Transport Tycoon Forums

Adding the Coke Oven great idea as adds a extra chain to the cargos .. take Coal to the Coke Oven and Coke to the Steel Mills and Iron Works. Should work well.

andythenorth wrote:Better

Looking good - it's ready for a Bernd and Hilla Becher photoshoot!

Added a larry car (on top of the ovens) and the start of a pusher car (behind the ovens). Kind of done for now. Planning to animate some of this...but later

Also, real-life coke ovens Nice line drawings here.

Brains trust: the (to be released in 2017) Steeltown economy contains a Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF). This converts pig iron to steel. If I chose to count rivets, basic oxygen process dates from 1940s/1950s. Previous to that steel was largely converted from iron using open hearth or bessemer process.

Economy overview
http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/pus ... #steeltown
BOF industry
http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/pus ... en_furnace
Wikipedia eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel#Pro ... m_pig_iron

The industry works fine in gameplay, so this is just a question about names.

• Basic Oxygen Furnace? (it's a game, ignore reality)
• Steel Converter?
• Steel Conversion Plant?
• Open Hearth Furnace?

There is also an Electric Arc Furnace in the economy that makes steel from scrap metal, so that complicates names a little (can't just use Steel Plant)

Maybe "Blast Furnace".

GarryG wrote:Maybe "Blast Furnace".

Got him already, he makes the pig iron

Not feeling like drawing some open hearths, too?

I don't think it's a big deal - "it's a game". Part of that industry chain looks pretty modern anyway. Like the Assembly Plant with those modern trucks and all. Or the Liquid Terminal. Not exactly pre-50s style. Maybe something that can be worked on if you feel like achieving perfection at some point, but as it doesn't really impact gameplay it's imo not the most important thing out there.

I suppose it's a bit of a shame that industry chains can't be changed through time, so, for example, modern cars would be built with aluminum instead of steel (or both, or whatever makes sense), but eh. Probably would cause needless complexity.


(btw, loads of industry pictures broken in that latest document for me )

andythenorth wrote:

• Basic Oxygen Furnace? (it's a game, ignore reality)
• Steel Converter?
• Steel Conversion Plant?
• Open Hearth Furnace?

I like to keep names as simple as possible, so I'd go for Steel Converter, which seems to be appropriate enough. It's also a fairly translatable term. "Basic Oxygen Furnace" gave me a wtf moment the first time I saw it in the translation list.

Great work , love the look of the Coke furnace , I would go with Steel Conversion Plant .

I'd choose Basic Oxygen Furnace or Open Hearth Furnace since they're the most descriptive and tell player what the industry really is.

alluke wrote:I'd choose Basic Oxygen Furnace or Open Hearth Furnace since they're the most descriptive and tell player what the industry really is.

They don't describe the product of the plant, which most industry names do. A brick work makes brick, a paper mill makes paper, etc. A Basic Oxygen Furnace does not make oxygen

leifbk wrote:A Basic Oxygen Furnace does not make oxygen

That sounds like something for a "FIRS... in SPACE!" spin-off

I agree, though; such names might be better descriptors for those educated on the subject, but for laymen, Steel Conversion Plant might be better suited.

Would the Electric Arc Furnace be better named something like Scrap Mill, or Scrap Steel Processor?
Docs for it here: http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/pus ... rc_furnace
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace

I'd be in favour of naming things what they do. "Scrap steel processor" is much clearer than yet another type of "Furnace". No doubt highly enlightening for those that know it, for everybody else it's a meaning less term except the rather generic "it's hot".

Edit: Scrap steel furnace would work too, preserving the kind of process a bit.

What about having a Small and Large Steel mill? Smaller Steel mills usually do their work with Arc Furnaces, while Larger Steel Mills produce steel from raw materials in a blast furnace.

NekoMaster wrote:Smaller Steel mills usually do their work with Arc Furnaces, while Larger Steel Mills produce steel from raw materials in a blast furnace.

I considered 'minimill' as that's what the steel industry sometimes call them. But eh, most of us aren't in the steel industry The size thing might be misleading as well, sounds like the size of the industry layout to some people maybe

Regarding the "Extreme" economy.
I'm also one of those who likes to play long complex games on large maps, and have always used Full FIRS/Extreme. It's great having all the different chains, and how they intermingle in places.

kamnet wrote:

andythenorth wrote:

kamnet wrote:I like "Extreme" because it offers as many industries as possible, and I can decide for myself what chains to pursue or not

So on that front, if you had to choose between...

• 'everything is hyper-connected'
• 'multiple independent chains'

...which is more fun?

There are other questions, but eh, how does that one play out?

I'm definitely for multiple independent chains.

Me too. But I also like the interdependence provided by Chemicals and the "Supplies" cargoes, amongst others. They tie everything together rather nicely.

Some thoughts:-

andythenorth wrote: - add cargos which are more generic, for example 'minerals' could be better than 'coal' / 'iron ore' / 'bauxite'

This is both a good and bad idea.
Good because it'll free up some valuable cargo slots.
Bad because it'll break a lot of things.
Such as, but not limited to:

• The industry chain window. This would show that you could deliver Bauxite to a Steel Mill or Power Station, for example.
• It'd confuse A.I.'s. They would deliver as above.
• It'd seriously mess with CargoDist.
• It might confuse some players. You could end up with endless "bug reports" such as "Why does the Power Station accept Iron Ore?".

Having said that, none of the above would bother me personally. I'm quite happy using the "Cheat" menu to play as an A.I. and redirect them. I don't use CargoDist, and I know where stuff is supposed to go.

Although this would work:-

NekoMaster wrote:Well you could perhaps combine some cargoes together to free up some spaces, like what about Food and Alcohol to make "Food & Beverage Cargo" or "Perishables" cargo?

Personally, I'd go with "Food & Beverage" or stay with the simpler "Food". "Perishables" makes me think of things like Fruit.

andythenorth wrote: - remove highly specific cargos like sugar beet which have single source / destination

Fish and Milk also fall into this category. I hope you're not planning on removing either of these, although Fish, Milk & Sugar beet could be combined into one general purpose food type cargo. But, again, some might find this all too confusing.
Lets face it. All it takes is a little bit of imagination and common sense on the part of the player. You wouldn't send "fish" to a sugar refinery, would you? You already have combined cargoes in FIRS, chemicals and the three supply cargoes for example.
In my mind I separate Chemicals into "petro" and "organic". Very broad and not entirely accurate descriptions, but they serve my purpose.
How about Farm Supplies. This could be anything. Tools and Farm machinery. Fertilizer. If you made an Animal feeds plant it could be , well, Animal Feed.

I've had some of these ideas myself, all written in my notebook of "Things I'd like to try when I learn to make GRF's". I'm finally in a position to try, but am having great difficulty getting started. That, however, is off topic and the subject for a separate post.

Does Extreme really need to have a "theme"? General/multi purpose & complex works for me. I really hope you won't decide to ditch it.

andythenorth wrote: Cargos are capped at 32, unlikely to change.

That's what you said about Roadtypes.......
Staying with this, weren't the number of industries recently increased? Is it up to 128 now? I wonder why the opportunity to increase available cargo slots wasn't taken. Do you think it's something that could break existing industry NewGRF's like FIRS?

Finally, the new graphics and industries look amazing. I'm looking forward to using them in my next game.

Pete.

Generic cargoes generally call for equally generic industries to avoid the unexpected situations you mentioned (i.e. Mineral Mine instead of [resource] Mine, so that you're not sending Minerals from an Iron Ore Mine to a Power Station), but in my opinion, this is nothing that a healthy dose of willing suspension of disbelief can't fix. For Extreme, I would absolutely prefer to keep varied, specific industries even if they were using generic cargoes and created such scenarios. At the end of the day, I don't really have to send those minerals from that iron ore mine to a power station if I don't want to.

Andy, I've seen there is a new cargo you've called "Kaolin". From what I've seen on the web, the better name should be "Kaolinite", if you're referring to the "China clay"... my penny...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolinite

Voyager One wrote:...From what I've seen on the web, the better name should be "Kaolinite", if you're referring to the "China clay"

Thanks Voyager I dug around a bit and I'm going to stick with Kaolin, but it was a useful suggestion, cheers