Industry Placement Parameters

[Bad Hair Day]

Currently in OpenTTD, Industries are placed rather willy nilly across the game map, often causing them to end up in rather strange places, such as lone steel mills sitting on the tops of mountains or sawmills parked on lone islands in the middle of the ocean. What I propose is for the player to be able to set location criteria for industries, both during games or random game generation, and in the scenario editor, the latter having more advanced options. These settings would be placed in the advanced settings menu under Industries.

These are the settings I propose, though the final decision would obviously be by whomever (if anyone) opts to try this.

Primary Industries

Mineral Industries (Coal Mines, Iron Ore Mines, Diamond Mines, Copper Ore Mines, Gold Mines, Oil Wells, Oil Rigs)
Ability to mark in the scenario editor areas where these industries can be placed. i.e. marking map coal fields, oil fields, etc...
Fields are remembered when playing the scenario. Any new mines or wells are placed only in their respective fields.
I understand that this will probably be the most difficult feature to implement, but it is also less important.

Agricultural Industries (Farms, Forests)
Ability to set a maximum height level at with they can be placed. e.g. Farms only being able to be built at level 6 or lower, forests at level 9 or lower etc...)
Also, removal of the inability to place forests below the snowline in the Arctic climate. (if anything it should be the other way wound in my mind) Sprites would be required for below snowline forests. Taking the temperate forest graphics and swapping the base tiles for the Artic base tiles would work fine.
Tropical industries should be fine due to the hypothetically higher temperatures making any height level suitable.

Secondary/Tertiary Industries

All
Ability to set their minimum distance from towns.
Ability to set population requirements for industry to be built near a certain town.

Power Station
As an alternative to their minimum distance to towns, the ability to set their maximum distance from water as a representation of their need for access to water for cooling.


Some of what I suggest could be achieved with a .grf file (namely industry distance to towns and town population requirements, though they would likely only be modifiable via .grf parameters), however some of it I believe could not, therefore I've posted this here in the hope that one of you fine upstanding gentlemen sees some merit to the idea.

Any thoughts, additional ideas or possible changes?

[Alberth]

I had considered this idea as well, but first the current industry placement code needs to be fixed.
The current problem is that if you give industries limited space to build, that area gets very full with those industries.
One example where you can see that behaviour is to make a few small lakes in the temperate climate, and watch how many oilrigs will be built there.

The core problem is that the industry generation assumes evenly distributing over the entire map. If the space is limited, the number of industries that are to be built is not reduced properly.
So far, I have not been successful in finding a good way to dynamically decide how many industries are needed for a map such that this cluttering does not occur.

[Bad Hair Day]

Perhaps a numerical cap on industries in relation to the number of map tiles availible? Or is that one of the things you've tried already?

[Alberth]

Perhaps a numerical cap on industries in relation to the number of map tiles availible? Or is that one of the things you've tried already?

That shifts the problem to deciding which map tiles are available. The idea is nice, but it does not work

There is no other way than trying every position for every industry for every variant (industries often have several layouts).

If that is not problematic enough, this changes dynamically, ie place one industry here, and suddenly at that other place another industry does not want to build any more due to NewGRF constraints.

Also, the user performs terraforming, so places where you could build in the past may become unavailable or vice versa.

In other words, it must be more dynamic, and less time consuming

[Bad Hair Day]

What if the available tiles had an overflow of two or three extra industries allowed to be built? Changes to the number of available tiles is buffered by the overflow. Anything the game was attempting to build which is no longer allowed can still be built using the overflow.

Alternatively, just giving the player the ability to set the industry cap as a numerical value of their choice. Possibly splitting primary and secondary industries, or setting it individually for each one. It's not a perfect solution, and it's not without its problems, but it could work as an interim solution.

[Alberth]

What if the available tiles had an overflow of two or three extra industries allowed to be built? Changes to the number of available tiles is buffered by the overflow. Anything the game was attempting to build which is no longer allowed can still be built using the overflow.

Sorry, I don't understand what you say here.
Maybe you have a different concept of 'tile', but a tile for me is one square in the game. A single industry needs on average between 5x5 and 8x8 tiles or so. How you can put 3 industries at one tile is something I don't get.
Also, what is 'overflow' for you? You can build at one place or you cannot. I don't see how having an oveflow can change that decision.

Alternatively, just giving the player the ability to set the industry cap as a numerical value of their choice. Possibly splitting primary and secondary industries, or setting it individually for each one. It's not a perfect solution, and it's not without its problems, but it could work as an interim solution.

Hmm, this might work for scenarios perhaps to some point.
In the game, the total number of industries is slowly increasing (assuming not too many die of starvation). How would you handle that?

[Bad Hair Day]

Nevermind the overflow idea, I seem to have misunderstood the problem.

As for industries increasing in number over time, perhaps if the player recieves a message when the cap is reached, giving them the choice to either raise it or leave it as it is.

Another possible avenue is changing how the number of industries on map option works when generating a map. It would take the total number of tiles on the map and divide it by different numbers and round the answer to the nearest whole number. That would be the number of industries the map can have. If the number of industries is set lower, the dividing number will be higher. If it is set higher, the dividing number will be lower.

The game already has economic changes, including depression. If recession, prosperity and boom were also added then changes to the economic situation would change the dividing number enough to cause noticable changes to industry numbers. If a declining economy causes the total number of industries on the map to drop lower than the allowed number, then non serviced secondary industries and primary industries whose production drops too low begin to close (due to poor profit margins) until the total number of industries matches the allowed number.

Again, this doesn't solve the issue of industries bundling together, although if the dividing number was also modified by the terrain type (e.g. increased for mountainous) it would keep the amount of industries in suitable areas relatively constant. That said though, the latter would only work in randomly generated games.

[andythenorth]

Most of this can be done in newgrf - not the scenario editing though. With that, you're basically describing spawn points for each industry type.