For the latest AXIS release as of 2023-12-29, skip to this post: viewtopic.php?p=1266401#p1266401
Original XIS release post below:
(outdated download removed. XIS is still available from Bananas)
The Extreme Industry Set
So here's a project I've been working on sporadically for the past year or so: a FIRS fork consisting of an extensive new economy. Featuring 62 cargos and 83 industries, it combines elements of all of the FIRS economies, primarily Extreme and Steeltown. There are many parallel chains so you can pick and choose which ones you want to play with. Since it's based on FIRS 3, the parameters, placement rules, and production/supply mechanics all work the same. If you're reading this you've probably played FIRS already and know how all that works.
I consider this an unofficial successor to FIRS Extreme, since that economy is no more and even when it was it hasn’t been updated in a while. However many people enjoyed the variety it brought, and I hope this new set can fill that gap for some of you
Here is the GRF, and a cargo flow chart to get you started. Enjoy! XIS is on GitHub now!
https://github.com/EmperorJake/XIS
Features:
FIRS3 Steeltown Chain: Includes coke works and the various furnaces and metal factories present in Steeltown. Not as detailed as FIRS4’s Steeltown obviously, but that means it fits in better with the rest.
Expanded oil/petrochemical chain: In addition to the usual oil rigs and refineries, you can now extract oil from other sources such as coal and oil sands, choose to send it to a Cracking Plant if you need more fuel, and make synthetic fibres and rubber at the Polymer Plant.
Raw materials from other economies: Zinc, Copper, Nitrates etc. all feature full production chains, unlike the partial ones found in the FIRS Basic economies.
Fully integrated economy: All industry chains go from raw material to finished product. This is great for larger maps meant to represent an entire country and not just a smaller region. It’s also good for cooperative multiplayer games where each player can focus on part of the chain.
Design goals:
My original idea came to me when I was first trying out FIRS 3 Steeltown, thinking it was a fun alternative to the ubiquitous Extreme economy. However, while adding lots of fun and excellent complexity to the steel chains, it would grossly oversimplify the food chain, and completely remove other important cargos like goods, oil and wood. So I began by combining Extreme with Steeltown in order to get the best of both worlds. But one FIRS feature still bothered me...
I wasn't a fan when "magic ports" were introduced and made integral parts of the economy (I.e. when Bauxite Mines were removed and the Bulk Terminal became the only source of Bauxite). So my original plan was to remove them, but after realising they can be put to good use, I made them secondary sources of cargo. (Some credits to Romazoon for this idea) Getting supplies from Ports is convenient, after all. Therefore, anything you can get from a "magic port" is also available as a product of a normal industry which means you're not limited to the reduced production and prevalence of the ports, and instead have more sources for certain materials. This allows for large fully self-contained maps, where you don't have to pretend invisible ships are leaving the map to trade with far-off lands.
Now XIS contains several industries and cargos which aren't in FIRS. Since I only have a surface-level understanding of the FIRS codebase, I had to reskin these from existing FIRS industries and cargos I wasn't going to use. (e.g. the Manufacturing Plant uses the internal code of the Vineyard and borrows layouts from the Assembly Plant, and Oil Sands is just renamed Phosphates and still uses the PHOS cargolabel) This is why the code is horrendously bodgy inside, and I hope to improve it in the future, but hey, it works
So in short, this is an unofficial successor to the FIRS3 Extreme economy, and as such it continues the idea of several parallel cargo chains and of generic cargos that can represent a variety of things (i.e. Parts and Packaging)
The future of XIS:
Currently there is only one economy, which I call "The Lot" because it's like a burger with the lot - it has a bit of everything. Because this leads to things that might not make sense such as having rubber plantations in arctic, I might eventually include climate-specific economies with a few minor tweaks but the same overall economy. In the meantime you can just choose not to build those industries where there is an alternative (Rubber can also be produced synthetically by the Polymer Plant, for example.) There can also be an economy that removes the magic ports to prevent port spam in competitive multiplayer games.
As development continues I will improve some industries visually by adding new layouts and graphics to make it distinct from FIRS. After all, some industries are currently reskins or just have their ground tiles changed to tell them apart.
In the longer-term, I may eventually do a full recode of the set using FIRS 4 as a base, which will enable the use of the 16 cargos in/out feature and a much more complex economy. I have some ideas for this waiting but it probably won't happen any time soon
Languages:
Currently only English is offered, since some industries have changed names and many new strings have been added, this would be confusing for any non-English players. If you want to contribute translations, just say so and I will provide an edited lang file to fill out.
