Map Generation Suitable for FIRS

[Buragan]

Hey all.

Recently I've been plagued with problems while trying to generate a map suitable for running the FIRS Industry Replacement newGRF. Either the industries are too spread out or there are too many in one area, or there aren't any related primary and secondary industries near each other. For standard industries and towns I usually use the 'Low' or' Very low' setting for towns, 'Low' for industries but turn on multiple per town, and then mix it up with some variety distribution. All help is welcome!

Yours,
Buragan

[3iff]

Some firs industries can cluster at the beginning (farms mainly). How big is your map?

There's never any guarantee that related industries will be close together but I've found that there's always something relatively close, to get you started.

I often play on 500^2 maps (or sometimes bigger) with minimal to low industry settings and allow more to appear during the game.

[Buragan]

I tend to use 1000x2000 for my maps. This has been successful for the standard industries, but it's a bit of a cluster-f for FIRS.

[3iff]

You may need to experiment with higher industry density to see what happens. You could turn 'multiple industries per town' off for mapgen then switch it back on once you've started. That should reduce clusters of one industry type.

"Too spread out" is a function of low industry density but the alternative is a map thick with industry...sometimes you just can't win.

[andythenorth]

FIRS industry generation is quite broken. Someone should fix it...

[leifbk]

FIRS industry generation is quite broken. Someone should fix it...

LOL

Generally I find it quite decent, at least on a 512x512 map, or 512x256 which I'm playing right now. The one thing that I find annoying, is the "opportunistic" placement of secondary industries close to primary source industries, even if the resources already have been "taken". I think that secondary industries placed 100-200 tiles Manhattan distance away from primary industries, as well as from each other, might work better. Clustering fishing harbours is generally a bad idea, at least in single-player mode.

fishing_harbours.png (181.21 KiB) Viewed 3782 times

[3iff]

FIRS industry generation is quite broken. Someone should fix it...

How is it broken? I could have a look/think even though it might be beyond my skills.

[andythenorth]

How is it broken? I could have a look/think even though it might be beyond my skills.

A not-comprehensive list:

OpenTTD tries to generate a fixed number of industries per map size, per industry density setting.
- The number of industries in the Full FIRS economies can overwhelm this for some settings on some maps, leading to gaps in the industry chains.

The clustering of primary industries doesn't scale per map size.
- bigger maps should have more clusters than smaller maps, and they should be distributed across the map.
- I think a previous version of FIRS did this but the code possibly went missing when it was converted to nml (haven't checked that code ever existed, or if I imagined it).

Clusters would benefit from tweaks
- Farms in particular need tweaked, they locate too close together which makes them difficult to serve with supplies, because stations overlap more than one industry.

Fishing Harbours try to locate near Fishing grounds, for two reasons
- boats are slow, so short trips are desirable for fun gameplay.
- it reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the possibility of Fishing Harbours that are stuck in a landlocked lake.
- but the side effect of this is that Fishing Harbours show a clustering effect.

Conflicting goals for min / max distance between primary and secondary
- most secondaries will try and locate at least 56 tiles from their primary sources and vice versa
- sometimes players want primary and secondary industries located close to each
- sometimes players want primary and secondary industries located a long way apart
- there's no clear obvious right answer. Even in the same game, I find I want both, depending on the stage of the game, and which vehicles are available.

Some industries don't use the min-distance checks
- when economies or new industries have been added, the checks for minimum distance to related primary or secondary types haven't always been updated to match.

Some of the rules for locating town industries are too restrictive
This causes some industries to be unbuildable in some large cities.

Most of these will be fixed or at least improved in the 'snakebite' edition of FIRS. No release date for that though, eh

[3iff]

Ouch. I'll have a look. I understand some of the code and I'll see if I can come up with some answers.
I'm not promising anything...

[andythenorth]

Make sure you look in the 'snakebite' branch, not default.

[3iff]

For the moment I'm looking at my own custom version of firs, a highly butchered copy of firs 143.

Thinking about your list of things, some of them will be a case of 'for a general map size' things should work. If using a map size much smaller (or larger) or with extremes (lots of water for example) then industry generation cannot be guaranteed. I'm presuming most players would understand that limitation.

[Buragan]

Well, I didn't expect the threat to expand that quickly! I was playing around with the 'WaterWorld' scenario set in 1780 which involves a 512x512 map, a few small islands - including an atoll, named Atoll - some fish grounds and industries. However, I found it hard to generate a profit without relying entirely on oil. However, I did see the following!

Here's a world map:

1776_map.png

The water level is high, number of towns is low, number of industries is normal. Town growth is turned completely off, as is inflation of course.

Looks like a reasonable layout. I'll try using the suggestion of a smaller map size, since I'm relying in ginormous maps!

EDIT: Found out, the quote didn't really work for the image. Just take my word that it looked good!

[leifbk]

The water level is high, number of towns is low, number of industries is normal. Town growth is turned completely off, as is inflation of course.

Looks like a reasonable layout. I'll try using the suggestion of a smaller map size, since I'm relying in ginormous maps!

If you like playing with ships, try to set custom water level to 60%. You'll get lots of large islands with plenty of water between them. (I discovered that after my Ships & RVs thread.)

[Buragan]

Definitely into ships. All of my previous attempts to generate island maps were quite mediocre, however I just tested the custom sea level of 60% and it is looking swell.

EDIT: After a few moments I had a little loop set up where I delivered livestock to something, it produced food which went to a port or something (I'm still not quite familiar with all of the names in FIRS) which produced farm supplies which went to the farm. Rinse and repeat, glue in some milk transportation to a dairy to produce MORE food and by-jingo, this map generation is nice.