise we'd run the risk of getting stuck.

Another suggestion: Let us build vehicles that can tow, as well as be towed. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks a Dwarven war train would be the awesomest thing ever.

[MagicJuggler]

Except this can bring up other issues such as:

What if a 3x5 vehicle enters an area, then a player issues build commands alongside the wide area of the vehicle so you have

BVVVB
BVVVB
BVVVB
BVVVB
BVVVB

Where B is an area to build a future wall, and V is the vehicle? Your vehicle would get stuck. Likewise, similar issues could arise with floodgates/etc. Assuming Toady has a better support system for these sorts of projects, I would like to see buildings interact with vehicles, so you could make a ship in a shipyard, suspended by several drawbridges, then when the main ship is done, you pull a switch and the drawbridges retract, causing the ship to fall into the water.

I agree with the making vehicles able to tow vehicles. Of course, power requirements would mean a certain degree of inefficiency. Think of one power plant split among numerous pumps, and the same rule applies. One horse cannot power a train! The harness idea can be expanded of course, to make it so that besides animals, warriors/slaves, and even other vehicles can tow.

[Reasonableman]

The most obvious problem with vehicles of any kind is that they can't fit into a single square, making it rather difficult to rotate them accurately. Honestly, I can't think of a way to make anything bigger than a wheelbarrow reasonably functional.

[King Doom]

I think for pathfinding, the solution to a lot of problems is being overlooked, especially with regard to the bigger vehicles. A war elephant isn't going to have problems with many trees, real world elephants knock them down all the time. I can't really see Ironbronze McLordbeards steam tank having problems with a piddly little forest, either. Add a trample tag to some of the bigger creatures/vehicles and that part of the problem fixes itself. boulders, trees, shrubs, goblins and groundhogs are all crushed to a fine paste/handful of gravel/collection of toothpicks.

For boats, I'd like to see the option to build a dock. It wouldn't be a regular building, it would be four times the size of a trade depot to start with, and would take a lot of time and effort to build, with the option of extending it later to allow bigger keels to be laid. Ships are serious bits of equipment after all, having Urist knock out three bits of hull in a carpenters workshop and then somehow magically assembling them into an ironclad over by the brook seems kinda odd. Dig a nice big river, build the dock, build boats. Have sailing adventures. I'd want a ground based version of the dock as well, for land based vehicles. call it a stable maybe? a garage? massive animals that can carry houdas are fitted up in here, as well as all manner of other fun vehicles. Steam tanks especially. Maybe this needs to be built around a road, like the dock would need to be built over a river. You could add an air strip as well, for Zeppelins. Don't tell me the idea of having two or three armoured blimps bombing and strafing the goblin siege wouldn't be amazing fun. You'd maybe need to build that one at the highest point on the map.

[MagicJuggler]

Hey King-doom, I like the trample idea, and having a basic collision system would be awesome, and not just for vehicles in general. The ability to build battering rams, or break down walls by creating avalanches, would be awesome as well.

Also, I disagree with the idea of the dock being a building as it goes against the ideas of a vehicle being customizable...that is, having to build x number of floor and wall tiles but make them nonattachable to the ground. Additionally, if you're building something simple like a canoe, then all you really have to do is hollow out a large tree then carry it to the river. Likewise, I disagree with making specialized airstrips/garages when one could make an airstrip out of paved road, or a garage out of walls/ceilings/stockpiles. It would be a lot easier to instead designate areas as zones for AI purposes, so that a damaged vehicle will attempt to pilot itself to a garage (it can fit inside) for repairs.

Toady is interested in making creatures scale to their corresponding sizes so that an elephant will take up more terrain than a dwarf, etc. So this makes howdahs a possible idea. The weight of all the combined components would determine the move-speed of the creature of course, with extra armor/ballistae decks/etc all contributing to the elephant's/dragon's/giant eagle's encumbrance.