Staff upgrades - maintenance carts?

[Codraroll]

So... this might require a little spriting work, so I'm not quite sure how feasible it will be. Perhaps it'd even fall under the category of mod content, but oh well. If anything, in my experience this community gives honest and polite feedback even to poor ideas, so I figure it's better to post and see, rather than keeping it to myself.

 

Anyway, a feature I liked in RCT3 was the ability to invest some money in your staff, making them do a better job. It's annoying to see your mechanic trudge his way from that queue line on the far side of his patrol area all the way over to the broken ride, or to watch a handyman walk half a tile, whip out his broom, clear thrash, put the broom away, walk another half tile, and repeat the procedure.

So... what if you, for the price of say $500 or so, could buy a maintenance cart for your mechanic? A vehicle that would take him whizzing to the other side of the park at a more appreciable speed than his current leisurely walk? Or even make it a Segway, or a kick bike. Might as well have multiple upgrades with multiple velocities, to make it a little more balanced. The staff member's wage would also increase with every upgrade.

As for the handymen, a cart wouldn't be a flat upgrade, but rather a specialization. A path-sweeping broom vehicle that would instantly remove the litter on the tile as the cart drove by. A lawn-mowing tractor. Another cart to empty litter bins, or spray water into flowerbeds. An upgraded handyman would only be able to do one job, but he'd do that job really well. The carts wouldn't need to move much faster than a walking handyman; their strength would be in their ability to do their job without stopping.

If even more balance is desired, one could take away the ability to patrol an area with carts. That way, the old foot-trudging staff could still serve a purpose, but the park could also have some "general purpose" staff serving those far-away areas.

As for security guards or entertainers, I don't think there would be many ways to improve their performance. Maybe boost their happiness bonuses or area of effect or something, but I don't have any concrete ideas. I think implementation of the feature might be the big hindrance here, so I'm cautious to go overboard with creativity before I know whether it is feasible or not.

 

May I also throw in a second, staff-related idea in here at the end? Give each staff a small box to tick, to toggle whether or not he will ever walk on a queue path. It's very annoying to set a patrol area, for instance along your park's main road or just outside the exit of one ride, only for half the patrol area to be inside queue lines next to the path. Only entertainers ever have anything to do in a queue line, but my mechanics and handimen keep wasting time there all the time.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Codraroll
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[ziscor]

I love this idea very much! This is the kind of stuff that can push OpenRCT2 very ahead of RCT2. At the same time, however, this will need serious work. Maintaining the look and feel of the game's graphics while building the sprites will be something to look out for. Balancing the mechanics to feel natural will take some testing. And since this is essentially adding a previously non existent feature into the game, the coding work needed must be tremendous (atleast for the 'using specialty staff'). 

Since the game already has a cheat for speeding up all staff, making an individual feature to upgrade mechanics should only need to replace the mechanic sprite with a new sprite and allow him to go at the cheat speed. I do have a suggestion for the wages, though. I say make the upgrade cost a lot, then reduce the wage of the mechanic/handyman, since providing them these upgrades only makes their job easier, and hence must deem them worthy of less wages, lol.

I urge the developers to consider this idea for the future. RCT3 does have some useful game mechanics that would be great additions to the RCT2 formula. 

As for the last part, I think @Broxzier has mentioned before that the amount of data stored for making 3X3 patrol squares is relatively less than what would be used if individual blocks were used to store that information, so I don't think this is going to be implemented any soon, if at all.

[EDIT: Actual patrol tiles are 4X4 sized squares, my bad.]

Edited March 31, 2016 by ziscor

[imlegos]

3x3 is better then 4x4 at least, or was that a typo?

[jensj12]

It's 4x4, and the data stored is about 16 times as much if we broke it into 1x1 squares (1 bit for every tile in the park, which is up to 256x256 in size).

[ziscor]

I should have opened up the game to check if 3X3 was the actual size or not. I stand corrected  @jensj12 @imlegos

[Broxzier]

1 hour ago, ziscor said:

Since the game already has a cheat for speeding up all staff, making an individual feature to upgrade mechanics should only need to replace the mechanic sprite with a new sprite and allow him to go at the cheat speed.

That's not how @Codraroll proposed his idea though. The way I understand it is that the cars are actual objects that can move staff from one place to another to let them work there. I'm imagining this as a car that is patrolling the park, sometimes a few handymen get out to clean some stuff, and when they are done they get back in, to travel to the next spot where they can clean.

For mechanics this would also be really cool. Having some place in the park where they relax, and whenever there is a call the mechanics will use one of these cars to get there fast, or when they want to inspect a ride.

Needless to say I like this idea very much, but indeed as Ziscor said, this will be a lot of work, and will not be compatible with RCT2 saved games. But it's definitely something that we can look at later!

[ziscor]

While that idea is a lot more cooler than what I assumed, it will need exponential amount of work than what I was proposing. What I had in mind was more along the lines of this:

 

This would only need a sprite of the mechanic and/or security guard on that vehicle thingy(or something similar, like actual carts). 

Or, @Broxzier, I see your idea in the form of a 'staff-only' ride (perhaps in the form of a tram?) that can be accessed by the staff to get to certain places across the park. Definitely shouldn't work like regular rides, though (not queue friendly, no attractive stations)(but then again, making queue's is up to us, and stations can just be made invisible by the user). 

[Broxzier]

From the first post I understood a cart like this:

Which can just drive over the paths, or perhaps on a new type of path that's only for staff.

[ziscor]

That's the second thing that came to my mind. In fact, that is way much better than the standing scooter things I had in mind. Carts would be more visually 'at home' in this game than the scooters: which feel more modern and out of place with respect to everything else in the game. I still wouldn't mind either one of them, though .

About driving over paths though, I don't think it would make much sense. As it is, making trains cross over regular path seems visually odd, what with all the indestructible guests walking through the railway cars unharmed. For this function the asphalt road (with the white lines going through it) could be put to good use. It could even be a two way road! What I'd be curious to know is how the game's internal logic would distinguish between regular path and staff only path.

It's a tricky bit of business, but I'm excited that as a developer you find this idea nice, Brox!  

[imlegos]

This idea seems very nice, and here's some ideas for upgrades i thought of:

Handymen

Derivable Mower (Like a john deer, colored according to handymen color)

Janitorial Cart (Trash cleaning is faster)

Floor scrubber (Path cleaning is faster)

Hose Cart (Waters flowers faster/AOE increase)

Mechanics

Advanced Toolkit (Fixes faster)

Info Tablet (Inspects Faster)

Repair Cart (Fixes vandalism)

Security Guards

Segway (Increased speed)

Low Power Tazer (Lowers vandalism rate (AOE))

Entertainers

Music Box (Increases happiness (AOE))

 

Edited March 31, 2016 by imlegos

[Codraroll]

@Broxzier, what I meant was essentially swapping out the staff sprite with a cart/scooter that would function like staff does today, only faster or with more area of effect. Moving walking staff around sounds more code-intensive to me. I worded it poorly, but @ziscor seems to have caught my intention, his interpretation is spot-on. I stand by the idea of having higher costs for upgraded staff, though, for balance reasons. Also, while the actual staff wages would go down, you'd have to maintain the cart/scooter, which would drive overall costs up.

I like your idea/interpretation of it, though. If you're willing to go to those lengths, I envision a booth-type structure where a mechanic may rest. The booth holds one cart, and when something breaks down the mechanic hops on the cart and buzzes out to the ride in question. I'm not an expert in regular theme park operations, but I assume this is how proper park mechanics do their job, rather than walking around the park waiting for something to break down. You could place these booths in strategic locations around your park, or gather them all in a big "park management center". I've already tried to make maintenance roads using shortcut paths with "no entry" signs, but currently they're too inefficient compared to just having the mechanic patrol near a cluster of rides. Using carts, maintenance roads could get a revival.

Then again, I suppose sprite swapping is the easiest way to do it. Click the button, pay the money, and your staff member is now permanently tied to a cart/scooter. Mechanics would go back to their walking sprite when working on a ride station, but when "walking" through the park, he's got a vehicle. Visually, it'd look like the cart is driving full-speed into (and through) people, which is unrealistic yet hilarious enough to let pass. Especially for coasters with separate on- and off-loading stations, where the mechanic has to go through the queue to enter the on-loading station when restraints stuck open.

[imlegos]

My previous idea would probably be a new tab in the staff window, and it is based on the "only 1 upgrade at a time' stance, which is basically giving staff specialization. However, it could be possible to give each staff a vehicle allowing them to have multiple jobs, like for instance, the Handymen would obtain a john deer tractor w/ utility trailer

[Superjustinbros]

I would prefer for this option to allow for not only faster, but smarter Handymen. Ones that will actively track and remove nearby vomit and empty litter bins the same way mechanics would track ride exits, instead of just walking away from a piece of vomit/litter he was placed next to just because he was facing the opposite direction when he repositioned himself to sweep up  another batch.

Also I am in huge support of a way for Mechanics to fix vandalism since having the player being the only one that could fix them is a bit of a dumb idea IMO.

[jensj12]

Smarter AI is something that will already be added/fixed, as they are considerably worse than in vanilla (or were, not sure if it's already fixed). 

[Broxzier]

15 hours ago, Superjustinbros said:

smarter Handymen. Ones that will actively track and remove nearby vomit and empty litter bins the same way mechanics would track ride exits

This has been discussed before, and in general the devs do not agree with this. It's not like by paying a handymen more, they suddenly get attracted to places where there's litter on the paths, there's no way of knowing that when it's around a corner. Mechanics get a phone call to let them know where to go, handymen have no way of knowing it.

What would be helpful though is that they stop randomly walking around, and instead try to really patrol an area. But this is something that's been worked on, as they now randomly walk around.

[Superjustinbros]

Well I do see Handymen getting trapped on occasion but yeah, i suppose the devs do have a point; despite not making sense that a Handyman wouldn't know the existence of a pile of vomit that's right in front of it, only to turn around and walk away while cleaning up something else.

[ziscor]

I propose a branched staff structure: Generic Staff at the top, which do work that they do in Vanilla and OpenRCT2, then more specific specializations branching down to more expert staff, and staff that has one/two specific work(s), like only mowing grass, only fixing Vandalism, only inspecting rides, only clearing bins. I'm open to the extent of specialty, because it would be pretty pointless to have a staff member that just cleared up bins.

I really like the idea of mechanics fixing Vandalism, with a cute little hammer being slammed into the broken thing, and fixing it right there and then . Each fixed item would be payed for at that very moment, or perhaps added into the monthly/yearly wage. The latter could be exploited by sacking staff right when they fixed things, so I think I should propose an idea for the game:

I'll make a proper Topic for it, but here's the basic idea: if the staff member has done any task from the time of hiring him to the time of sacking him, make the game pay for the employee's wage. Not in full, if needed, but a considerable fraction. 

[imlegos]

The mechanic actually does have a hammer animation, it is used during a brakes failure breakdown. It actually has a sound to accompany it as well!

[Broxzier]

On 02/04/2016 at 15:45, Superjustinbros said:

Well I do see Handymen getting trapped on occasion but yeah, i suppose the devs do have a point; despite not making sense that a Handyman wouldn't know the existence of a pile of vomit that's right in front of it, only to turn around and walk away while cleaning up something else.

They actually are aware of vomit and rubbish one square away from them in all directions. It's what made them sometimes get stuck in corners, but that has been fixed last week.

[joshwoo69]

I am giving a thumbs up for this one.. maybe like parking spots for those carts where they would "Spawn".. but yeah.. returning them when they need to...

One a side note we should have another variant for peeps.

[ziscor]

Here's what I have in mind of what the security guard sprite could possibly look like (as per OP's original idea):

 (the Segway, if you will)

It's way too small to look at as a standalone image, but I'm sure it would look appropriate in a game-setting. I know it's definitely not in proportion, and the color variety isn't exactly spot on, but I hope this comes useful in the future when something like this is possible to implement.

As for the handyman, maybe something like this:

For this I used the Gentle Car Ride Truck sprite as the cart.

Pretty shoddy work, but I tried to show two garbage bags in the lower right, some water in a compartment in the left, and some 'equipment' (basically litter sprites) in the upper right corner. The handyman is using a hose pipe to water the flowers.

This is the best I can come up with, but at least this could show the possibilities of the overall idea. 

Edited April 18, 2016 by ziscor