Hazelnut wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:43 am
Not replaced exactly, I still hope that in the long run a refined roads of daggerfall materialises that has more natural and complex roads.
I am back to this thread too, at least for the next couple of months I hope...
There is a good chance that I will have some time in the next period to invest in implementing Roads-related stuff for DFU.
My first choice would be to re-use the way you managed to put roads into the game in Basic Roads, if it is alright, I would ask for your help in doing this in the coming months (provided I don't get distracted from this again).
jayhova wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2023 6:07 pm
Another illustration (generated independently) showing the economic costs of road grades.
Thank you for attaching figures to the phenomenon. That really will help to design the algorithm to implement it.
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It occurred to me that transporting stuff is only one role a road plays. Roads are also frequently followed by travelers (like the player in Daggerfall). So, there is more than one calculation to the cost of a road...
- the cost one needs to bear when transporting goods on it (as illustrated above, here, the incline is very important)
- the time it takes to traverse it (postal carriers, scouts, smaller military detachments etc. - keeping in mind that grade is not negligible - I would say length is more important)
The next thought is that not everyone needs to go the same way. There might be a twisting and turning (but relatively level) wide road between two locations (cities, let's say) for freight and there could also be narrower trails (shortcuts) here and there (that are shorter at the price of involving steeper inclines). In our world, some of these trails would be narrow and rarely tread to the point of undetectability. In the world of Daggerfall, we will need to invent categories of routes.
The phenomenon of the horse/hiking trail is quite counterintuitive. The moment you have a wagon you have a problem. Walking or riding a 10% grade is fairly easy but if you need to bring food, water and goods with you this changes things enormously. A 10% grade creates a literal 10% reverse force pulling a load. A typical wagon weighs about a ton. This is BTW why a ton is a unit of measure. The 200lbs pull opposing the horse will quickly exhaust it. Unless you are doing something like stagecoaches where you would change teams it would be untenable. Bear in mind stagecoaches over good roads had to have changing stations every 10-15 miles. People in a stagecoach could travel 50 miles a day but this required the horses be changed 4-5 times.
A wagon over good terrain could do about half that. So there is the math twice the distance equals 4-5 times the horses and an existing infrastructure. Bear in mind also the teamster cannot afford to wear out his horses so they cannot be used the next day. He will also have to pay for each horse he has to stable. You simply cannot win with shorter steeper roads because you wind up with exhausted horses that cannot be used the next day creating even more delays. The math comes down to days to get from point A to point B. The distance is largely irrelevant. If it takes you 4 days traversing 90 miles to get from point A to point B or 4 days traversing 56 miles, the former is preferable. The latter would have been very hard on the horses and by the time you get to B they would be close to collapse. Again, if you take the stagecoach example if you work horses twice as hard you can use them only a quarter as long. In the case of stagecoaches, stops, in some cases, might be only 5 miles apart for just this reason.
Horse and walking trails are not roads and do not serve the same function as roads. Daggerfall has very little impassible terrain and certainly does not take terrain into account when calculating exhaustion. Exhausting yourself or your livestock to the point of collapse taps into reserves that takes days of rest to recuperate from.
jayhova wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 5:53 pm
Horse and walking trails are not roads and do not serve the same function as roads. Daggerfall has very little impassible terrain and certainly does not take terrain into account when calculating exhaustion. Exhausting yourself or your livestock to the point of collapse taps into reserves that takes days of rest to recuperate from.
Thank you for the input. One of the changes I would aim for a mod to make is to have it cost more fatigue to traverse untrodden terrain in the wilderness (especially where vegetation is present or there is a steep grade). The antidote to this self-inflicted malady would be to allow the player to follow a well-trodden trail to avoid the penalties.
But the main message I got at this point is that trails should indeed be treated differently to proper roads.
jayhova wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 5:36 pm
The phenomenon of the horse/hiking trail is quite counterintuitive. The moment you have a wagon you have a problem. Walking or riding a 10% grade is fairly easy but if you need to bring food, water and goods with you this changes things enormously. A 10% grade creates a literal 10% reverse force pulling a load. A typical wagon weighs about a ton. This is BTW why a ton is a unit of measure. The 200lbs pull opposing the horse will quickly exhaust it. Unless you are doing something like stagecoaches where you would change teams it would be untenable. Bear in mind stagecoaches over good roads had to have changing stations every 10-15 miles. People in a stagecoach could travel 50 miles a day but this required the horses be changed 4-5 times.
A wagon over good terrain could do about half that.
[...]
Does my distinction between Imperial Roads and Inter-city Roads make sense to you, or we should just go for having one kind of raod?
How wide should these roads be? What would you say, how wide would the part of the surroundings that a road's presence actually affects? (e.g., road width: 4 meters, but 3 more meters affected on either side for some reason)
At the moment, I am looking at this technically, trying to find out how big piece of terrain should be affected by the code placing the road.
meritamas wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 6:29 am
Thank you for the input. One of the changes I would aim for a mod to make is to have it cost more fatigue to traverse untrodden terrain in the wilderness (especially where vegetation is present or there is a steep grade). The antidote to this self-inflicted malady would be to allow the player to follow a well-trodden trail to avoid the penalties.
But the main message I got at this point is that trails should indeed be treated differently to proper roads.
As I said one of the major issues is not simply the terrain but how you are traveling. Settlers crossing North America to get to the West Coast did not have roads and averaged 10 miles a day. A rider on a horse or a fit man on foot could do twice that. Altitude also affects your ability to travel as well as weather.
meritamas wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 6:35 am
Does my distinction between Imperial Roads and Inter-city Roads make sense to you, or we should just go for having one kind of road?
How wide should these roads be? What would you say, how wide would the part of the surroundings that a road's presence actually affects? (e.g., road width: 4 meters, but 3 more meters affected on either side for some reason)
At the moment, I am looking at this technically, trying to find out how big piece of terrain should be affected by the code placing the road.
Most roads in the ancient world would be wide enough to fit one wagon plus some sideage for drainage. Of course, great roads might be double-wide if there was enough traffic. One cannot discount that kingdoms might build grand roads to impress upon people their ability to accomplish this as a conspicuous display of wealth and power.
