Firstly, let me explain my motivations.
Roughly speaking, there are two approaches to the openttd industry processing:
- FIRS-like (used also by some derivatives: Forked FIRS projects - FFIRS), where any input is consumed instantly and output is produced immediately as an result, similar to vanilla OpenTTD;
- ECS-like, where input is stockpiled and gradually consumed resulting in steady stream of products, there are stockpile limits with delivery withhold hysteresis.
In my opinion, each approach (FIRS-like or ECS-like) has pros and cons as well.
Upsides of FIRS and ECS types of economy:
- FIRS-type: Even in case of complex economy (like XIS), there is easy and seamless fire-and-forget game-play, you get what you put, even if not all substrates are delivered;
- ECS-type: challenging economy, realistic supply&demand chain, player need to take care on whole network instead of just launching a spinning reel;
- FIRS-type: Even in case of complex economy (like XIS), fun at the beginning but later rather boring fire-and-forget game-play, you get what you put, make food from packaging or other oddities;
- ECS-type: fun at the beginning but later annoying unstable economy, requires lot of micromanagement, especially with finite mine resources - not suitable for multiplayer servers, havoc if freight cargodist enabled;
It is hard task, because these are the same, but depending of player preferences :)
Jokes aside, primary objective is to make industry set well settled even before XIX century and playable for whole timespan.
Currently, most of industry sets are rather plain among time - just few new industries without huge impact at whole cargo flowchart (maybe expect of infamous recyclables :) .
Playing with early date start with modern industry is anticlimatic, especially when vehicles can't cope industry outputs.
It is also hard to achieve closed cargo loops for supplies, and workarounds like FIRS ports cause some unbalanced chains like Port-Fruit Plantation exploit.
Also medieval small industries, like smithy forge, looks later ridiculous when spammed by millions tons of steel monthly.
Therefore my proposal is as follows:
- Early industry chains are rather simply, but produce very small quantities of output (or slightly more if manpower and other supplies are delivered)
- Stockpiles and stockpile limits apply for early industries. Such industries also provide very small idle production.
- XIX century industries are more complex and effective, and some vital chain nodes are without stockpile limits.
- Modern industries are very effective, most of them with instant consumption/production feature, but at expense of complex cargo chain.
- Blackhole industries, especially town ones (as house replacement), are always with stockpile limits and speed of stockpile consumption depend on city size.
Similar situation with Grocery Shop vs Brewery. Stockpile limits for blackholes should allow to avoid permanent cargo capture.
Consecutively I will publish proposal of cargo chains below.
they are divided arbitrarily into 7 tiers (just for sake of clear view).
Disclaimer: no line of code was written by now, it is still just draft of the project.