FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development

[andythenorth]

The rate of recyclables production per inhabitant could be reduced. Or larger towns could have multiple recycling depots, splitting production between them. Or I could leave it unchanged

Not currently working on FIRS, but discussion is useful - all attempts so far at waste/recycling chain have not resulted in win.

[3iff]

This is the code I use for SPI. It sets a limit of 15,000 population as the controlling factor for recyclables production. This gives a max production of 135 per month and a minimum of 36 per month.That's enough to get players interested and they have an incentive for building up the town, but by the time they become available the town is likely to be fairly big anyway.

I find that manageable. I can't remember if I allow multiple depots per town...but I think it is permitted.

Changing it to 'population / 2000' would make the town need to get to 30k population to get max production...which might be better.

Code: Select all

produce(recycling_depot_production, 0, 0, 0, LOAD_TEMP(1), 0, 0);

switch (FEAT_INDUSTRIES, PARENT, recycling_depot_produce, [STORE_TEMP(min(15, max(4, (population / 1000 ))), 1)]) {
  0: recycling_depot_production;
     recycling_depot_production;
}

[oftcrash]

Doesn't capping it encourage people to just throw stuff away instead of recycling?

I like the large volumes, but my gameplay is pretty casual and I don't try to max out my efficiency.

What a variable rate, where the rate for a smaller town is higher/population then lowered as the size increases?

[NekoMaster]

Wouldn't it be possible to scale the output of Recycling with train service provided? I'm pretty sure a City and/or waste managment company isn't going to send tons of waste/recycling your way if you can't handle all of it. Instead a city/company would probably look elsewhere to send their waste/recycling to (like another city or company to send to another transport company)

[supermop]

Wouldn't it be possible to scale the output of Recycling with train service provided? I'm pretty sure a City and/or waste managment company isn't going to send tons of waste/recycling your way if you can't handle all of it. Instead a city/company would probably look elsewhere to send their waste/recycling to (like another city or company to send to another transport company)

But currently this is no different than the other primary industries in FIRS. The coal mine will happily dig out hundreds of tons every month to go nowhere, and the fisherman will catch and throw back thousands of fish - completely indifferent to the fact you are only running a metro on the opposite side of the map and have no plans to service them. You can imagine that some invisible smaller actors are contracting for the service in the background instead - maybe the mayor is driving the recyclables out in the trunk of his car?

[Simozzz]

Wouldn't it be possible to scale the output of Recycling with train service provided? I'm pretty sure a City and/or waste managment company isn't going to send tons of waste/recycling your way if you can't handle all of it. Instead a city/company would probably look elsewhere to send their waste/recycling to (like another city or company to send to another transport company)

That's how primary industry works in ECS. If you transport more than 75% of cargo produced, more will be produced following month/year. It is hard to maintain that for majority of players, and that's why ECS considered as hard to understand and play.

And some questions for Andy:
How CASS, NITR, PHOS are supposed to be transported?
Are they bulk and needed to be covered?

[andythenorth]

How CASS, NITR, PHOS are supposed to be transported?
Are they bulk and needed to be covered?

Yes bulk. No, covered isn't needed

[Wowanxm]

How CASS, NITR, PHOS are supposed to be transported?
Are they bulk and needed to be covered?

Yes bulk. No, covered isn't needed

Many types of nitrates (maybe even majority?) are considered to be dangerous cargo.

And what is phosphate in your conception? Is it an ore (apatite for instance, 1850 kg/m³ — suitable for open gondolas and platforms) or some mineral fertilizer (superphosphate, 960 kg/m³ — only for special hoppers)?

[Alberth]

Clearly, the cargo is not dangerous, as it's no cover.

This is fully within OpenTTD regulations, where cargo is forbidden to explode or do otherwise harm to innocent nearby pixels.

[Simozzz]

How CASS, NITR, PHOS are supposed to be transported?
Are they bulk and needed to be covered?

Yes bulk. No, covered isn't needed

Nitrates are easly dissolved in water, so transporting them uncovered is quite reckless. Single rain and your train/truck is empty.

[kamnet]

It never rains in southern OpenTTD... or so they tell me.

[andythenorth]

And what is phosphate in your conception? Is it an ore (apatite for instance, 1850 kg/m³ — suitable for open gondolas and platforms) or some mineral fertilizer (superphosphate, 960 kg/m³ — only for special hoppers)?

Cargos in FIRS aren't precise. But to give a guide, phosphate is a primary cargo in FIRS, and needs processing before it can be used in fertiliser or chemical production. So ore is a better representation.

Iron Horse transports phosphate in open gondolas and open hoppers, Road Hog transports it in dump trucks. Other sets of course make their own choices about best vehicle to use.

[oftcrash]

I decided to try to add a new economy to FIRS for my own use. Essentially industries focused northern central and eastern US and Canada. I've looked through the FIRS code, and it looks like I need to:

• add a new economy file to the economies folder
• update the economy init file
• enable the economy in each industry I want to appear
• update the lang file

Is there anywhere else?

Also, have you considered moving the industry enable flag to the economy file instead of each industry?

[oftcrash]

I decided to try to add a new economy to FIRS for my own use. Essentially industries focused northern central and eastern US and Canada. I've looked through the FIRS code, and it looks like I need to:

• add a new economy file to the economies folder
• update the economy init file
• enable the economy in each industry I want to appear
• update the lang file

Is there anywhere else?

I've answered my own question. Turns out it works a lot better when you spell things correctly

[andythenorth]

Also, have you considered moving the industry enable flag to the economy file instead of each industry?

Yes. But economies can optionally over-ride industry properties, so it makes more sense to keep the flags in the industry file, alongside any over-rides.

The html docs are useful when developing an economy, especially the cargo flow diagrams. 'make html_docs' will build them quickly in isolation.

[oftcrash]

The html docs are useful when developing an economy, especially the cargo flow diagrams. 'make html_docs' will build them quickly in isolation.

Yeah, I like the diagrams. I'm having some problems getting Graphviz to run properly, but I haven't had a chance to diagnose it yet.

All in all, the build scripts are slick and make it pretty easy to make changes. I was able to create a new economy to test out in about an hour yesterday.

[andythenorth]

All in all, the build scripts are slick and make it pretty easy to make changes. I was able to create a new economy to test out in about an hour yesterday.

Might be worth putting it on devzone?

[oftcrash]

All in all, the build scripts are slick and make it pretty easy to make changes. I was able to create a new economy to test out in about an hour yesterday.

Might be worth putting it on devzone?

That would probably simplify things for me

I have two economies:

• Northeastern US based - Fishing, Coal, Textile production, Wood harvesting, Lumber, Paper, but not much farming aside from some Dairy to cover Vermont and Ben & Jerry's, fruit orchards, plus some other stuff I forget now that I'm at work . It would probably fit for the Pacific Northwest too.
• Upper Midwest US (Ohio across to the Dakotas) - lots of farming, iron ore, metal production, vehicle production, orchards.

I had insomnia last night, so I played a 30 year test of the Northeast economy. Needs some tweaking, but I like it. I upped the forest spawn rate quite a bit - something about hauling wood that I really enjoy.

I started off trying to figure out if I could just make an add-on grf that would ride along side FIRS and just tweak settings, disable certain industries, and so on. It was just easier to recompile it though.

[andythenorth]

Might be worth putting it on devzone?

There's no quick way to fork a project on devzone afaik, but you can make a new project and push your changes to it http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/new

Getting the repo initialised isn't always straightforward, you might need to ask for help in irc #openttdcoop.devzone (be patient for replies, the channel isn't very active)

Interesting to see these FIRS forks, this is the 3rd major fork that I am aware of

[oftcrash]

I'm pretty much doing it for myself - I don't know that anyone else would find it as interesting. I'm going to futz around with it some more and see what I come up with. If I think its any good I'll see about putting it up on devzone. I think it needs to be differentiated more from FIRS to make it worth it, especially as you make updates.