Okay now that I've had a chance to absorb the entirety of everything you've written, I'll respond to just a "few" things
LaChupacabra wrote:If you update the version of an add-on in the NewGRF settings window (e.g. from 0.5.0 to 0.7.0), not all of the new version settings will work. I don't know if this is a bug with the game or your add-on.
I thought it was clear, but I'll highlight it again:
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...Trains...
I'll look into the power and capacities. Once I've had a chance to sit down and play a good game and I can get a better feel for the balance I'll definitely be doing some adjustments
Part 2/3: INDUSTRY
Problems:
1. Disappearing factories before all necessary raw materials can be supplied, and even when everything is delivered
2. Disappearing water pumps despite being serviced
3. Disappearing Offshore Colony despite steel supplies and servicing
4. The immediate combustion of oil in a power plant is strange and makes it difficult to ensure the continuity of the electricity supply
5. Workers going to the mine just to make their mark. What are they getting so tired of?
The way primary industries (mines, offshore colony, etc) work is that when they get to 1/4 of their initial output they will be marked for closure. As long as you maintain decent (>50%) service those industries should generally increase production, thus rarely close when serviced. I've never had any issues with primary industries closing the way you describe, but you're the second person to specifically mention the offshore colony closing unexpectedly. If you (or anyone) has a savegame demonstrating this behavior, it would help a lot in figuring out why
As for the secondary industries closing: that is a bit frustrating
I'll see if there's any way of disabling industry closure when at least one cargo is being delivered, but I can't promise I can fix it. From what I remember, industry closures are a passive thing, so I'm not sure I can directly influence it this way, but I'll try.
In the meantime though, I should point out that there are NewGRF parameters you can enable to make industries "static", as in they will no longer randomly spawn or close during gameplay. This would solve the issue, it just means you have to fund any additional industries yourself if you want more than what you get at map generation. For what it's worth, having these parameters on is actually how I prefer to play Wasteland
...I would have some idea of how the production issues could be solved in a similar way to FIRS...
Your proposed production mechanics are...complex, to say the least. I have a hard time following the way you explain it here, let alone trying to understand it during gameplay. Changing production based on arbitrary volumes of output, or certain cargoes being delivered but not others, and only when a percentage of the correct cargo is in stockpile, etc., etc. It's all just confusing and adds nothing but complexity and unnecessary micro-management to maintain a magical perfect balance to achieve desired output. You mention yourself in the very next post that making something too complicated is not good for gameplay, and to me this sounds very complicated
Maybe some of those ideas work for some "extreme" version of the economy, but I'm not convinced of the gameplay value it brings right now.
I don't know why, but there are frequent drops in production and Water Pump closures. I have the impression that the set ignores the smooth economy setting and this is the reason. Very often the production changes are very large. It is not a pleasant setting. Personally, I do not like randomness and prefer to have an influence on what is happening than to be a silent observer.
Once again you're describing behavior I haven't seen myself, so I can only speculate. Very large swings in production sounds like you have smooth economy
off, but you seem to indicate you have it on, and in that case I have no idea. Water pumps shouldn't act any differently than other primary industries.
...As for passengers, it seems logical to me that they should be a vanishing cargo...
Later you go on to make the argument that things disappearing or changing acceptance without warning is bad; this seems like a direct contradiction to that notion. It sounds just like the oil wells in normal OpenTTD where everyone ignores them completely once they discover they will all close anyway. Most people think it's not worth the effort, myself included
It's nice if the electricity is received not so much by houses as transformer stations. Thanks to this, it would be possible to show the demand and supply. The player would know what the city needs. Perhaps it would also be possible to stop the development of the city when supplies are too small? When deliveries are too large, electricity should go to waste without getting paid. It is completely natural. It will also encourage the player to expand the network and rationalize production.
Again this is diving into micro-managing territory. Having to constantly monitor electricity demand and adjust the network or else have everything break randomly doesn't sound intuitive or fun to me.
About industries producing cargo too quickly, this is something I think I can fix easily by just turning down the rate of consumption to 1/8 per cycle instead of 1/3; that should make it take a full month to consume all cargo. I probably should have had it set that way to begin with, but I'll test it out to make sure it works as expected first
...that could become cumbersome and cause the player to focus on one item...
This quote basically sums up my thoughts of many of the proposals here, they are too specific and require a lot of attention of the player to make them work as expected. One thing I actually did like is the robot factory to make an alternative to wastelanders, that sounds like it could be fun
10. Uranium
...
That is basically the plan for the second electricity chain
11. Supply Point / Supply Base
Currently, the big problem is the lack of information for the player what the city needs. At the same time, the problem is vanishing acceptance....
Supply depots won't solve this issue. That just shifts the problem from seeing what cargos the houses accept, to which cargos the industry accepts. Actually it's worse than that, because the industry will always show acceptance of all cargos, so you either need different industries for each stage of buildings, or you force the player to click on the industry to monitor which cargos are currently
actually accepted or not.
And acceptance of cargos doesn't "vanish", you must build the municipal hub industry and directly initiate the final stage of buildings, so you should be very aware that those cargos will no longer be needed in that town and you can arrange to transport them elsewhere. If you don't wish to stop delivering cargos to a town, simply don't build the hub
The behavior of the cities is strange and incomprehensible. It is not uncommon for a city to start dying out despite deliveries. Expectation from the player to understand this mechanism, with very limited information, is too much in my opinion. I delivered all the cargo and I don't know when or why the city started dying out anyway - most of the 3rd tier buildings have disappeared.
Unfortunately I did not write it down. The screenshot below is a manual recreation of the situation - that's what it looked like.
In order to properly explain the town growth mechanics to the player, I would need to be able to put the information in a window, preferably the town information window since that's the logical place to look. That however would require a patch to the game to extend that ability to NewGRF. The alternative is to write a separate GameScript which can already do that, but there's no way to guarantee that a player uses it, so that is not a dependable solution. So for now you'll just have to read the manual to understand how it works
As for your town shrinking: the way you show it should not be possible. If your town is shrinking it is because not all of the cargos are being delivered frequently enough, but in that case it should cause all types of houses to disappear, not just one. This is definitely one situation where a savegame is needed to diagnose what is wrong
Actually, having renewed buildings disappear due to transporting wastelanders away shouldn't really happen at all, at least it doesn't make much sense. So maybe that needs some investigation as well.
Excessive road development is not cool...
There is a game setting to disallow towns from building roads - I highly recommend you enable that
It is understandable that new buildings no longer accept irradiated food. But why can't they accept food and building materials while the city is still growing?
If you mean the self sustained buildings should accept cargo, that doesn't really make sense. The whole point is that they don't need any more cargo. If you don't want to stop delivering cargos there then don't build to the last stage, keep it at the green buildings.
...[town growth ideas]...
I don't understand. You begin this post by claiming the town growth mechanics are too complicated to understand, then propose far more complicated and arbitrary mechanics to replace them?
I wonder if it is possible that time or other information could determine the type of trees available
Not just the trees, the whole landscape can be switched on or off. I'm already adding that as option so you can, at whatever date you choose, have the world change back to green again. Or disable the landscape completely and just use the normal climate graphics from the beginning if you want