FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development

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andythenorth
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by andythenorth »

leifbk wrote:You really should consider a height level limit on the placement of some industries...
I dug this up because processing industries at the summit of mountains are...irritating to service (drag cargo up, then down again), and stations are hard to place due to lack of flat ground.

However I can't think of any method to prevent mountain-top locations which doesn't immediately cause unwanted results for some combination of map and playing style.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by leifbk »

andythenorth wrote:I can't think of any method to prevent mountain-top locations which doesn't immediately cause unwanted results for some combination of map and playing style.
If you can get at min. height level and max. height level it should be possible to limit the locations to eg. the lower third.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Alberth »

I think the main point is not whether you can limit the height, the question is whether it is a good idea, as it might break some play styles.

As a counter-example, default industries in arctic climate have forests high up in the mountains, which I find fun.
On the other hand, FIRS building a steel mill (or some other heavy industry) at the top of a mountain is mostly annoying, heavy iron ore hauling up the hill is very much bleh.
So for me, it seems having an industry at the top is not a problem, the need to haul heavy cargo up is what breaks it for me.

Eg if the ore mine is also high (same mountain-ish, or even higher), I would have no problem.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by leifbk »

Alberth wrote:default industries in arctic climate have forests high up in the mountains
That's kind of silly. In arctic climate, there are no forests above a few hundred meters. See Wikipedia: Tree line.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by andythenorth »

The issue is more 'what's the top'? I've played games with large plateaus at max tile height, where I can build mostly-flat routes of 50 or 100 tiles. Preventing that is definitely not a goal.

Specifically having industries at the top of isolated mountains is irritating :)
- it looks counter-intuitive ("why there?")
- the lack of reality will bother some people
- it's tedious dragging the cargo up the hill

But...
- it's a hard case to detect without a big circular tile search checking slopes, which will increase FIRS compile time (bad for me) and map-gen time (bad for everyone)
- the slope search is likely to be fragile and easily tripped up by specific locations
- preventing this type of location might make some maps untenable for industry placement
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Pyoro »

Yeah, it'd be odd to keep plateus forcibly industry-free. Maybe it "realistically" would make sense but ingame, if it's at a height where towns can be (and since towns have no restrictions...) there's really no reason why there shouldn't be industry.

Example map:
Aesthetic Tranports, 1. Okt 1967.png
(1.19 MiB) Not downloaded yet
And while I don't really know how much of an argument it is, if you want perfect industry placement you really should use the scenario editor and place them manually. You can still let the rest be generated randomly. Expecting the industry set to always make perfect sense is imo too much. Inevitably you'll get some steel mill on a small island in the middle of a lake, but that's OK, since maybe there's another small island where the game decided that a 3-houses-town needs to go ^^
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Kalen »

Given how problematic it would be to add checks to avoid these odd cases vs. just allowing some acceptable breaks from reality, I say leave it as it is.

If that steel mill atop a mountain seems like a headache to service for someone, can they not just scout the map for a different one? Alternatively, if every single industry's positioning is important, then like Pyoro says, that calls for the scenario editor since fine-tuning to taste is one of its purposes.

Additionally, taste is subjective; I actually find forests atop mountains in sub-Arctic to be cute, regardless of whether I'm planning on servicing them or not.

I suppose some checks could be added for some industries (i.e. those dealing with heavy cargo), but if it's just going to create more problems than solve, then it doesn't seem very logical to me. Checks based on height might not be truly reliable either since this can potentially happen below max height too.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Supercheese »

Besides, having to haul heavy cargo uphill gives use cases for some more exotic types of transport such as rackrail or geared steam locomotives.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by NekoMaster »

Or you can use a really powerful/high traction locomotive or design your railways to deal with the terrain. The only thing I don't like about industries spawning in mountains is when they spawn on a mountain side and thus makes it difficult to build a decent train or industrial tram station.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by GarryG »

I started to make a reply to this this morning when my hard drive crashed on me .. maybe the Industries did it. :)

Don't forget when we start a game we can select Terrain Type from Flat to Mountainous .. so those who select lots of mountains and hills got to expect to have mountainous problems. :)

Did someone make rack rails for the game? Could run on of these up and down the mountains and transfer them at a station at the bottom and a fast train can load them and take it to its destination.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by andythenorth »

Improved Iron Ore Mine
iron_ore_mine_2.png
iron_ore_mine_2.png (230.2 KiB) Viewed 2221 times
Improved Vineyard
vineyard_improved.png
vineyard_improved.png (291.35 KiB) Viewed 2221 times
Improved Coffee Estate
coffee_estate_improved_3.png
coffee_estate_improved_3.png (491.29 KiB) Viewed 2221 times
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by andythenorth »

Improved Forest for temperate / arctic / tropic.
  • Denser trees (9 per tile instead of 4)
  • Fixed bugs on slopes where trees were placed over adjacent tiles
  • Extra machinery / log tile
  • Fixed bug with date-sensitive sprites, and added another date variation for modern machinery
  • Better ground tile for trees - also makes industry more visible in transparent mode
  • Better choice of tree sprites, especially in tropic
  • Improved layouts - also more uniform so easier to build adjacent stations
Attachments
improved_forest_temperate.png
improved_forest_temperate.png (456.65 KiB) Viewed 2220 times
improved_forest_arctic.png
improved_forest_arctic.png (226.85 KiB) Viewed 2220 times
improved_forest_tropic.png
improved_forest_tropic.png (122.6 KiB) Viewed 2220 times
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by leifbk »

Thanks for the improved forests; I guess that they will be easier to spot among the overall vegetation now.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Pyoro »

leifbk wrote:Thanks for the improved forests; I guess that they will be easier to spot among the overall vegetation now.
Gameplay-wise that makes sense but as someone who likes blending in the forests I'm not so sure about the eye-candy effects. Old ones worked nicely:
download/file.php?id=164147
Dunno if those new ones don't look a little too dense. Tree farms certainly look like that though.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by andythenorth »

Likely I'll release FIRS v3 in 2017.

For v3, or maybe for v4, I'm considering removing Extreme (and replacing it with something equally extreme,. but better).

My objections to Extreme:
  • No clear theme, it grew from industries I wanted to draw. The other economies have clear themes.
  • Manufacturing Supplies goes pretty much everywhere, from pretty much everywhere, and it's kind of bland.
  • Not enough balance between very generic cargos and very specific cargos (Sugar Beet, I'm looking at you).
  • Cargo flow chart makes no sense :twisted: http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/pus ... ml#extreme
My intention for other economies is to include one large economy per climate. In A Hot Country already covers tropic; there will be an equivalent for arctic, and maybe temperate. There are also niche mid-sized economies like Steeltown, which will appear in v3.

Economies are all listed here http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/pus ... omies.html
So one option is to leave Extreme alone until other large economies are figured out, then redefine what the theme is for Extreme.

But what would a good theme for Extreme be? :)

Economies are all listed here: http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/pus ... omies.html
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by alluke »

I think you're making a big mistake by removing Vehicles chain from Arctic Basic. One of my favorite chains plus gives use for car carrier wagons of Finnish and other train sets.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Kalen »

I pretty much only use Extreme because I play in large (2k+) maps starting in the 1800's, so I like having the variety of as many different industry types and chains as possible keeping me busy with things to do throughout that huge timespan. I don't think I'd be able to accomplish this as easily under smaller economies, so I generally leave those for smaller maps with a less "epic" timespan when I feel like changing the scenery a little.

To me, Extreme has always felt all about packing in as many industries/chains as possible, which I find best suited for larger map sizes, so perhaps this economy would work best as an amalgamation of themes, having a number of common/universal industries, then taking some unique ones from each of the other large economies, in essence trying to replicate those three themes in one big map. Perhaps it could even include some Steeltown/niche economy stuff.

I have no idea how Extreme would work with its own theme (beyond universal/"a little bit of everything"), and I'm not even sure if it would still make sense at that point. Perhaps then it'd be better suited as another large climate-specific economy, at most a hybrid economy, or even a niche one entirely.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by Pyoro »

I feel that this has been discussed before, but how about something centered around Western export/import (not necessarily for extreme, although I think that could be done, too)? Use the harbor as a sort-of central point in the chains. Something (very roughly) along those lines:
industry.png
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by andythenorth »

Maybe the 'extreme' aspect is the very large number of producers and destinations for the tertiary cargos like manufacturing supplies, engineering supplies, farm supplies, food and goods?

This means that instead of long simple chains A->B->C->D, there is a complex web of branching links (this incidentally works badly with cargodist but eh).

If that's 'extreme', then ideas in that direction could be:
- remove highly specific cargos like sugar beet which have single source / destination
- add cargos which are more generic, for example 'minerals' could be better than 'coal' / 'iron ore' / 'bauxite'

Eh dunno. What's 'extreme'? Cargos are capped at 32, unlikely to change.
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Re: FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development & Translations

Post by NekoMaster »

Well you could perhaps combine some cargos together to free up some spaces, like what about Food and Alcohol to make "Food & Beverage Cargo" or "Perishables" cargo?
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