Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

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Fairyfloss
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Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Fairyfloss »

Once upon a time, I was playing OpenTTD and thought to myself "You know, a fantasy-themed industry set could be neat".

And then I took that idea a bit more seriously, because I still think it's neat. A few days of designing the industry chains, with some help from the discord, later and here we are; the Development Thread.

While the focus will, at first, just be on industry, I won't rule out the potential of future vehicle/building sets for a total Fantasy Conversion Set. But that will be dependent on how well development of this set goes, and how much people like it, and all that jazz. If development of this goes great, I see no reason why this concept can't be expanded upon. If it does not, I'll be content with just a fantasy industry set.

Before I go on to show the actual drafts of the industry chains, here are a few core ideas I had in mind when thinking up this set. Ideally, all of this will make it into the final version of the industry set, unless they prove unpopular/don't work.

Early start support - No reason to not make it possible to start in 1700 with this set, and transport cargoes by horse-and-wagon. It fits thematically, after all. Not only this, but the next point should hopefully make this grf play better with low-capacity early vehicles.
No naturally-generating heavy industry - Big industrial complexes don't really fit with a fantasy setting in my opinion, so most of the secondary industries will be town industries. Players will be able to, however, fund industrial complexes later on which will fill the same role as their town-based counterparts, but have a higher base output.
No transporting adventurers/non-passenger passengers - This decision is based on two things. One; transporting trainloads of adventurers to the same dungeon sounds silly; the dungeon crawling will be left to the player's imagination. Two, the fact that different types of passenger can't share the same passenger wagon is a little weird.
Different tiers of Tools/Equipment Cargoes - By supplying different kinds of metal to Blacksmiths/Forges, you will be able to create 3 different 'Tiers' of the Tools and Adventuring Equipment cargo. They fill the same role (increasing production), but higher-tier versions give a bigger boost than lower-tier ones.

Without further ado, here's the first draft of the industries and cargoes.
Fantasy Industry Set.png
(219.71 KiB) Not downloaded yet
(Yes, the Dwarven Mine MUST be supplied with Alcohol to produce things, tools make them produce stuff faster. They are dwarves, after all.)

It's still a bit unorganized/messy, I want to get around to making it look a bit better, and it might be missing a few things (Like something at sea to make use of boats more. Likely something with fish, but possibly something else as well), but that's what this thread is for. Feedback, suggestions, criticism, things like that.

Regarding development of this set, I intend to do the coding, though help with that will be appreciated as I've never dabbled with Industry before. I can't, however, draw sprites properly, so help with that will most certainly be needed.
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Erato
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Erato »

Sounds great! If you want it to be a collaborative effort, it might be worth it to set up a Github for the project.

Also, I presume cargo decay will be turned off, because otherwise horse drawn stuff won't be able to make much of a profit?
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Fairyfloss »

Erato wrote: 14 May 2021 09:55 Sounds great! If you want it to be a collaborative effort, it might be worth it to set up a Github for the project.
I will probably do so once I get around to starting development on this.
Erato wrote: 14 May 2021 09:55 Also, I presume cargo decay will be turned off, because otherwise horse drawn stuff won't be able to make much of a profit?
Hm... I'll need to look into what is and isn't possible, but I do think decay should be less punishing so that low-speed transport is viable.
Ideally, cargoes would be separated into Perishable and Non-Perishable. Perishable cargoes should punish you if you take too long, becoming non-profitable if you're too slow. Non-Perishable cargoes should always be at least somewhat profitable, but give you a nice bonus if you deliver extra fast. Hopefully this way slow vehicles are viable, but fast ones encouraged.
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Taschi »

Fairyfloss wrote: 14 May 2021 07:16Big industrial complexes don't really fit with a fantasy setting in my opinion
The last games I played were Final Fantasy XIII (including sequels) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Both of them would disagree with your opinion - as would most of the Steampunk genre.

Especially if you want to have early starts, in order to have a game world that feels like it is evolving over time, it might be interesting to move from fairly low-output agricultural and artisanal "industries" towards more steampunk-y (or dieselpunk-y, teslapunk-y or whatever you prefer), factory-like industries over time - sort of how vanilla TTD moves from land-based oil derricks to more modern offshore oil drills.

I'd also honestly suggest culling the agricultural production chains a bit. Treating grain and hops as input for a brewery may make sense in a modern setting, but in a typical medieval-inspired environment I'd expect a brewery to be grow its own hops at the very least, and by the same token I'd expect a vinyard and a winery to be essentially the same thing, probably overseen by the same guy. So, toss out grapes and hops as intermediate products, instead have vinyards that produce wine and / or breweries that produce beer, without additional inputs. For added flair, you might opt to have some kind of monastery / cloister instead of the brewery, given that in real life, many breweries were in fact located in monasteries (and many are to this day).
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Kruemelchen »

I think the idea sounds great!
I'm working on a medieval-inspired horse (etc.) carriages vehicle set. That would fit well for this industry set, I think :)
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Fairyfloss »

Taschi wrote: 14 May 2021 10:46
Fairyfloss wrote: 14 May 2021 07:16Big industrial complexes don't really fit with a fantasy setting in my opinion
The last games I played were Final Fantasy XIII (including sequels) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Both of them would disagree with your opinion - as would most of the Steampunk genre.

Especially if you want to have early starts, in order to have a game world that feels like it is evolving over time, it might be interesting to move from fairly low-output agricultural and artisanal "industries" towards more steampunk-y (or dieselpunk-y, teslapunk-y or whatever you prefer), factory-like industries over time - sort of how vanilla TTD moves from land-based oil derricks to more modern offshore oil drills.
More advanced industry appearing over time is definitely a possibility, yes, but ideally that would only happen in bigger towns. So that, in 'later' starts, some of the bigger cities might get some more proper industrial buildings, like the ones players can fund. But for the early game, I do want the focus to mainly be on local town industries.
Taschi wrote: 14 May 2021 10:46 I'd also honestly suggest culling the agricultural production chains a bit. Treating grain and hops as input for a brewery may make sense in a modern setting, but in a typical medieval-inspired environment I'd expect a brewery to be grow its own hops at the very least, and by the same token I'd expect a vinyard and a winery to be essentially the same thing, probably overseen by the same guy. So, toss out grapes and hops as intermediate products, instead have vinyards that produce wine and / or breweries that produce beer, without additional inputs. For added flair, you might opt to have some kind of monastery / cloister instead of the brewery, given that in real life, many breweries were in fact located in monasteries (and many are to this day).
The main reason why the brewery does not produce it's own hops for brewing alcohol, and why it's a brewery instead of a monastery, is because it also serves as a building for brewing potions and not just alcohol.

Additionally, the brewery is also supposed to be the 'upgrade' to the default source of alcohol, much like how the forge is an upgrade to the blacksmith. The player pays for it to allow them to brew more alcohol, which would not really work unless it, too, produces alcohol without requiring cargo input.

However, culling the agricultural chain is something I'm open to considering? Perhaps a parameter for 'simplified' and 'expanded' industry selection, where expanded provides more cargo variety wheras simplified... does not.
Kruemelchen wrote: 15 May 2021 12:14 I think the idea sounds great!
I'm working on a medieval-inspired horse (etc.) carriages vehicle set. That would fit well for this industry set, I think :)
Horse Carriages also work great with medieval/fantasy stuff! Looking forward to seeing it.
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by Fairyfloss »

Once more revisiting this concept, but taking a different approach based on some things I've come up with and some features found in other GRFs. The Fantasy Industry Set concept will now also require houses as per my most recent ideas.

Using 2TallTyler's quadrant idea, where the map is dividend into four quadrants with different industries in each, the map will be divided into two types.

In one corner of the map will be the civilized/developed part of the map. This part of the map will be as one would expect from normal OpenTTD. Farms, mines, towns and cities. In this area you will start a playthrough, but none of the cargoes you can transport here are exceptionally valuable, and beyond seasonal harvests, outputs are low. However, in this area, you can make your first kind of supplies, which are needed in the rest of the map.

The rest of the map, after all, is untamed wilderness. Towns consist of only a single outpost building, and Cities are always relatively small. What's more, most industries... aren't ready to be used yet. They exist, sure, but outside of some industries near cities, almost all of them start as simple marked locations found by explorers letting you know there's something there, and in order to utilize them, you need to start supplying them with the resources they need to work.

Once an initial delivery of the appropriate supplies have been delivered, the appearance of the site will change into a proper mine/farm/etc, and it will start producing resources for the rest of the game. How much it produces depends on how many supplies you feed it, but it will always produce a little.

From this point on, most of your work will be in the wilderness, growing the outpost-towns by providing them with food and building materials so they can build actual buildings, and gradually working your way towards more complicated and expensive cargoes, which will then eventually be brought back to your initial starting quadrant, where the big cities and such will pay good prices for luxury items and resources harvested from the wilderness.

EDIT: Also came up with for vehicle type progression for a potential vehicle set
[+] Spoiler
Horse-drawn wagons:
Available from: before recommended start
Requires: any road
Very cheap, incredibly low running cost. Low capacity and low speed. Best used for low-density routes carrying cargo that hardly decays

Horse-drawn trams:
Available from: before recommended start
Available until: mid-game
Requires: Simple Road-rails
Higher capacity than Horse-drawn wagons, but limited in where they can go. Ideal to use in big cities.

Sailing Ships:
Available from: before recommended start
Sailing Ships are slow, but have a low running cost and good capacity. Use for early high-capacity routes.

Steam Trams:
Available from early game
Requires: 750mm Tram Tracks
A replacement to horse-drawn trams, steam trams are more expensive and require entirely new tracks, but beat horse trams in every other regard.

Narrow Gauge Steam Trains:
Available from: early game
Requires: 1000mm Tracks
The backbone of your early networks, provides a good balance between cost and usefulness. Loses to standard gauge in terms of speed and capacity, but much cheaper to build - and with cheaper tracks

Standard Gauge Steam Trains:
Available from: early game
Requires: Standard Gauge Tracks
Standard Gauge trains are a bit excessive in the early game, when you don't produce enough cargo to warrant full-size cargo carriages, but they excel at speed and capacity when compared to Narrow Gauge trains, and become much more useful on busy or fast routes.

Steam Ships:
Available from: early game
An upgrade to Sailing Ships, for when the increased speed is worth the increased price

Rackrail Steam Trains:
Available from: mid-game
A special variant available to both narrow and standard gauge, rackrail trains are slower than contemporary trains, but when driving on special rack tracks get an incredible boost in Tractive Effort, allowing them to climb mountains with very little effort.

Steam RVs:
Available from: mid-game
While unable to compete with trains in terms of speed and capacity, they're good in very dense, very short routes where you lack the space to fit bigger trains.

Mana-powered vehicles:
Available from: late game
Special mana-powered variants of all vehicles (except air vehicles) become available in the late game, providing incredible stats at incredible cost. Best used for your most profitable routes - they're way too expensive to use everywhere.

Airships:
Available from: late game
Airships excel in servicing very long routes that are too difficult or expensive to build infrastructure through. They're not exceptionally fast, nor have exceptional carrying capacity, but require almost no supporting infrastructure.
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Re: Fantasy Set - Industry (Development/Brainstorming)

Post by UnknownWanderer »

Good day!

I just searched and found this thread and found it interesting enough to make an account.
Are you still working on this or is it rather dead?


Have a nice day. ^^
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