FIRS Industry Replacement Set - releases

[andythenorth]

- Is there any plans to add day length support to FIRS?

No. I am somewhat opposed to all daylength patches, they will never work, and they fragment the game whilst introducing unwanted problems.

You could fork FIRS and modify production values https://github.com/andythenorth/firs

The majority of industries use one of 5 templates ("templates/industry_*.pynml"). These contain 'produce' blocks, and changing the base production would be a matter of inserting a multiplier there. This may not cover all industries, and may cause broken calculations, constants or strings elsewhere, but it's possibly close enough.

- I see new industries being created during the game. But I disabled closing of secondary industries. Does that mean that the number of industries will increase until I have no more free blocks on the map?

For a specific map size, OpenTTD targets maintaining a specific count of industries on the map. So no, the map shouldn't get full of industries, new industries will be rarely built unless another industry has closed

[phobos2077]

- Is there any plans to add day length support to FIRS?

No. I am somewhat opposed to all daylength patches, they will never work, and they fragment the game whilst introducing unwanted problems.

You could fork FIRS and modify production values https://github.com/andythenorth/firs

The majority of industries use one of 5 templates ("templates/industry_*.pynml"). These contain 'produce' blocks, and changing the base production would be a matter of inserting a multiplier there. This may not cover all industries, and may cause broken calculations, constants or strings elsewhere, but it's possibly close enough.

Thanks for the info. It is unfortunate that you have this predisposition towards the day length. I find the game much more enjoyable for myself with JGR's version of the patch. Not sure what you mean "they will never work" because they do. They just require a few additional multipliers to keep the game somewhat balanced. Which is not a problem IMO, because the game is unbalanced AF even before the patch. Every player has to balance it for himself anyway if he even cares about such things (many people just want to build a model railroad w/o any restrictions, as I understand).

Just a simple third multiplier in the GRF parameters will do the trick I think. I think it might be beneficial for many since your industry set is very popular, so as JGRPP.

I'll try to play some more with default values and if it's too low then try to follow your suggestion.

Edit: I didn't find "produce" blocks in the files you mentioned. But I did find this: https://github.com/andythenorth/firs/bl ... uild.pynml
If I increase these values, will it work? Having a configurable multiplier would be better though, but I have no idea how to do it yet.

[vtk]

I love FIRS, first of all. But it would be cool if there were an economy that felt a little "closer to home" for me. By "home" I mean Ohio, which includes parts of the Rust Belt, the Midwest, and Appalachia. I guess what I'm looking for is Temperate Basic ∪ Steeltown ∪ Power Plants. Would it be much work to make this happen?

[andythenorth]

By "home" I mean Ohio, which includes parts of the Rust Belt, the Midwest, and Appalachia. I guess what I'm looking for is Temperate Basic ∪ Steeltown ∪ Power Plants. Would it be much work to make this happen?

It takes me 1-2 years to make a new FIRS economy, (mostly rounds of play-testing and tweaks) so it's not something I'd be able to do.

FIRS is quite easy to reconfigure yourself. There are at least 3 forks of it that I'm aware of.

Reconfiguring it just involves turning cargos and industries on or off in code, then recompile, and test you didn't break chains.

Reconfiguring using existing cargos and industries probably takes an hour or so. You do have to set up newgrf tools first though

Code is here https://github.com/andythenorth/firs
There's minimalist instructions for compiling here: http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/rel ... rence.html

I'm assuming by your font set that you're working on a Mac? I compile it on a Mac.

The only caveat is that major changes are in progress for v4. The v4 stuff isn't finished so I wouldn't fork from it. But the v3 stuff is designed for the old industry 3-accepted, 2-produced cargos system, where v4 is designed for the newer 16-accepted, 16-produced system. Just a heads up.

[vtk]

I'm assuming by your font set that you're working on a Mac? I compile it on a Mac.

I'm not, actually. I just think that font looks cool in retro-computing contexts.

The only caveat is that major changes are in progress for v4. The v4 stuff isn't finished so I wouldn't fork from it. But the v3 stuff is designed for the old industry 3-accepted, 2-produced cargos system, where v4 is designed for the newer 16-accepted, 16-produced system. Just a heads up.

I'll wait patiently for v4 then.

[Kaoso]

There are some kind of bug in my FIRS Tropic Basic game, no fish cargo in ships neither any display on shoals, and the industry chain is broken. I use Renewed City Growth gamescript, set to FIRS: Tropic Basic.

[andythenorth]

There are some kind of bug in my FIRS Tropic Basic...

Looks like Fishing Harbour is missing. What FIRS version?

[Kaoso]

There are some kind of bug in my FIRS Tropic Basic...

Looks like Fishing Harbour is missing. What FIRS version?

It's the lastest version of FIRS, and there is the fishing harbour, but only exports food, without any income.

[andythenorth]

The fish cargo is missing. Possible explanations:

* another grf has removed or broken the fish cargo?
* patched version of OpenTTD? FIRS doesn't support anything except vanilla OpenTTD

GL

[Shylon]

Hi.

First of all, thank you for doing this amazing mod, I don't think I can play without it.

I downloaded the source code because I wanted to try something like industries demanding passengers. I took a look at those .py files and I know (or I think so) how to do it. The problem is that I have no idea how to convert it to .grf so I can test it.

I''ve read several tutorials talking about different programs and I still don't know what to do.

I just made some small changes to a couple of .py files (like dairy.py). There must be some easy way to do it, so I'd appreciate if anyone could tell me how.

[2TallTyler]

I downloaded the source code because I wanted to try something like industries demanding passengers. I took a look at those .py files and I know (or I think so) how to do it. The problem is that I have no idea how to convert it to .grf so I can test it.

I'm pretty new to NewGRF coding so I'll let andythenorth answer in more detail (and correct me where I'm wrong), but FIRS is a very complex industry set which uses Python in addition to the actual NML which is encoded into the NewGRF.

I'd suggest looking at something coded directly in NML. I just released a single-industry set which is about as simple as you can get. Feel free to download the source from the thread and muck around with it.

[Shylon]

The code in your .nml file seems very similar to the .py files from FIRS. I think I know how to read and modify most of it.

My problems start when I have to compile it to .grf so I can test if it works.

I downloaded and installed Python 2.7.18.

Then I downloaded and installed PIL 1.1.7. I think all the content went inside the "Phyton27" folder during the installation.

Then I downloaded PLY 3.11. I ran setup.py but I didn't notice anything. I saw a tutorial saying that I have to put the "ply" folder inside the "Phyton27" folder.

Then I downloaded NML latest version (g9fdd4bbc). Again, running setup.py didn't seem to do any installation. I read some tutorial, but I got lost. Apparently, I have to type "python setup.py install" somewhere. And also "nmlc --version" to verify it.

I have a lot of experience modding games. I'm good at reading/modifying/creating code with Notepad++. I've done it in a lot of games, but I guess that I'm a complete noob when it comes to compile, sorry.

[Shylon]

Ok, I did it, I was able to encode a modified version of your .nml into a .grf.

I don't know if my installation of Python, PIL and PLY was correct, but the NML was wrong.
In case someone is interested, I was downloading "nml-2020-04-20-g9fdd4bbc.tar.gz" from http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/nml/nightlies/LATEST/ , but I needed to go to the "Parent directory" and download "nml--windows-win32.zip".

After extracting the folder inside the .zip, I renamed it "nml" and placed it in C:\ (to make things easier), and added your "plaza_ind.nml" file and "lang" folder inside the "nml" folder.

Then I just had to follow this instructions: https://www.tt-wiki.net/wiki/NMLTutoria ... sing_NML_3
So my commands were:

Code: Select all

cd C:\nml
nmlc -c --grf plaza_ind.grf plaza_ind.nml

And voilà, a "plaza_ind.grf" was created inside the "nml" folder.

Now I have to learn how to do something like this with FIRS, because I wasn't trying to create new industries like yours (great work, btw), I just wanted to see if I could make FIRS industries like Brewery, Dairy, Textile Mill... demanding passengers.

[Monty_Montana]

Hi everyone!

I have been playing FIRS from a long time and i have seen there are some kind of output limit for second industries.
Is this intentioned? Or just a game limitation? In that case, what is the real limit?

Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Montana

[Diesel Power]

There is a limit, but it's somthing ridiculous like 2000+t per tile. It's an old Openttd coded limit I believe

[speeder]

Is it possible somehow mix "economies" ?

I am making a map in Brazil, I wanted to use the "extreme" economy because it is the most fun one, but I also wanted to support industries that are wildly common in my RL reference area (for example most of the map is in an area nicknamed "land of the coffee")

[Aphid]

I'm working on updating my CB script to support FIRS-3, all 6 economies, and have a few questions that I've tried to find in the source code and on the wiki, and would like to confirm the answers.
I would like to figure out what the approximate ratio of final, town-consumed cargoes is in a fully interconnected system for each of the economies. Thus I would like to find out if these findings are correct:

1. The production ratio of an optimally fuelled secondary industry (all 3 cargoes are input) is equal to the total of the production ratios of the individual products.

Example: If an aluminium mill would use scrap 8:3, coal 8:2, and bauxite 8:4 (respectively, input:output), then an aluminium mill that receives all three would have an 8:(3+2+4) = 8:9 input:output ratio.

2. The ratio of industry types spawned on a default map is indicated by the variable prob_random in /src/industry/<NAME>.py

3. The total production output of an industry is about 9 (prod ticks per month) times the variable prod_multiplier. Correct? If so, prod_multiplier is an array of 2 values, one for each output. (For the base, non-gung-ho production of primary industries).

4. There's a random factor; with certain probability, the value determined from [3] is multiplied by one of: 0.5, 0.75, ..., 2.25. It is then rounded to an integer value. The probabilities of each are 1,1,4,3,2,1,1,1 (out of 14). This results in the following average production values per industry:

Code: Select all

BASE	AVG
2	21 2/9
3	31 1/2
4	46 2/7
5	55 2/7
6	67 1/2
7	77 7/9
8	92 4/7
9	101 4/7
10	113 7/9
11	124 1/9
12	138 6/7
13	147 6/7
14	160 1/9
15	170 3/8
16	185 1/7
17	194 1/7
18	206 3/8
19	216 5/8
20	231 3/7
21	240 3/7
22	252 5/8
23	262 8/9
24	277 5/7
25	286 5/7
26	298 8/9
27	309 2/9
28	324    
29	333    
30	345 2/9

[Aphid]

FIRS suggestions;

Economies:

When using a town-building script, ideally, one can harness the production of the whole map into a town, and ideally it's configured such
that the relative amount of resources wanted by the town's end consumers matches this production.
I have tried to see if all the production of the map can be delivered to end-consumers, and there is no spare production left.
I've used the probabilities in the code (as per the post above) to determine this via a complicated spreadsheet. Assuming the reasoning there is correct, I arrive at the following:

Conclusion: The 'FIRS' or 'EXTREME' economy is the most complete WRT town-building, as it allows for full consumption. It is the only such economy within FIRS. (Note: The economies in the default game also allow for this).

The other economies, if you work out the production of a map, have some resources that don't make it to towns or are spare.
Perhaps changing them only slightly can fix this; even just with existing industries/graphics, to 'close the loop'.
The production figures are for a total of 1,400 theoretically optimized industries on the map, monthly.

Temperate basic:

Production total: 573K
Spare resources:
Clay: 36K
Engineering supply: 6K
Farm supply: 50K

Suggestion:
Add 'DIY shop' building that takes in the excess Farm Supplies and Engineering Supplies.
Allow glass works to consume excess clay. (Or add Brick works that turns Clay into Goods).
Add 'Power Plant' from default temperate map. (Not needed, but just strange that it gets removed upon using FIRS from temperate but not arctic).

Arctic Basic:

Production total: 329K
Spare resources:
Engineering supply: 20K
Farm Supply: 14K
Paper: 17K
Explosives: 18K
Zinc: 25K
Fertilizer: 18K

Suggest: Add DIY shop as above.
Add "Printing Works" from the base game. Consumes paper to produce Goods.
Not sure what to do with the spare fertilizer, explosives, and zinc. Changing fertilizer to chemicals and add munitions factory, consuming these?

Tropic Basic:

Production total: 671K

Spare resources:
Copper: 228K
Coffee: 37K
Engi Supplies: 15K
Farm Supplies: 17K
Food: 232K
Wool: 63K

This one has the most spare resources yet. Suggest:
Add "Mint" (use bank graphics) that consumes spare Copper.
Add "Cafe" that consumes Coffee and Alcohol.
Add DIY shop as above.
Add Clothing Store that consumes Wool.

Steeltown:

Production total: 757K

Spare resources:
Cement: 83K
Engi Supplies: 82K
Farm Supplies: 74K
Pipe: 139K
Chlorine: 25K
Electrical: <1K.

Suggest:
Add DIY shop as above.
Add 'Building Materials' cargo. Perhaps give up on one of the two chemicals (acid&chlorine -> acid) to make room.
Glass Works produces Building Materials as well as vehicle things.
Add 'Concrete fabrication plant' -> Consumes Cement, Pipe to produce Building Materials.
Add 'petrol station' from extreme version. (Not all building sets accept Petrol, and it seems really weird to have the Detroit themed town not need any petrol, even though there is an unlimited consumer for it).

Hot Country:

Production total: 1196K

Spare resources:
Oil: 148K
Manganese: 84K
Rubber: 80K
Edible Oil: 57K
Engi Supplies: 51K
Copper: 50K
Farm Supplies: 47K
Coffee: 46K
Phosphate: 41K
Diamonds: 17K

Hot country has a large amount of spare resources. The export buildings only need a small amount to produce the maximum stuff, so we're left with a huge supply of oil and other resources that can't be converted locally (only dumped into ports for no production).
Suggest:
Add DIY shop as above.
Add 'Oil Refinery' (from EXTREME or the regular game). Optionally allow edible oil consumption. OR:
Add 'Oil Power Plant' consuming oil.
Add 'Grocery Store' that wants Food, Edible Oil, Fruit.
Add 'Cafe' that wants Coffee, Alcohol
Add 'Bank' (using default tropic bank graphics and mechanics) that takes Diamonds, Copper.
Add 'Factory' that takes Phosphate, Manganese, Rubber and produces Goods.

[andythenorth]

FIRS 4.0.0 Beta 1 is now on Bananas.

Not savegame compatible with any previous version of FIRS.

Thanks to all who helped.

Changelog below.

TL;DR:

• OpenTTD 1.1.0 increased industry cargos from 3-in, 2-out to 16-in, 16-out
• FIRS production code totally rewritten to work with this
• Complete rework of Steeltown industry chains and cargo flow. Steeltown is now the intense highly-connected economy I always wanted it to be
• Extreme removed - life expired, if you really want that style of 'everything' gameplay, try FIRS forks like XIS or Auz Ind - they've actually take it further than FIRS Extreme
• All other economies, minor tweaks, mostly to port-type industries which make good use of more in/out cargos

Yair also, I try not to cross-promote my own grfs too much. I don't want to compete with other vehicle grf authors - more grfs is always good in my view

BUT Iron Horse 2 is really tailored to FIRS 4 Steeltown, and includes boatloads of dedicated wagons for iron, steel, slag, carbon black etc.

4.0.0 Beta Release

Steeltown

• reworked completely, Steeltown is a much more intense, highly-connected economy
  • Carbon Steel is a key cargo
    • there are two routes to produce it, the Blast Furnace route, which depends on many primary inputs
    • the Electric Arc Furnace route, which depends highly on scrap production, which depends on the population of towns
  • there are many more steel industry processes and end products represented
  • vehicles production process is also more detailed
• added cargos
  • Alloy Steel
  • Aluminium
  • Carbon Black
  • Carbon Steel
  • Cast Iron
  • Cement
  • Cleaning Agents
  • Coal Tar
  • Electrical Parts
  • Ferrochrome
  • Glass
  • Sodium Hydroxide
  • Oxygen
  • Paints & Coatings
  • Plastics
  • Potash
  • Stainless Steel
  • Steel Sections
  • Steel Sheet
  • Steel Wire Rod
  • Tyres
  • Vehicle Engines
• removed cargos
  • Petroleum Fuels
  • Copper
  • Steel
  • Electrical Machines
• added industries
  • Body Plant
  • Builders Yard
  • Carbon Black Plant (new sprites)
  • Component Factory (new sprites)
  • Cryo Plant (new sprites)
  • Engine Plant (new sprites)
  • Potash Mine
  • Sheet and Pipe Mill (new sprites)
  • Vehicle Distributor
  • Wire and Section Mill (new sprites)
• Chlor-alkali Plant replaces Chemical Plant
• removed industries
  • Foundry
  • Steel Finishing Plant
  • Metal Workshop
  • Port
  • Vehicle Dealer
• Scrap Yard production amount now depends on town population (grow town to increase production)
• improved sprites for Slag Grinding Plant
• rebalanced industry probabilities
  • most secondary industries in Steeltown will only build at game start, not during gameplay
  • this avoids the game spamming the map with new secondary industries that are unlikely to be served
  • this increases the chance of the game building useful new primary industries

Extreme

• removed Extreme economy from FIRS
  • the future of 'big' economies in FIRS is detailed themes (industry chains or world regions)
• for the most interesting current FIRS gameplay, use Steeltown, which focusses on highly connected industry chains
• meanwhile, if you want a 'big general economy':
  • try an alternative industry, options include grfs based on FIRS, like XIS or Auz Industries
  • or make your own version of FIRS, many people have done this now, code is on github https://github.com/andythenorth/firs
  Temperate Basic
  
  • renamed Clay to Kaolin
  • removed Bulk Terminal
  • adjusted Port cargos
    • added Kaolin to accepted
    • removed Alcohol from accepted
    • added Chemicals and Farm Supplies to produced
  • Scrap Yard production amount now depends on town population (grow town to increase production)
  Arctic Basic
  
  • reworked cargo and industry chains
  • removed Trading Post
  • removed Furniture Factory
  • replaced Bulk Terminal with Wharf
  • added Fish Farm industry
  • added Ammonia cargo
  • added Potash cargo
  • removed Alcohol cargo
  • removed Goods cargo
  Tropic Basic
  
  • removed Bulk Terminal, moved its cargos to Port
  In a Hot Country
  
  • no changes to industry chains or cargos
  General Changes
  
  • reduced overlap of cargos on cargo payment rate chart in-game
  • removed option for secondary industries to close
  • improved ground tile sprites for multiple industries
  • increased sizes of layouts for multiple industries
  • added BSPI to list of incompatible grfs
  • Copper Refinery renamed Copper Smelter
  Docs
  
  • improved cargoflow diagrams
  Fixes
  
  • prevent Oil Rig, Dredging Site and Fishing grounds building on coast of small islands (frosch)
  Codechanges
  
  • moved to git
  • reworked all production-related industry code to use OpenTTD's improved spec for industry cargos (16-in, 16-out per industry)
    • note for those forking: FIRS caps cargos to 8-in, 8-out for both gameplay reasons, and because production code maths relies on not dividing by more than 8, to avoid very small fractional cargo production
  • introduced nml procedures, eliminating many blocks of repeated nml, improving compile times
  • improved compile / Makefile

[arikover]

Thank you!

I did not have much time to play with it yet, but I found a small error:
- The URL in the Action14 is referring to Iron Horse (it is https://grf.farm/iron-horse/4.0.0-beta-1/index.html, should probably be https://grf.farm/firs/4.0.0-beta-1/index.html)

I really like Steeltown.