Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

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Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Erato »

Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS
What does FIRS do right, that XIS does wrong? And how do I use these design principles in my own industry set?


When you're moving freight at all in OpenTTD, the industry set is what truly gives your playthrough identity. There are many different industry sets available. I'm personally interested in the design of extreme industry sets, as I am currently working on my own. "Extreme" here means having a very large amount of cargoes and industries. The most popular "extreme" industry sets are XIS and FIRS 4. In essence, FIRS is multiple industry sets at once, and the only ones that I would classify as extreme are Steeltown and In A Hot Country. XIS is built upon the code of FIRS, thus inheriting a lot of features from FIRS, and also making it a lot easier to compare the two. XIS is generally considered worse than FIRS, supposedly all over the place, whereas FIRS is generally considered to be well designed. In this essay I will be looking into what FIRS and XIS do differently, and how to learn from this.

XIS is often cited as lacking a general direction and theme. It inherited this from FIRS 3 Extreme, which was being deprecated for that reason around the time of the development of XIS. The benefit of this is that it allows many different parallel chains to coexist. FIRS 4 Steeltown is widely considered a golden standard because of its extreme directionality; everything points towards the ultimate goal of producing vehicles.

As I said before, I am currently working on my own extreme industry set, the DPRK Industry Set v2. When it's finished I want all the industries to lead to a single ultimate goal, much like Steeltown. In the process I want to make it so you can tie up loose ends and have many smaller chains. That way you have somewhere for your steel to go before you connect up all the industries needed to produce vehicles. I want to use this analysis to critically examine my own, and other people's industry sets, and see how I can improve my own design, and what I should avoid. I hope it will also be useful to others looking to make their own industry sets.

I heard someone say that XIS is the prime example for "less is more". This raises today's question: is less really more? I'm sceptical.

The numbers

Code: Select all

Industry Set				| XIS	| Steeltown | In A Hot Country
----------------------------------------+-------+-----------+------------------
Cargoes					| 62	| 48	    | 29
Industries				| 82	| 30	    | 32
XIS is clearly far bigger than FIRS. It's more than twice as big as In A Hot Country, and it even dwarfs Steeltown. Interesting to note here is how Steeltown has slightly fewer industries than In A Hot Country, while having one and a half times as many cargoes.

OpenTTD has a cargo limit set at 64 different cargoes, so XIS has space for only 2 more cargoes. When designing a large industry set, this limit can really creep up on you, so it's important to properly deal with this limit.

If all you want is to have as many trains as possible, then we can clearly see that XIS is the winner here. Let's take a closer look at XIS.

Everything goes to everywhere
So I started up a quick game with XIS. Vehicles seem like a logical goal to aim for, as many different industries come together to eventually produce vehicles. To make vehicles, we need to supply the assembly plant with vehicle bodies and parts. Vehicle bodies require steel, which requires pig iron. I can obtain pig iron by supplying the blast furnace with iron ore, limestone and coke. Coke is provided by the coke oven if you supply coal. A decent chain, as can be expected of XIS. So I build my tracks and I send my iron ore train to the blast furnace and prepare the trains for the limestone quarry, and then I see that iron ore alone was enough. This was quite disappointing to be sure. At first I thought this was just because iron ore was the core component, but even providing limestone was enough.

As it turns out, all FIRSids have this problem where you can just supply any of the required cargoes and the secondary industry will go brr just fine. I personally find that somewhat problematic. After all having everything all come together at the end is the beauty of things like that.

Another problem XIS has is the parts cargo. I've been informed since starting this essay that this exists because the original FIRS code is somewhat difficult to work with, which is why XIS has only 62 cargoes. Regardless, this parts cargo kinda ruins XIS in some fundamental ways. You can obtain vehicles by simply sending wool from a farm to a textile mill, and then sending the parts you get from that to an assembly plant. 6 very different types of parts; textiles, glass, nuts & bolts, tyres, electrical components and plastics, go to 6 very different secondary industries; factories for furniture, books, vehicles, vehicles again, goods and a port. This can make it somewhat difficult to figure out what to do with those parts. Because if everything goes everywhere, then where does it go? This is the thing I like least about XIS.

To fix this, XIS would preferably have to get rid of some industries, cargoes or links. XIS isn't necessarily beyond saving, but a lot would need to change to fix this problem.

I wouldn't say this is necessarily an example of less is more, but rather an example of how technical limitations might force us to make decisions that in hindsight might not have been the best decisions.

So what about FIRS? How does it improve on this?

What’s this feeling of warmth?
Second in the list is the smaller of the three; In A Hot Country. Unlike Steeltown and XIS, it doesn't have a cargo like vehicles that would require a large chain, so I just started wherever. Just like in the base game, you just combine whatever industry you fancy. It's quite relaxed, and reminds me a bunch of toyland, which in my opinion is the best economy out of the 4 base game economies.

It does seem rather directionless without any end goal to work towards; you don't really feel like you're getting closer to something, but the chains are all fairly small, so you can easily chain together a bunch of industries, which is rather satisfying. On top of this, In A Hot Country is rather interconnected, so adding a new industry to your network feels rather satisfying. This gives In A Hot Country a rather fuzzy feeling

Like all FIRSids, in In A Hot Country, only one of the cargotypes is required for a secondary industry to start producing, and it's not very picky. This means chemicals alone are enough to produce copper. Sure by supplying everything you get more, but I kinda dislike doing things this way, and it's not really intuitive.

In A Hot Country also has a bunch of cargoes that go straight into the trading post. This trading post produces supplies whether you chuck diamonds into it or not, but it is somewhat of a shame, as it does make for rather boring gameplay.

Like a magic
I was really looking forward to Steeltown until I learned that you can just send sand to get turned into engines which you can then send to an assembly plant to make vehicles. Just take a pile of sand, chuck a license plate on it and boom; it's a vehicle. The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles. It is very disappointing, as I had imagined it was a lot like factorio, where you eventually get to your final industry where you assemble everything you've worked towards, and then you win.

But sadly, because FIRS requires players to supply any, and not all cargoes, the excitement of getting to work towards a goal kinda just dies. If you ignore this issue, and impose the requirement onto yourself, then Steeltown provides a nice and deep experience, which is quite enjoyable.

Another thing Steeltown does is keep related industries close together. With the large interconnected web of industries in Steeltown, you get to condense the chains somewhat, and this also makes it a bunch easier to get started. I think this is a fairly nice addition, which helps tie everything together.

The thing I dislike most about FIRS is magical ports. In A Hot Country also has these, but in Steeltown it is so much worse. These magical ports just magically cause cargoes to appear out of thin air without you having to do anything to obtain them. In Steeltown there are 2 magical ports, each producing 5 different cargotypes. 7 cargoes in Steeltown exist purely to be sunk into these ports, and 8 cargoes can exclusively be obtained through the magicians that are harboured by the ports. I like the idea of being able to export some cargoes that you otherwise wouldn't use, in order to get new ones, but that's not how this works. It just appears out of nowhere, and you can supply stuff to make it appear out of nowhere faster.

What is the purpose of these magic ports then, and why does Andy like them so much? Probably because Andy prefers smaller maps, and this way, he didn't have to add a bunch more industries to the map, which already quite packed. Alternatively he's just trying to avoid making extra sprites. Reasonable tbf.

XIS also has these ports, but they're never the only way to obtain these cargoes, so it is a very welcome improvement. This way you don't end up like potash, which exists solely to be chucked into the sea. At least it isn't as boring as the power plant in the base game.

Is less more?
Steeltown and In A Hot Country have roughly the same amount of industries, although Steeltown has many more cargoes. Discounting the magic port cargoes puts them both at roughly the same size either way. Regardless, Steeltown manages to make the larger amount of cargoes work really quite well by weaving the entire economy together in one large web, which gives you a much more coherent network, and as such is a bunch more satisfying.

Meanwhile XIS is truly too big for its own good. The omnicargo "parts" means it's not ideal for a game where you just want to move cargo from A to B, and it performs much better as an industry set for eyecandy games. I am currently playing a game with XIS that is all about eyecandy, and I must say that XIS is just fantastic for it.

From this all I can say is that if you're mindful of your limitations, more is simply more. In A Hot Country shows that it doesn't have to be one interconnected whole to be fun, while Steeltown really highlights what that can do to a game.

I believe that industry sets larger than Steeltown could definitely work, but you'd need to work with your limitations, and not against it.

How can I do better?
The first version of the DPRK Industry set v2 won't be much bigger than v1, but I do have ambitions to make it much larger than even Steeltown. My current cargo flow draft has 55 cargoes and 61 industries. Many cargoes are used in both much larger and much shorter chains. With this I hope to be able to make it satisfying to add small parts to your network while you're working towards a bigger goal, and I'm hoping to make it so at the end everything will all come together, when all the pieces will fall into place.

Another benefit of doing it like this is that it allows me to release updates in smaller parts, without having to rip out some older connections. I can also make it so the player can have a smaller set of industries if they prefer.

Something Steeltown teaches me is that I might do well to consider making it so some similar industries spawn close to each other. You wouldn't want to have to drag 55 different cargoes halfway across the map.

One thing I do realise now is that if there's too much going on at a single industry, it might be nice to split it up into multiple smaller industries, but besides that I'm not seeing any obvious flaws. The main issues I had with FIRS and XIS were things I was already going to do differently. Perhaps this made it so I couldn't properly assess these industry sets, but who knows. I suppose the only way to see if my ideas are truly better is to put it all together and find out.

So what do you think?
Last edited by Erato on 12 Jun 2021 19:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by gebik »

Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05
Nice post. It should be on wiki.
I and my parents, i play this with, are enjoying XIS with full Cargodist. This allows cargo to be divided into more destinations. The width is no problem, since we play with
BeeReward GS, which sets goals for cargo to be delivered somewhere.
So, for my MP games is XIS a best one.
BTW, I personally play PAX mainly.
Are you an eye candy player? Check out Invisible engine set! viewtopic.php?f=67&t=88934
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Taschi »

Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 In A Hot Country has the same problem XIS has, where only one cargotype is required in order to produce something, you can turn mere chemicals into copper, without needing to transport copper ore. This isn’t very intuitive, and makes completing chains a lot easier.
That is only unintuitive if you assume that the player-run transport companies encompass literally all traffic, and nothing gets moved from A to B without you.

My assumption when playing something like OpenTTD or Transport Fever or whatever is always that goods and passengers can flow *somehow* even without your intervention - i. e., a steel plant can run its own supply chain, it'll just be significantly worse and less efficient than a supply chain run by a major logistics company like the one you're running.

Without that assumption, it simply doesn't make sense that factories exist at all at game start because no sane person would build a power plant (which happens to be kind of expensive) and maintain it for decades without having any way of actually running it and making revenue.

On the grounds of this assumption, I find it a completely legitimate design decision to have factories start producing with just one input product available in order to make it easier to get your network started, and to save you from having to fine-tune the transported capacities on multiple lines. Of course, for an "extreme" set, using different approaches is perfectly legitimate as well.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Erato »

Taschi wrote: 12 Jun 2021 19:06That is only unintuitive if you assume that the player-run transport companies encompass literally all traffic, and nothing gets moved from A to B without you.
Without that assumption, it simply doesn't make sense that factories exist at all at game start because no sane person would build a power plant (which happens to be kind of expensive) and maintain it for decades without having any way of actually running it and making revenue.
Well yes, but this raises the question of why they don't produce anything at all until the player comes along, and why they do actually go bankrupt if you, the player, don't do anything. If there are tiny men moving things around, they're really bad at their job.

Pretty much every game I've ever played where you turn goods into other goods, works in the way that if you, the player, never come along, nothing ever gets made, and nothing ever gets done.

But besides I think it's kinda bad game design. OpenTTD has no tech tree of any kind, so ideally, an industry set would provide this feeling of progression; something to work towards, and something to do. Making money in OpenTTD isn't a good goal because of how easy it is, so having the industry set provide a way to keep progressing further and further is really quite ideal.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Wahazar »

Thre is lack of ECS in this review.
I know this newgrf is old and kind of buggy, but its internal mechanism is quite different than FIRS or its clones.
For example, assumption that cargoes are "somewhat transported anyway" is valid in ECS - secondary industry is producing something (very little) even if its inputs are not fed. And whole logistics is upside down - before supplies, deliveries of secondary products must to be secured - otherwise factory would be overfilled by not consumed input.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Andrew350 »

Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 As it turns out, all FIRSids have this problem where you can just supply any of the required cargoes and the secondary industry will go brr just fine. I personally find that somewhat problematic. After all having everything all come together at the end is the beauty of things like that.
One big problem with requiring all cargoes to be delivered before an industry produces something is preventing premature closure. I know this specific issue obviously doesn't apply to FIRS-alikes due to industries in these sets never closing, but it's something to consider if you're doing something different.

NewGRF has no real direct control over industry closures. Primary industries sort of do, but especially when it comes to processing industries you are completely at the mercy of what OpenTTD decides, which in this case is "if the industry isn't producing something, it can be closed". This leads to endless frustration when your secondary industries close just as you are about to link up the final cargo to begin producing something, and instead end up with nothing and a now-useless network. This is probably the main reason why industries in FIRS, etc. just simply never close at all in the first place; there's very little you can do to prevent it so it's just easier to disable completely**.

By allowing cargo to be produced with only one input (or even none like ECS), this situation is mostly mitigated, and you can instead apply a malus to the output for only delivering partial required cargos and/or a bonus for supplying all (which these sets do anyways). Obviously though if you want to follow the FIRS lead and just never allow industry closures and/or random production changes, this is completely a non-issue, though personally that always makes the world feel a bit stale to me :)

========

A possible secondary issue with requiring all cargos before producing something, is that often it takes quite a bit of time to build up all the pieces you need. If going for a "stockpiling" approach, this means you end up with a massive stockpile of the other goods which, depending on your production mechanics, likely means the player will be inundated with a massive wall of finished product once the final cargo is delivered, before eventually trailing off again to normal levels. I had some complaints about that when doing it this way, saying it was unmanageable to handle the initial flow and made it difficult to judge what the "actual" transport requirement was for the long term, often leading to over-building. This can be mitigated with some special handling for that specific situation, but again it is more hassle to do that nicely.

If you are instead just taking an "all or none" approach this is not very relevant, but in that case it will mean you need to be very clear about how the production mechanics work in-game to avoid people complaining that their industries just aren't working. Like if it is a time-based delivery system (e.g. all cargos must be delivered within 3 months of each other) it will likely need some feedback to the player about exactly how long it has been since each was delivered so they can identify the actual issue. Again, not sure if any of this applies to your specific situation, just something to consider :)

========
**It is possible to work around this issue by instead defining all industries as extracting type and then playing with the production_level variable solely as a method of psuedo-controlling industry closure, but it is a bit hacky and kind of a pain to manage compared to just using "normal" production mechanics.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Taschi »

Well yes, but this raises the question of why they don't produce anything at all until the player comes along
In my "headcanon", they do, they just produce inefficiently and also handle their own output.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by ebla71 »

Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS
What does FIRS do right, that XIS does wrong? And how do I use these design principles in my own industry set?
You give a lot of very careful consideration to what has to be done to get cargo produced.

Honestly, I like XIS the way it does this, but I also place all industries manually during a game.

Something that is however missing in the consideration is cargo "disappearing". I don't know enough about the game mechanics to tell whether this is controlled by an industry set or something else, but I find it strange that for example when I pick up coils of steel and bring them to a transfer station, they start to disappear in a fashion that is more or less random to me if I don't pick it put again quickly enough.

With some perishable goods this is ok to me, but not with bulk cargo or machinery.

If I recall correctly, there is/was another set called SPI that showed that behaviour so would be nice to have that blend in with a new set.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Argus »

The player's opinion is also appropriate. Personally, I don't like it when the industry closes even though I import it, which can be done not only by vanilla, but also by the Korean set.
I like the SPI approach, which needs all costs by default. And when ECS was mentioned here, it often does what vanilla does. I mostly play with FIRS, but it's too easy, so when I'm in the mood for a harder game, I have nothing to choose, in which case SPI suits me best.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Taschi »

ebla71 wrote: 12 Jun 2021 22:25 Something that is however missing in the consideration is cargo "disappearing". I don't know enough about the game mechanics to tell whether this is controlled by an industry set or something else, but I find it strange that for example when I pick up coils of steel and bring them to a transfer station, they start to disappear in a fashion that is more or less random to me if I don't pick it put again quickly enough
On the "realistic" side, everything is perishable if you leave it out in the open long enough. And the steel coils lying around at the station aren't yours, they were given to you by their owner in order to ship them to a destination, and if you fail to do that, the owner will eventually ship them another way.

But I'm pretty sure that this is primarily done for gameplay purposes: if you cancel the service from, say, Coal Mine A to Powerplant B, there will be leftover coal at Coal Mine A's station, and without this game mechanic, that leftover coal would keep lying around there literally forever.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Erato »

Andrew350 wrote: 12 Jun 2021 20:46Obviously though if you want to follow the FIRS lead and just never allow industry closures and/or random production changes, this is completely a non-issue, though personally that always makes the world feel a bit stale to me :)
Many good points. I will take this into consideration; chuck out stockpiles older than 6 months. (sample 1st day of every month, and then after 6 months chuck out whatever hasn't been consumed in that time FIFO LIFO style).
A thing I could do that FIRS doesn't do is manage closure manually and have it be so if don't either pick up from an industry or supply an industry in the last 12 or 24 months, the industry will have a random chance of closing.

Argus wrote: 12 Jun 2021 22:27 The player's opinion is also appropriate. Personally, I don't like it when the industry closes even though I import it, which can be done not only by vanilla, but also by the Korean set.
If you mean the DPRK Industry set v1, it has no special code so it just uses the vanilla features.

I think industries shouldn't close if you have sent vehicles there at all recently. Unused industries might come and go, which does suck if you just built a railway line, but having it close when you're still using it is the worst.

But I'm going to be honest, I haven't given that much thought so I'd love to hear people's thoughts on that.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Sunmannus »

I am glad to know that there are other sets in development with different mindsets than the usual ones.
For some time now I have been working on my own version of SPI, with 64 cargos and an as yet undetermined number of industries, taking note of the comments and suggestions posted in the FIRS, SPI, ECS, AuzIndy and other development threads; so this thread is also of interest to me.

What I have been able to gather from these threads is that a large part of the players want diversity (hence the popularity of these "extreme" sets), playability (that every part of the supply chain counts and is ) and clarity in the production formulas (that the player is able to understand them with the information presented in the game, without needing external references).

The challenge is, of course, to balance the chosen cargos and production chains. In my case I have had to rewrite the design doc several times because some of the cargoes or chains were simply useless or contributed almost nothing in terms of playability. Although in other cases, cargos have remained in the cargo table because of their relevance in real life, even if in gameplay terms they don't contribute much (BDMT in my case, having as only destination black hole type industries).
Taschi wrote:That is only unintuitive if you assume that the player-run transport companies encompass literally all traffic, and nothing gets moved from A to B without you.

My assumption when playing something like OpenTTD or Transport Fever or whatever is always that goods and passengers can flow *somehow* even without your intervention - i. e., a steel plant can run its own supply chain, it'll just be significantly worse and less efficient than a supply chain run by a major logistics company like the one you're running.
I have taken this approach in my set, (primary industries produce at minimum only if they have workers) mostly because the graphics change if the player serves an industry or not (And I like the visual effect of seeing the industry "active" thanks to my efforts :) ), but I have yet to test if an automatic minimum production is a better solution.
Andrew350 wrote:One big problem with requiring all cargoes to be delivered before an industry produces something is preventing premature closure. I know this specific issue obviously doesn't apply to FIRS-alikes due to industries in these sets never closing, but it's something to consider if you're doing something different.
SPI try to get around this with a parameter, defining a minimum time before closure, which in theory should be sufficient for the player to secure industries of interest.

In any case, I wish you success. Let's hope that this discussion will be useful and will serve to see a different and well done industry set.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Argus »

MLG wrote: 12 Jun 2021 18:29 BTW, I personally play PAX mainly.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Taschi »

Argus wrote: 15 Jun 2021 10:13
MLG wrote: 12 Jun 2021 18:29 BTW, I personally play PAX mainly.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Argus »

I do that too, I always try to connect all cities. Thanks for the clarification :)
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by stefros »

Thanks for the anaylsis. DPRK Industry set v2 sounds pretty neat! When is it about to be released? Cant wait :D

I am also pretty annoyed that the supply of 1 cargo is sufficient for an industry to work. Guess this was implemented due to maps not having all industries. It however lowers the difficulty of playing to an unacceptable level.

How many layers do you plan to have on the production chain?
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by Lt_Joker »

SPI Stockpiled Industries works differently, ECS too :) I'd love for the OP to give his opinion on those :)
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by 3iff »

When I started to develop SPI, I did try insisting on having all required cargos before making the finished product...but it just didn't make for interesting gameplay.

A steel mill could have lots of coal and scrap metal nearby but iron ore could be the other side of the map, perhaps in an inaccessible corner. It might take 5 years of cash building before iron ore could be sourced...and it would take ages to arrive.

Having the ability to make metal with just coal or just scrap metal is unrealistic but far more enjoyable.
With SPI, I can control just how much might be made at a time without the 'key' ingredients but I won't go back to having all cargos HAVE to be on site before products are made.

Also, I have options to limit the life of primary industries via mine reserves (they run out of minerals) or bankruptcies for farms and similar industries. That can make the game quite dynamic. I just had a useful wood supply ferried over the sea to a paper mill, then the forests all closed down!

I also have industries able to tick-over...if no-one is carrying the products away then the industry ticks over, using minimal resources until someone sets up a service to transport it away.

Finally (for now), if an industry is receiving cargos it won't close as it understands it's 'in use'. That also applies if it's ticking over with stockpiled cargos but no-one is taking the products away. I hated industries closing down if I wanted them to stay open so I did something about it.
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

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Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS
What does FIRS do right, that XIS does wrong? And how do I use these design principles in my own industry set?
Sounds really good to try this out, but it seems the DPRK project has come to a standstill, hasn't it?
I tried to find V2 in the download list, but only some stations and objects popped up. Will it appear in the downloads section again and is the project still alive?
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Re: Design of Extreme Industry Sets - An Analysis of FIRS and XIS

Post by odisseus »

Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 So I build my tracks and I send my iron ore train to the blast furnace and prepare the trains for the limestone quarry, and then I see that iron ore alone was enough. This was quite disappointing to be sure.

...Sadly, because FIRS requires players to supply any, and not all cargoes, the excitement of getting to work towards a goal kinda just dies.
I think you're missing the point of FIRS (and its derivatives such as XIS). FIRS was never meant to be challenging; first and foremost, it was meant to be fun even for the less skilled players. That's why every FIRS economy contains at least one simple feedback loop such as Iron Ore → Metal → Engineering Supplies → more Iron Ore.
Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 As it turns out, all FIRSids have this problem where you can just supply any of the required cargoes and the secondary industry will go brr just fine. I personally find that somewhat problematic.
If you want a challenging economy with interconnected industry chains, stick to ECS instead.

And here's a few smaller points:
Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 "Extreme" here means having a very large amount of cargoes and industries. The most popular "extreme" industry sets are XIS and FIRS 4. In essence, FIRS is multiple industry sets at once, and the only ones that I would classify as extreme are Steeltown and In A Hot Country.
If I were to grade the "extremeness" of an industry set, I would also take into account the length of the longest industry chain and the connectivity of the complete industry graph.
Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 If all you want is to have as many trains as possible, then we can clearly see that XIS is the winner here.
If you assume that more cargo types = more trains, I beg to differ. When I play with FIRS or its derivatives, I try to make use of refittable wagons as much as possible, so that each mainline train carries a useful load both ways. Of course, the player can transport just one or two cargoes and ignore the rest, if he chooses to do so.
Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 In A Hot Country also has a bunch of cargoes that go straight into the trading post. This trading post produces supplies whether you chuck diamonds into it or not, but it is somewhat of a shame, as it does make for rather boring gameplay.
In A Hot Country (originally named "Heart of Darkness") is meant to represent a (post-)colonial economy, in which most industry chains lead to overseas processing plants, and most processed products also come from overseas. This trope is averted in Industries of the Caribbean, which is even more export-oriented, but you must process the goods before exporting them.
Erato wrote: 12 Jun 2021 16:05 The first version of the DPRK Industry set v2 won't be much bigger than v1, but I do have ambitions to make it much larger than even Steeltown. My current cargo flow draft has 55 cargoes and 61 industries. Many cargoes are used in both much larger and much shorter chains. With this I hope to be able to make it satisfying to add small parts to your network while you're working towards a bigger goal, and I'm hoping to make it so at the end everything will all come together, when all the pieces will fall into place.
Could that ultimate goal be... the ultimate weapon stash? Seems fitting for the DPRK theme.
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