North American Industries

[lifeblood]

Sweet! We already got one industry complete!

Here's my scheme for the arctic - feel free to pick apart. It's heavy on natural resources, the way the north is:

[krtaylor]

Maybe my understanding of new-industries isn't complete, but I think you've got some overkill here.

For example, you have gold mines, silver mines, and platinum mines, all going to the bank. But IRL, from the point of view of the railroad, these are all the same - you carry heavy bricks in an armored van. It makes no sense to have to refit the vans for Platinum, Gold, or Silver. It should be just one cargo, Or, is there the intelligence for the game to know armored vans can carry any of those things without refitting?

[DanMacK]

I'd say just have Gold, drop Platinum and Silver.

Also, why do you have Chemicals going to the Aluminum Smelter and not to town

[lifeblood]

OK, true about silver and platinum. They're out. I was just trying to come up with mined cargos.

The chemicals to the aluminum plant as part of the process of get the alumina out of bauxite requires a chemical bath.

[Flamelord]

...before it gets zapped. I believe they use an electrical process to refine the aluminum and not fire to melt it now. But I am unsure and could be wrong. You may want to research it a little for accuracy. It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes on Google to find out what you need.

[krtaylor]

Yes, aluminum uses electricity. I don't know how much chemicals an aluminum smelter uses.

Does it make sense to have separate nickel mines? How much nickel is used at a steel mill in comparison to the iron ore usage?

I'd say, dump the Print Shop. Cities consume Paper.

Is it possible to set a goods-equivalent and food-equivalent? I mean, we should have Paper treated the same as Goods, and Beer treated the same as Food, even though they are separate cargoes with (somewhat) separate transport.

[Flamelord]

Nickel AFAIK could be dropped; Steel is Iron with some carbon thrown in for the most part. The carbon comes from the fire or is injected in another way, so you would mainly need the ore and the coal.

[lifeblood]

What if the print shop took on the properties of banks, built in city centres, produces nothing, but consumes paper? I don't think it should be scrapped, just scaled down. Paper won't be delivered directly to towns at this point for the same reason cars aren't delivered directly to towns.

Nickle mines need to stay, the point of the arctic industries was to have more mining! Therefore, I'll add copper. Lumber is scrapped, lumbermills also produce goods. Chemicals are scrapped. Aluminum processing plant become a metal plant that produces copper and aluminum, it requires copper ore, bauxite, and coal, as it will have a small power plant to supply the power needed to extract and produce copper and aluminum. See below:

edit: an alternate could be a seperate plant for copper and aluminum, then chemicals could be added again. Nickle is used in steel production, more so in stainless steel, but also in regular steel, other wise you just have iron.

[krtaylor]

I think we are working at cross purposes. It seems to me that the optimum solution is one which a.) has appropriate industries, b.) has sensible vectors, but c.) does NOT add needless complexity. Multiple different mines producing different things that are all used the same way, is pointless - they all look pretty much the same, why be difficult? Likewise, paper is NOT just used in printing shops, it's used all over the place - it makes sense to have it delivered to towns like goods.

If you like mines, well and good - you could accomplish the same thing by having several different graphic variants of mines that appear randomly.

I do think there may be one improvement to new-industries, and that's the "behaves like..." function. I mean, so that we can just say "paper behaves just like goods" and "cars behave just like goods." I'd like to see the cars back, in Temperate at least, and I think this solution might be practical. I realize that, in the arrays, buildings can only accept X (I think 3?) different types of cargoes, but I think we can kludge it in this way.

[lifeblood]

It's a shame you feel that way, kr. My goal here is to not only improve the art work, but also fix the mundane industrial schemes that have become boring to play with. I'm not needlessly complicating things, I'm propossing industries that offer players a slice of logistics in northern Canada for the arctic set, and Ontario/Quebec for temperate. As a non-resident of the US, I can only hope that these industries also reflect industries found in simular regions of the US. Fixing the industrial schemes, making them more interesting to play requires adding more cargos and more industries, not taking them away. I see no point in starting an industrial set that simplifies things more than they already are in TT.

Also, until we're sure that town buildings can accept more than three cargos, we shouldn't pencil in more than three. I've said about paper the same thing I said about cars, they can easily be added later.

[krtaylor]

Before we nail down exactly what is wanted, I think there are two questions that it would be nice to get answers to.

1. Given that we can't explicitly set a specific building as being able to accept more than three different cargoes, would it be possible to set additional cargoes as "behaves like..." another cargo? E.g. Beer "behaves like" food, so any buildings that accepts Food, ipso facto also accepts Beer. Maybe this would work in the part of the code when a train arrives and checks to see if it can sell its cargo. If the cargo it is carrying is a "behaves like" cargo, then it doesn't look explicitly for that cargo, but for the general cargo it "behaves like." So the Beer train would check and see if the station accepted Food, and if it did, that would do the job.

2. Is it possible to have sub-cargoes such that a traincar can carry more than one cargo (maybe not at the same time) without being refit? E.g. the armored van can carry Gold, Silver, or Platinum, without refitting.

[wallyweb]

I have to agree with Lifeblood's rationale and those are two excellent questions krtaylor ... I wonder if they would be covered by a58's new action 0 classes properties, 28 and 29?

[Patchman]

1. Given that we can't explicitly set a specific building as being able to accept more than three different cargoes, would it be possible to set additional cargoes as "behaves like..." another cargo? E.g. Beer "behaves like" food, so any buildings that accepts Food, ipso facto also accepts Beer.

This would be an extension of the "officefood" switch, which does more or less the same thing. It could be workable.

I'd also point out, that while any one building can only accept three cargo types (well, almost always passengers, mail, and something else), different buildings can accept different things, and if you make their acceptance ratio high enough (i.e., not just 1/8, but 1/4 or even 1/2), a few buildings can accept many different cargo types even without the need to fudge anything.

2. Is it possible to have sub-cargoes such that a traincar can carry more than one cargo (maybe not at the same time) without being refit? E.g. the armored van can carry Gold, Silver, or Platinum, without refitting.

You've proposed this before, and the problem is still the same: we have no way of telling the wagon, which cargo it should load if several of these are waiting at the station. Since all refittable cargos don't usually have the same target, you need to be able to set that somehow, which will not happen until someone rewrites the entire vehicle order system from a 2-byte-per-order system to something more flexible.

[Flamelord]

Those vectors don't entirely make sense to me. So here's the modifications I would make to your proposal to make it make more sense.

The problems I found with it:

-Coal is spread a little thin between 3 industries.
-Providing only Bauxite to the Metallurgical Plant would still produce Copper.
-Wood chips are pulped and pressed into Paper at the same plant normally.
-Meat Plant = Cannery - Both meat and fish are processed at the same plant, sometimes.
-What's the point of the Factory if all it does is play with metals?

My modifications:

-Took Coal away from Metallurgical Plant. This may be a bad idea, but having to distribute coal 3 ways and not having 3 times as many of them isn't good either.

-Added Valuables. Yes, I know it's the Arctic, but people still want Gold transported between cities.

-Removed Meat Plant. Meat can be packed at Canneries. It just seemed awkward with so many of a limited number of industries devoted to different forms of food, plus it was a little redundant.

-Renamed Meat to Livestock. They're butchered at the meat plant, not the farm.

-Added Plastics. They're from crude or another petroleum-type raw material and the Factory needed something else to work with.

-Combined Aluminum and Copper into Refined Metals. See point 2 of the problems list.

-Removed Hotels. They should at least use Tourists if we're going to have them. What's the point of Hotels unless they're away from Cities? The Cities accept Passengers anyway.

-Renamed Iron to Iron Ore. Well, I thought I did. It doesn't seem to be part of the chart.

-Removed Pulp Mill. See point 3 of the problems list.

-Removed Print Shop. KrTaylor's right.

-Sawmill no longer produces Goods. Since when do office buildings need a constant supply of cut lumber?

Funny thing is, this would also fix the banks - They'd no longer produce Valuables unless Gold or Valuables were being given to them. And I think that's about all I have to suggest at the moment.

[DanMacK]

Here's the meat packing plant as is. Anyone else feel like doing the construction stages and sprites, go ahead

[wallyweb]

Comment Time

Patchnam:
- point 1: Interesting
- point 2: too bad
DanMack: Nice
Flamelord:
- Actually Lifeblood's vectors make a lot of sense in the Canadian economy, which I believe is where he is aiming the arctic version of his North American Set.
- I agree that coal is spread a bit thin but this does add a challenge to the player - who gets the product? decision time ... make the wrong one could be costly. I like a challenge. In reality, over time, coal production would shift away from power as utilities move to oil powered generation. Costs money to pull a coal power plant and replace it with an oil fired plant. Very real - Very challenging.
- Aluminium production is a reality in Canada and it is produced in a power hungry smelter. Those smelters do not work with copper, but the metalurgical plant decription is generic and it does the job and it needs power ... lots of it and many of these plants have their own power plants.
- In Saint John where I live, there is a pulp mill at one end of town and a paper mill at the other end. Yes, the paper mill does do some of its own pulping, but not nearly enough. For game play, this would be a toss up.
- By far, the largest consumer of paper is the printing industry, be it newpapers, books, or any of a miriad of other printed materials. It should stay.
- Towns are large consumers of lumber - that's where our houses come from. Sawmills are the source of lumber. That vector should stay.
- In Canada, meat processing and fish processing are very distinct and different. They tend to be relatively near their respective sources of supply. Don't mix them.
- Livestock from farm to packer is a good point although it could also be cattle.
- Iron/iron ore - semantics - they're the same thing.
- Resort hotels are a very real part of the Canadian scenario and they were started by the railroads. Some are in cities and some are in scenic areas. They are a keeper. Whether they service "tourists" or "passengers" is semantics, although George has done some nice work with "tourists". A thought for the future.
- Gold to banks is in the game now. Lifeblood made his point in relegating valuables to temperate. His arctic scenario is resource driven. Maybe in a later updated version.
- plastics or chemicals are valid but they can be added in a later version at which time a second factory type could be added.

The way Lifeblood has it now is good and is a good fit to the Canadian scenario. A few small tweeks perhaps, but they can wait for the drawings to be done.

[WWTBAM]

iron and iron ore are different in the sence that iron is made of iron ore and it worked like that in tto but got renamed in ttd

[BobDendry]

r0b0t_b0y2003: absolutely useless point.
lifeblood: your plans are just a bit too adventurous for the very moment. Think about the coding

[krtaylor]

Patchman, on point 2 -

I understand the issue of not knowing which cargo to load. I didn't really intend that this would be used in a situation where you actually had both to load. But, I was thinking it would be used in a situation where both of the possible cargoes were going to the same place. So it wouldn't really matter which loaded first. It would load whichever was first in the loading array, and then once that was all gone, if the other kind was there and there was more room on the train (separate individual cars, I suppose), then those would load also. Is that possible?

[Patchman]

In that case I don't see why you even need different cargo types... if all that's different is the name, it seems pointless.