FIRS Cargo Labels

michael blunck · **Joined:** Wed Apr 27, 2005 7:09 am **Posts:** 5243

andythenorth wrote:

Pulpwood (PULP) I am very dubious about, I am play-testing it and I am not sure it adds anything at all compared to plain WOOD.

Right. At first I thought you meant "wood pulp", but as real "wood" it´s redundant as already deprecated TWOD ("tropic wood", by George). It doesn´t add anything to gameplay, and should be removed from CargoTypes.

andythenorth wrote:

In theory it brings the opportunity to have dedicated bulk vehicles (woodchip hoppers/trucks) for pulp which would be inappropriate for logs.

In DBXL, "wood chips" is a sub-cargo to WDPR, to be transported in hoppers.

regards
Michael

andythenorth · PostPosted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:10 am

'Pulpwood' would make more sense if there was also a 'tree length logs' or 'prime logs' cargo or similar.

I'm not ruling that out, because I have roughly sketched-out Logging economy in mind. But for the current economies, pulpwood is pretty useless, and moreover, adding it now might be premature as it might not fit in a Logging economy either.

So I'll get rid of Pulpwood from current FIRS repo, thanks. Deleting is fun.

michael blunck · **Joined:** Wed Apr 27, 2005 7:09 am **Posts:** 5243

andythenorth wrote:

So I'll get rid of Pulpwood from current FIRS repo, thanks.

Should also be removed from the list then.

There are some other quirks with that list (e.g. MAIZ is used also outside tropic climate, some classes seem to be incorrect, the table is broken, etc).

Since I seem to be banned from newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net I can´t change it myself.

andythenorth wrote:

Deleting is fun. :cool:

Want more (less)?

regards
Michael

andythenorth · PostPosted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:27 am

michael blunck wrote:

Since I seem to be banned from newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net I can´t change it myself.

I am also locked out of the newgrf wiki, hence this thread. :twisted:

andythenorth · PostPosted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 8:09 am

michael blunck wrote:

Since I seem to be banned from newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net I can´t change it myself.

Something has changed on the newgrf wiki, looks like a software upgrade.

I couldn't get in with my previous creds, but I did a password reset and I can now log in and edit

Eddi · **Joined:** Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:14 am **Posts:** 7272

i might be a little delayed to chime in here, but

michael blunck wrote:

IIRC, "copper" is the only metal product in "basic tropic" and "in a hot country" economy, hence no collision with any other material. BTW, COPR was just an example, even more redundant labels are METL and STEL.

i think this is the wrong approach. If "metal" and "copper" are likely to have different sprites, they should very much have different cargo labels. there is no reason to minimize the total number of cargo labels across all GRFs. the only thing that achieves is that vehicle set authors must put in additional logic to determine which industry set is loaded to decide which sprite to draw, and the cargo labels was exactly meant to avoid that.

Quote:

And BTW, take a look into our mess/list of cargo labels. There are already cargoes with no equivalence to their labels, and also the meaning of specific cargoes differ between different industry sets.

and this is the direct result of the above misguided attempt at "reusing" cargo labels, and "bending" them somehow onto your cargo, instead of using new "clean" ones.

michael blunck · **Joined:** Wed Apr 27, 2005 7:09 am **Posts:** 5243

Eddi wrote:

michael blunck wrote:

IIRC, "copper" is the only metal product in "basic tropic" and "in a hot country" economy, hence no collision with any other material. BTW, COPR was just an example, even more redundant labels are METL and STEL.

i think this is the wrong approach. If "metal" and "copper" are likely to have different sprites, they should very much have different cargo labels. there is no reason to minimize the total number of cargo labels across all GRFs. the only thing that achieves is that vehicle set authors must put in additional logic to determine which industry set is loaded to decide which sprite to draw, and the cargo labels was exactly meant to avoid that. [...]

For a "minimalistic" set, METL (or the original label STEL) would be the proper label for handling all cargoes who´d fit (probably only roughly) under that label. Without any further ado. But for a "rivet counter/foamer" vehicle set, the overhead of "additional logic" would be clearly negligible. IMO, inflation (and continuous invention and discarding) of labels is a more serious drawback.

regards
Michael

andythenorth · PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2018 4:47 pm

michael blunck wrote:

IMO, inflation (and continuous invention and discarding) of labels is a more serious drawback.

I'm missing what harm it causes. As far as I can see, it's cost free. What do I miss? :roll:

Eddi · **Joined:** Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:14 am **Posts:** 7272

i think you're kinda missing the point why the METL cargo exists in the first place. it was never meant as a "let's lump all metals into this" cargo.

the need for a METL cargo came from there being both a steel mill and an aluminium plant, but the factory that processes them doesn't really care which one of these is delivered.

now, there would be 3 solutions for this problem:

have both STEL and ALUM cargos, and handling the distinction at the input of the factory. this, however, clashes with the fairly strict limit of 3 input cargos on industries
have the aluminium plant also produce STEL. here you would introduce some disconnection between the cargo label and the displayed name, which we could live with, but it also poses a problem for future extensibility, because if there ever were need for both STEL and ALUM cargos in an economy, you need to have additional logic in the industry set to define which name/translations to be used with the STEL cargo label
introducing a new METL label for this "unified" cargo seemed to be the clearest approach

however, none of this has even remotely anything to do with COPR

there almost certainly never will be an industry that doesn't care whether it processes steel or copper
copper is already a base game cargo with existing name/translations
copper has significantly different cargo sprites, whereas steel and aluminium you kinda get away with using the same

conclusion: trying to squeeze COPR into this METL cargo makes life worse for everyone involved, with no discernable benefits

PikkaBird · PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2018 3:12 am

Eddi wrote:

copper is already a base game cargo with existing name/translations

CORE is a base game cargo, accepted by tropic Factories and converted into goods. COPR was originally a PBI cargo.

Eddi · **Joined:** Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:14 am **Posts:** 7272

ah, i was mixing those two up then. but it doesn't really change much of the argument. the idea behind the "mixed" cargos like METL and BDMT is this "we have these multiple cargos for which there is no gameplay distinction". you should still be as specific as posssible with the other cargos.

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