Well, technically, #8497 doesn't have anything to do with this, as it only applies to news messages when the vehicle was already cleared from any vehicle list, so there is nothing left to sort or filter for.

what is really needed is some way to keep the vehicle reference in vehicle lists, once the vehicle is cleared from the map, to give the player a decision whether to rebuild the vehicle in an appropriate depot, or just scrap it.

From #7611:

@TrueBrain:

Doesn't have to be a real depot, but you can hide a vehicle completely, while keeping it around. Details I have not thought out, tbh, but I guess hiding the vehicle completely, and allowing some way to list crashed vehicles and "rebuild at nearest depot" or something like that. It seems #8498 already discusses this a bit :)

@JGRennison:

Having vehicle instances which are "off-map" such that Vehicle::tile does not necessarily point to a valid sensible tile for that vehicle type requires changing a surprisingly large number of places in the code.

e.g. if a road vehicle was destroyed on a level crossing, later put into a "hidden" state, and then the crossing was removed to prevent further carnage, many parts of the code would encounter issues trying to get the road/tram type of the road vehicle's current tile, even if the vehicle was crashed and not moving.

This is certainly doable (it is done for trains in my branch), but it requires a non-trivial amount of combing through the code.

@Eddi-z:

my train of thought would be to teleport the vehicle into the nearest appropriate depot (hoping there is one).
that would avoid all the stuff about querying the tile the vehicle is on.

I made this issue a bit broader, as how it was worded, it might only solve one part of the equation. To avoid us looking too narrow, I made it a bit more clear that a more generic solution might also be viable.

If I recall correctly, Railroad Tycoon 3 opens a dialog box when a train crashes and asks the user whether they want to purchase a replacement train.

I find this a very convenient feature in RT3, although in OpenTTD it may be problematic if you crash many vehicles at once or if your depot doesn't have a universal connection to your network. There's a high chance of lost trains unless there's a way to only clone the train at a depot which has a path to the first station in the orders, or at a depot in the train's order list.

If I recall correctly, Railroad Tycoon 3 opens a dialog box when a train crashes and asks the user whether they want to purchase a replacement train.

I find this a very convenient feature in RT3, although in OpenTTD it may be problematic (...)

The question of whether you want to buy an accident vehicle would be a nuisance if someone in the online game intentionally, especially massively, destroyed your vehicles, or even if you did it yourself (intentionally or not).

From #7611:
@Eddi-z:

my train of thought would be to teleport the vehicle into the nearest appropriate depot (hoping there is one).
that would avoid all the stuff about querying the tile the vehicle is on.

A solution close to what Eddi-z proposed seems to be the best.

However, in this topic, I would see several solutions:

1. The text of the message (in the previous message window) would have a different color depending on what they refer to.
2. Displaying up to 5 news icons in the bottom bar with links to recent news. The icons could be of different colors (see point 1) and would disappear after ~60 seconds regardless of the pace of the game.
   
3. A damaged vehicle, after a month (or even less) of staying on the map as a wreck, would go to the nearest depot (also as a wreck), where it would stay for the next year - the vehicle could be sold like others, but without profit.
4. There could be a setting that would determine how long the vehicle is to be stored after an accident.
5. On any vehicle list, regardless of the sort you choose, destroyed vehicles would always as first - usually this is rare enough not to be a problem, but almost always would be helpful.
6. If any vehicles were damaged, there would be an additional, usually invisible sorting option marked with a different font color - here the disadvantage of the solution would be that the player would have to know that there was an accident at all. Alternatively, the list would change the sorting method each time a vehicle is destroyed and revert to the previous sort when the company no longer has such vehicles. The player could also change the order, but each subsequent accident (usually very rare) would cause the change to occur again to give the player the opportunity to spot the problem.

• On any vehicle list, regardless of the sort you choose, destroyed vehicles would always as first - usually this is rare enough not to be a problem, but almost always would be helpful.

• If any vehicles were damaged, there would be an additional, usually invisible sorting option marked with a different font color - here the disadvantage of the solution would be that the player would have to know that there was an accident at all. Alternatively, the list would change the sorting method each time a vehicle is destroyed and revert to the previous sort when the company no longer has such vehicles. The player could also change the order, but each subsequent accident (usually very rare) would cause the change to occur again to give the player the opportunity to spot the problem.

👍👍

This is a great idea, Mashinky has a similar feature where you can rebuy the train and it will basically set it on route again.