FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development

[APDAF]

I need help with the fishing harbour.
It keeps saying this.

screenshot.png (62.08 KiB) Viewed 589 times

[planetmaker]

you need to click the upper left part of the intended fishing harbour which on that shore is some water tile 1...3 tiles off the shore

[APDAF]

Works fine now thanks.

[DeletedUser6]

World's most hopeless sprite No.192:



I was discussing salt deposits in IRC and no-one listened So I drew this in the vain hope it would look good.

Please note that this is rushed beyond doubt.

Matthew:out

[Leanden]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but that just looks like the Fishing Harbour to me.

[Hyronymus]

World's most hopeless sprite No.192:



I was discussing salt deposits in IRC and no-one listened So I drew this in the vain hope it would look good.

Please note that this is rushed beyond doubt.

Matthew:out

You call that drawing up something yourself?

[Pingaware]

I was discussing salt deposits in IRC and no-one listened So I drew this in the vain hope it would look good.

Please note that this is rushed beyond doubt.

Okay, you're right. It's very simple and barely noticeable. But, when I compare your modified sprite with Andy's original, I have to say it does look that tiny bit better. All credit to you for coming up with a small improvement! Hopefully Andy does something similar

[andythenorth]

You call that drawing up something yourself?

I did tell him to post it in the forum He was sheepish about doing that, but I wanted to see what people thought. I'm open to the idea if it adds something...

[Roujin]

So after my recent game with FIRS, I've been thinking about engineering supplies. Now before you tell me to bugger off, I did read back and I know that you are not willing to change the system (back(!)) to some kind of stockpiling one. Still, here are my thoughts, even if in the end you'll only say "but we're still not gonna change it!"

First off, knowing that I need to deliver small-and-steady amounts of engineering supplies instead of infrequent but big deliveries made me do something I've never done before in OpenTTD: I created a "Logistics center" somewhere in the center of the map where I had some free space, as a hub to deliver ESUP to (by train) and from there transport it on in small portions (truck) to the industries that need it. I see that as a definite plus, making players try new things to conquer this gameplay mechanism.

However I also have a few points to criticize about it:
1) The current method of using up ALL delivered supplies at end of month, no matter the amount, seems totally arbitrary and forced. It seems like there is a hungry monster at those industries that eats once a month and takes whatever amount is available. Having eaten anything, it bestows the industry with good luck and (possibly) grants it a production increase, no matter the amount of yummy supplies it ate. I see no rational, realistic explanation why delivering (another) load of ESUP on the 31st of January would go to waste, when delivering it on the 1st of February would have granted a production boost chance for february. Couldn't they, like, stow it away for one single day on site? In the aforementioned game, I "microed" trucks that were a few days too early (when I happened to be there with my screen) by stopping them for a few days right before their destination and then starting again, only so they would not deliver on the end of month n, but the beginning of month (n+1). I felt like I was forced to do this to have a realistic chance of my industries improving, but I had no fun in doing this kind of thing.

2) Using a construction like on the wiki (transfer at destination, small truck route with slow, low cap truck to "real" destination), you can "simulate" the industry having a storage and only slowly using up the ESUP, instead of the monster eating all of them at the end of month. But then again I'm thinking why should I have to do this if the newgrf could have this functionality built in? It's just inconvenient. Also, I feel that building this kind of thing is a hack to circumvent the gameplay you are intending with this mechanic, rather than a legit thing to do, which is why I did not do this in my game. I am a transport manager, managing their storage is the responsibility of each industry, not of the company that delivers their supplies.


To sum it up, I think it is a fresh and good new thing to force the player to do such small deliveries, but I would prefer if
1) it would use a different system that does not force me into delivering at just-the-right moment, and not a few days too early or all the effort is wasted
and 2) if it couldn't be hacked with the aforementioned methods to act like it had a storage OR the storage should be built in the industries.

[George]

So after my recent game with FIRS, I've been thinking about engineering supplies.
...
To sum it up, I think it is a fresh and good new thing to force the player to do such small deliveries, but I would prefer if
1) it would use a different system that does not force me into delivering at just-the-right moment, and not a few days too early or all the effort is wasted
and 2) if it couldn't be hacked with the aforementioned methods to act like it had a storage OR the storage should be built in the industries.

And what would you say about ECS then? Industries has stockpiles, but it is limited and can be overflowed. And this makes you to make some sort of logistic centres too.

[Leanden]

Actually i work for a transport company, and they do have a warehouse where they store goods for factories which currently are not needed by customers. So storing goods can be the responsibility of the transport company too.

[Simons Mith]

The main thing that bothers me about the Engineering Supply chain is not the industry's poor stock management - I don't mind managing that for them, it's how the hell an industry producing a few tonnes a month can gobble up hundreds of crates of supplies, if that's what you send it. Could industries be given a maximum consumption proportional to their current production, rather than (or in addition to) a minimum ENSP supply level for a chance at growth? If I wanted to play with stockpiles, I'd play ECS instead. My preference would be for secondary and tertiary industries to have maximum consumption caps instead.

[andythenorth]

The supplies mechanic works using the same behaviour as town growth above the snowline or in desert. That's the main (and only-needed) justification for the current behaviour. It also works better than the alternatives that were tried, but that's a minor plus point, not the essential argument.

[Simons Mith]

Are there any industries GRFs in existence that implement a maximum consumption cap? Does the game make it technically feasible to implement such?

[Eddi]

yes, that can be done. PBI does it, and i believe ECS as well.

[andythenorth]

Are there any industries GRFs in existence that implement a maximum consumption cap? Does the game make it technically feasible to implement such?

It's what many people mean when they refer to 'stockpiling' (right or wrong? who knows?).

As Eddi says, PBI does it.

[Leanden]

Andy, how long until you implement the feature to stop industries being found randomly during gameplay? I'd quite like to play a sandbox game using these industries, but annoyingly extra ones keep popping up all over the place with relatively high frequency.

[planetmaker]

Andy, how long until you implement the feature to stop industries being found randomly during gameplay? I'd quite like to play a sandbox game using these industries, but annoyingly extra ones keep popping up all over the place with relatively high frequency.

It's an OpenTTD feature. Choose 'no industries' and only those which you placed in the SE or found yourself will ever show up. Thus you must not play with 'high industry density' setting.

[andythenorth]

Andy, how long until you implement the feature to stop industries being found randomly during gameplay

It's feature #2318 in version 0.7 roadmap here:
http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/firs/versions/145

I don't know how long it will be until 0.7 is released. There are two problems currently:
- I have to break savegames to provide snow graphics and ground-tile details like paths. This can't be avoided, so I want to get as many savegame-breaking changes as possible done in one version (to reduce need for savegame breakage in future).
- features in FIRS 0.7 need some new features to be added to trunk (extending industry var 68, extended tile action 2 layouts). This depends on time + good will of trunk devs, and I've asked for this as much as I dare.

The 'no opening' parameter might show up working in a nightly build of FIRS sometime, but it comes with a health warning: nightly savegames will be breaking regularly over the next few weeks / months

[planetmaker]

Andy, how long until you implement the feature to stop industries being found randomly during gameplay

It's feature #2318 in version 0.7 roadmap here:
http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/firs/versions/145

I don't know how long it will be until 0.7 is released. There are two problems currently:
- I have to break savegames to provide snow graphics and ground-tile details like paths.

Hm, IIRC only changing the tileIDs (or industryIDs and industry tile layout) breaks savegames. Changing the sprite layout and adding a few more varaction2 for a single tile - something which is sufficient when adding snowy graphics - doesn't break savegames. Thus adding snow-awareness should not break anything.