[OTTD] mrjack2's Screenshot thread -- 18th century madness!

[mrjack2]

So I've just discovered the joys of Daylength Patch (via JGR's patchpack), and 18th century gameplay with ships and horses.

Basic settings: 65% sea level. 100 towns, minimal industries (FIRS 2). Some key NewGRFs are Sailing Ships and SQUID for shipping, 2cc trains, eGVRTS plus 2cc trams for road vehicles, a random bunch of town sets chosen without much care. Towns are a 3x3 grid for predictability. Villages is Villages Gamescript to control town growth and industry spawning, so that I have to work with what I have got. No infrastructure maintenance, and low costs, because this isn't a game about money. Daylength x5. Possibly a little excessive, but one tends to get excited when they realise how good a feature is for the first time.

I'm not one for eyecandy, so my screenshots aren't designed to look super-flashy or anything, just to show the gameplay.

Starting year was 1701.

Map_overview.png (117.58 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

The overall map. A bunch of big islands, but no single main island.

Bulk_terminal.png (790.53 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

The bulk terminal, sending chemicals to a nearby paper mill. is at the core of the main eastern island's economy, due to its high production levels, ramped up by building materials. It's a long time before the bauxite will have anything to connect to, and when it does the game will look very different.

Brick_and_Cement.png (676.9 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

The bulk terminal is served by Building Supplies from these two nearby industries, which are why it is at enhanced production. These industries are served by sand and stone from a quarry in the northeast of the island, coal from further south on the island, and clay from the small southern island.

[mrjack2]

Coal.png (731.41 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Here's the coal mine. On its return leg, the coal ships switch to building materials and transfer it here, for the horses to take to a nearby town.

Clay_pit.png (759.55 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Similarly with the clay pit. This is a really key industry -- it serves the brick words, the cement plant, and the paper mill, thanks to cargodist. All of those are long journeys across open water. Unfortunately its production is quite long -- I'm desperate to get engineering supplies to it to get it to gungho, as it will ramp up the entire island's economy, but the only port is on the far side of the map, which is a lot to ask of 20kph ships! Note also the town, which is receiving a lot of building supplies from the ships on their reverse journey (to the extent that a backlog is slowing down the brick works). These building supplies are allowing it to continue growing despite it bumping against its scripted population limit.

City.png (869.93 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Here is one of a few cities on the map, in the centre of the south-western island. Its city status isn't that evident from its growth yet, but as the towns bump up against their population limits, this city will become regionally dominant.

[mrjack2]

Coastal_towns.png (734.6 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Now for some linkgraphs! This is a series of coastal towns that looked ideal for a passenger route. But the only ship available -- the brig -- has a pretty poor passenger capacity (20, compared to 50 cargo units) so passenger lines require a LOT of ships. Hence inter-town passenger transport is very much at an exploratory stage until we get some new ships (and later, rail! How easy it will be...)

Building_supplies _linkgraph.png (187.44 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Here is the linkgraph for the building supplies on that western island. As we can see we're over capacity on the link to the clay pit and the associated town.

Goods_linkgraph.png (236.96 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

A similar situation with goods on the central and western island. There's two sources of goods -- a textile mill in the centre which is well supplied with plant fibres and wool, and a furniture factory which only gets occasional deliveries of timber, due to having to share the timber with a timber yard. Again we can see there's a link firing yellow here, so a few more destinations out west for goods might help us.

[mrjack2]

Textile_Mill.png (683.85 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Final page for this first one! Here is the textile mill, which is the goods hub. Due to its suppliers receiving farm supplies, this is going to ramp production up significantly soon.

Gung-ho_farm.png (854.97 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Here's one of the suppliers, currently on gung-ho-production thanks to farm supplies. It went gung ho because it was at first the only destination for farm supplies -- now it's splitting them with another smaller farm, so may fall down to enhanced production, which will be more manageable. Edit: It's still gung ho much of the time! As is the other farm, though that one is smaller so much more manageable. I'll have to leave these ones to the future when I get higher-capacity ships.

Livestock_food_orders.PNG (561.82 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

Finally, here's an example of the sorts of orders we have. Most of them are just buoys, of course. But this ship is taking livestock to a nearby stockyard, switching to food and picking up, and taking a long route home so that it can drop of food at a few towns on the route home. This is the approach I am taking with building supplies and goods too. (and will do in future with other cargos as needed).


So what's next? My immediate goal is to link a mixed farm to a sugar refinery on the western island (and supply food on the way home to 3-4 towns). My long-term goal is to get engineering supplies across the map to my clay pit, but that will be a big task. I will also be maintaining intra-town passenger networks (every town has a horse-tram loop, so I'll be adding trams to towns as they grow), and very carefully setting up inter-town routes, by boat or by horse.