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Airlines and Other Transportation

Posted by Aces California on 28 March 2017 in English.

Tonight, I have been considering the operation of the national flag-bearing airline of Tierajas-Verdes, JEV. I think I was on the right track in splitting operations between three companies comprising of JEV, Pavparvati, Liberan and Bidesi, as well as a cargo company.

However, I’m starting to consider the viability of running an airline between towns in Tierajas-Verdes which is smaller than Belgium. Which would require use of maybe 5-15 passenger airplanes. I can still see economically JEV Pavparvati running with that scale, IF it was maybe the largest percentage of transport between towns.

Sadly though, I intend for the railways to be the most used transportation between towns in Tierajas-Verdes, meaning the idea of JEV Pavparvati would be a failure.

This is where I’d like your input on the matter. Should I continue on with JEV Pavparvati as a company, run a smaller fleet, and make it the smallest company? Or more radically, share the air and rail between Public Companies.

The idea here, is that since the railways will be the most important transportation link between towns, I came up with two options. Merge the major railway routes of Tierajas-Verdes into a company in JEV, and totally rename and restructure the company, so that this new railway company will run the domesticated flights under the JEV name.

Alternatively, I am also considering making a brand new company, separate from JEV all together, though still Publicly owned, in which the railway company of Tierajas-Verdes that run the routes, will either run beside, or replace, long-distance train services with flights between towns. So for example, there may be a train-route from Punto de Christopher to Parirakbe, making frequent stops along the way. But there will also be a local flight on an airplane with 5-15 passengers taking you direct from Punto de Christopher to Parirakbe, but is still run by the national railway. If that’s easier to understand?

… See full entry

Adjusting

Posted by ADB52 on 28 March 2017 in English.

I find these diary entries very useful as they give me, a newcomer to this world, pointers on how to proceed. This week, I have deleted the network of motorways and primary roads, with a few exceptions, as they did not connect anything. I am fairly happy with the road system in the north of Utterland, which is where I started mapping.

I have been scratching my head over the southern section of Utterland, but when I looked at the work done by my neighbour @bhj867 in Vinnmark I had a go at mapping hills, rivers and lakes, some of them hydro-electric schemes. Most of my major towns seems to be at the water’s edge, looking at Solsburg, Welle and Galmosen - Uisteren will follow suit.

Thanks all for the pointers and inspiration.

"Protecting" Tarott - or: Re-thinking "definite" landscapes in OGF

Posted by joschi81 on 27 March 2017 in English.

Hi everybody!

Like other people, I sometimes struggle with problems in my imaginary countries that lead to the question: Is it already definite or can I still change something? Normally, when I have drawn an area up to a very high level of detail, I leave it as it is, of course. But what with roughly sketched structures that were only definite in my head but did not appear on the map yet? I allow myself to change them, even heavily, if there’s a special need.

For Tarott (map) I definetily saw the need to change something very elementary. As it is an old city that survived many wars (even after heavy destructions) and as it was founded thousand years ago (maybe even more), it needs to be in a protected location. An open bay directly at the West Sea did not seem logical at all, finally.

So, I dared to rethink Tarott bay and - although it has only been outlined very rougly so far - I’m satisfied with the result:

Tarott Bay, March 2017

(To be honest, although not being a motorway enthusiast, I always wanted a western bypass for Tarott to release traffic congestion at the central trunk road in Tarott and at the eastern motorway rings - there is going to be an outer ring in the east as well.)

This is how the open Tarott Bay looked before:

“old” Tarott bay

It feels much better now. :) And at crucial points, I’m going to build some old fortifications (or ruins of fortifications).

Happy mapping!

Johannes

Floating currency exchange rates

Posted by Toadwart on 27 March 2017 in English.

I recently made a template, which constantly calculates a new value of the Aorangëan Dollar. It is basically a sinus curve (to simulate periodical fluctuations) multiplied with an exponential curve (to simulate) inflation. I didn’t do it because we need it, but rather because I can do it. You can see a table with “live” values here: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Aorang%C3%ABan_Dollar#floating Also in the list of currencies the value floats and therefore influences the sorting order.

If I might get bored and there is no public outcry here, I will introduce this for some more currencies. I did some blue currencies already.

If you like you can edit the parameters for your currency yourself, I added a minimum of documentation in the templates.

Royal Aulean Foreign Legion

Posted by ilikemaps on 27 March 2017 in English. Last updated on 30 March 2017.

The Royal Aulean Foreign Legion is an army open to foreigners and Aulean citizens and typically serves abroad.

More detail will be added to the wiki page soon.

Feel free to add your citizens to the legion and your wars to the list of wars, unless they are between 1910 and 1937ish.

EDIT: Is there going to be any interest in this?

Lodken-Mapper's Challenge

Posted by Yuanls on 26 March 2017 in English.

This month for Luciano’s challenge, I decided to use this opportunity to do some serious mapping work in Agarderia, an area that I seemed to have neglected for some while now. I decided to start afresh, making a new town named Lodken.

History of Lodken

Since history is so important in this month’s challenge, it would be wise to give an overview of Lodken and its surroundings for historical context.

The area was historically the border between Karamsk and the Kingdom of Both Glasters, then the newly independent Agarderia after the former country was defeated by the Ingerish in 1803. I have not quite decided why the border was not immediately at the River Taka, but instead slightly to the west of it. However, to the south of Lodken, the border was defined as ‘being in the middle of the River Taka’.

I have not exactly decided why Lodken exists, or why it exists that the place it does. But I assume that it was a border village that relied much on trade coming in and out of Agarderia into Karamsk. During the 20th Century, specifically the 1930s, relations between Agarderia and Karasmk soured, leading to both Karamsk and Agarderia building border fortifications on the border. The Agarderian fortifications have not been mapped yet, as they are somewhat weaker and so less preserved. It is also to the east of the river, which forms a natural defense itself. The defenses on Karamsk’s side were heavily mined and booby trapped. At this point, Lodken was still a small village, which sat in the middle of no-man’s land.

… See full entry

The headache that is Trevers

Posted by PortCal on 25 March 2017 in English.

The last few months, I’ve been struggling a lot with how Trevers should look and how it has developed. Starting working on the city, I was soon encountered with the fact that river Vale (that seperates Trevers from the rest of the land in the east) doesn’t make any sense. Since I did now know any solutions at the time, I tend to just ignore it for a while and hope there would be ideas about how to fix this in the future. More than half a year later, that has not happened. Au contraire, there are even more problems like overall geography, place in history and structure all over the city. I’m getting in a downward spiral and more depressed by the look of the city week by week, which leads to slow progress, which leads to overthinking everything about the city and country in the first place.

I’m honest when saying I’m happy with some parts of the city, but for some reason it doesn’t add up at all when zooming out on the map. The island looks weird and a lot of things don’t make sense in physical geography. Starting a discussional collaboration with Refriedsushi — about which I’m very grateful and should be continued very soon — made me realise even more that some things don’t make sense. Luckily he provided me with some solutions, like making Trevers into a bunch of islands in a bay, that could later be landfilled. This looked like a good solution to me. Now, I just don’t know. It’s hard to envision the landmass as landfilled islands, especially since it is not designed that way.

But I tried to do it anyway. At first, it looks okay. Then again, I just feel like I don’t know enough about physical geography. The islands I created look weird to me. I’ve tried drawing them in a lot of ways. Of course they have to align with the history and the historic sites of the city, but when trying to make a development map of the city, I just don’t know where to start.

… See full entry

Splitting ferry routes?

Posted by thilo on 25 March 2017 in English.

I just took a look at this changeset:

http://opengeofiction.net/changeset/316249

Which made me briefly wonder, what kind of large scale editing did he do to cause such a large changeset bounding box?

It turns out, the reason was probably a locally restricted change in Tarott that affected the endpoint of a very long ferry route:

http://opengeofiction.net/way/3643123

It’s not a very severe problem, but still somewhat unfortunate because it can make detection of illegitimate or problematic edits significantly harder. Therefore I propose to split all long distance ferry routes into at least three parts, split at the borders of the territorial waters of the involved countries. This would result in rather short parts near the ports, and a long part through international waters, where it probably won’t matter as much.

I’d like to hear some thoughts about this, especially from people who, as creators of long distance shipping routes, have a stake in this. Any obvious downsides that I haven’t thought of?

Thilo

Tarott EXPOMONDIALE 2018 world exhibition - Choose a parcel of land for your nation's pavillon

Posted by joschi81 on 25 March 2017 in English. Last updated on 8 April 2017.

Hello everybody,

only a bit more than one year left until the Tarott EXPOMONDIALE 2018 world exposition will open! The nation of Kalm and the city of Tarott are glad to host this international event and to welcome all other nations of the world with their own pavillons and exhibitions.

The motto of the world exposition will be “Smart digital and analogue future of our world”. Participating nation’s are invited to present concepts showing newest oder planned digital solutions in any interesting domain for their nation, but also to answer the question how people can participate in daily life in the future without being dependent of their own digital devices.

So, choose a spot for your nation’s pavillon:

1) See the map of EXPOMONDIALE 2018 Tarott exposition grounds here

2) Zoom in to see the names of the depicted parcels of land (“TEM18 - A1” etc.)

3) Then send me a private message, mention:

  • your country’s name (resp. names if you have more than one in OGF)

  • EITHER: the shortcut of your three favourite TEM18 plots (character and number in the end of the name)

  • OR: if any plot of land is okay for you, just write something like “any plot is ok”

  • OR (EDIT 27/03/2017): If you think your country is to small or doesn’t have the money for an own pavillon, consider having a smaller exhibition in a shared pavillon and just write “shared pavillon”

  • OPTIONAL: the planned title for your nation’s exhibition.

I will collect all wishes and publish a list of selected plots of land around easter. Afterwards I invite you to build your pavillon in the respective plot (or I will build it myself, in case you prefer it).

If there is more demand than parcels of land prepared at the moment, the area will be extended.

Looking forward to bringing the EXPOMONDIALE to “international” life.

Happy mapping

Johannes

1st EDIT 27/03/2017

2nd EDIT 08/04/2017

Here’s a list of applications as of today:

… See full entry

Location: Nedernlande, Tarott, Kalm