Ride improvement research

[Thanquol666]

Hello everyone,

having never really played vanilla rct2 for more than like half an hour, i was really surprised to learn that the improvements to rides are actually researched when the kind of ride they with is checked in the research menue. i.e. the ride improvement "swan boats" is researched when the "water rides" type is checked. in the original rct1 game the ride improvements had a separate check box in the research menue. Frankly this has been bothering me quite a bit... is it just me or are others bothered by this as well?

I have been checking the forum and haven't found any way to change this research behavior. Maybe I didn't see the point to change it, maybe it doesn't exist or isn't even possible due to limitations in the source code of rct2. Does anyone know of a way or plugin or whatever to get the game to behave like in rct1?  

Replies are greatly appreciated

[jensj12]

All vehicles are just separate ride types, but grouped together so you can easily switch.

[Wuzzy]

The original RCT2 pretends that each new vehicle is also a new ride, even if the vehicle runs on the exact same track type as some other known vehicle.
The OpenRCT2 devs rightfully dumped this nonsensical distinction, at least for the GUI, so that the build window distinguishes between actual roller coasters and not between every single vehicle type.

But the research window remains more or less unchanged. Here, this original RCT2 behavior can still be seen. E.g. researching a water ride might actually just unlock a new vehicle.

What I don't know whether guests consider a new track+vehicle to be of a different ride type for their “ride rating”. This is important for park rating and earnings. If they do consider a different vehicle to be a different ride, then using different vehicles makes your ride “unique” again, which is good for bonuses. So new vehicle types are more than just decoration (if my assumption is correct). The algorithm that decides how much guests pay for coasters is quite complex and too much to explain here.


I doubt this will change anytime soon, because changing that would be a massive gameplay change which might mess up the research order intended by the scenarios. But you never know …

[X7123M3-256]

On 20/07/2020 at 09:12, Wuzzy said:

The original RCT2 pretends that each new vehicle is also a new ride

Several vehicles were grouped in the original. For example, the Giovanola and B&M hypercoasters are both listed as "Hyper Twister Coaster", the Arrow and Vekoma suspended swinging trains are all listed together, as are the GCI and PTC wooden trains (there's also three types of PTC train in the game, all listed under "Wooden Coaster"). OpenRCT2 just changes how the grouping works.

Since research worked per-vehicle in the original game, I wouldn't be in favour of changing it. Especially as a scenario could be intentionally designed so that one vehicle is made available early and a better one is researched later.