Transport Tycoon Forums

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
— Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Railway Trilogy

Lumberjack Industries is an industry/economy replacement mod which focuses on creating a balanced supply chain in a harsh northern climate. It's inspired by Alberta, Canada, where the wheat belt meets the Rocky Mountains.

Your company is involved in both transportation and logging. While most natural resources (Coal, Wheat, Kaolin clay) are already available, you'll need to construct Logging Camps to harvest nearby trees.

Factories of all types need Workers to process cargo, and you'll need to connect and grow towns to provide the necessary workforce. With the Renewed Village Growth Game Script (not included but strongly recommended), they'll demand finished goods, creating a feedback loop to focus your growth and incentivize interesting gameplay.

For more information and a production flowchart, check out the gameplay guide.

Let me know any problems you encounter!

Only staff, not passengers? Robots?
The oil in tons is a bit ... weird
There is a bit of industry, a little more would perhaps refresh the game more, this way it's a bit dull, but it's a beta after all

Tonnes might be a weird unit for oil but tbh I tend to find it messy if every type of freight is on a completely different system of units and on a completely different scale. Makes it hard to quickly estimate how many vehicles I need.

This comes to me as a weak argument, in the case of fluids, the car has the capacity specified in the same units, if one masters the basic mathematics, it is not so difficult to orient.

Argus wrote: ↑25 Oct 2021 20:10 This comes to me as a weak argument, in the case of fluids, the car has the capacity specified in the same units, if one masters the basic mathematics, it is not so difficult to orient.

Well, in that case there is no reason to use any other units than tonnes, because it turns out the maths required to calculate the weight of 10,000 liters of oil is exactly the same maths that's required to calculate the volume of 10 tons of oil. Thus, this entire argument is irrelevant and you should feel ashamed for starting it.

The fact is that I have a solid grasp of how many tons of stuff fit onto one railway car while I do not have a solid grasp of how many liters, gallons, crates, pieces, sacks, British thermal units, chains, mol, square inches or Saxonian police miles of stuff fit onto one railway car.

I use tonnes for oil and other liquids to simplify players’ understanding of how much boost cargo is required. Much easier math than litres!

I don’t plan to add more cargos or industries. The beta status is just to allow others to playtest and find bugs I missed due to differing playstyles. Simplicity is elegance.

2TallTyler wrote: ↑24 Oct 2021 22:34 Lumberjack Industries is an industry/economy replacement mod which focuses on creating a balanced supply chain in a harsh northern climate.

That sounds like a very interesting idea .. split Industry sets up to work a lot like ECS has done. Then players can chose all the different sets and have a big set of Industries or just have a few.

Did you add Tropic Wood TWOD as well?

Taschi wrote: ↑25 Oct 2021 21:17
Well, in that case there is no reason to use any other units than tonnes, because it turns out the maths required to calculate the weight of 10,000 liters of oil is exactly the same maths that's required to calculate the volume of 10 tons of oil. Thus, this entire argument is irrelevant and you should feel ashamed for starting it.

The fact is that I have a solid grasp of how many tons of stuff fit onto one railway car while I do not have a solid grasp of how many liters, gallons, crates, pieces, sacks, British thermal units, chains, mol, square inches or Saxonian police miles of stuff fit onto one railway car.

You're right, my mistake, I'm sorry

2TallTyler wrote: ↑26 Oct 2021 02:26 I use tonnes for oil and other liquids to simplify players’ understanding of how much boost cargo is required. Much easier math than litres!

I don’t plan to add more cargos or industries. The beta status is just to allow others to playtest and find bugs I missed due to differing playstyles. Simplicity is elegance.

Ok I haven't found any mistakes yet.

GarryG wrote: ↑26 Oct 2021 04:31
That sounds like a very interesting idea .. split Industry sets up to work a lot like ECS has done. Then players can chose all the different sets and have a big set of Industries or just have a few.

Did you add Tropic Wood TWOD as well?

It’s not really like ECS in that it’s not compatible with my other industry sets. It’s designed for relatively few cargos and industries compared to other sets (although roughly on-par with vanilla), although my extensive playtesting has shown it to be reasonably deep with a gameplay loop much more compelling than vanilla industries.

I did not add Tropic Wood. In general, I use cargo labels from FIRS in the hopes that Andy has a special cargo sprite for them in Iron Horse.

2TallTyler wrote: ↑26 Oct 2021 02:26 (...)Simplicity is elegance.

And simply pleasant. The added influence of workers and food on production is really nice. Other nice thing is that you don't have to refit the vehicles to get your workers back to the cities. Let them come back on foot! Heh... I wish cargodist would work differently, but that is a separate topic. However, it is a pity that obtaining higher processing productions is so demanding. Typically, if you deliver 1,000 tons of raw materials, you will receive at least 670 tons of products. Up to ~3000 in FIRS if you deliver everything. Here it is sometimes only 100-200. This is a bit discouraging. I tried to get a production of 1000 tons, but that would require a really large network. I look at it from the perspective of a potential online game and competition, and... I don't see the point in transporting products here. Apart from food and fuel, it is simply unprofitable, especially for refineries. Or a paper mill, where it is very difficult to obtain enough varnish, but even if get everything what is hard to get, the production will still be little more than that in the mine or oil rig. Recruiting workers may also be a problem, especially on maps with a small number of cities. Carrying them long distances between cities looks quite strange for me. Another problem may be the clou of this set - the loggers camps. They are generally designed for tropical climates where trees grow very quickly and there is never a shortage of them. Here, if the player has a very large company that supports several dozen of such enterprises, the need to check whether there are still trees everywhere will be quite unpleasantly engaging. This industry will also not be able to function with the tree growth switched off. It will, but it doesn't make sense. As for the workers, the problem is that you don't see how many of them are delivered to the factories, because they disappear immediately. It is then difficult to judge whether enough of them have been provided, or perhaps unnecessarily many. I like the seasonality of production on farms and loggers camps. It is interesting and requires a different solution than usual. The problem here, however, is the rapidly declining transport rating and the disappearing cargo from the station. It's hard to transport it all at once. You can, but it won't necessarily look good. Another problem arising from seasonal production is too low acceptance of raw materials. It is very easy to overfill warehouses and therefore I believe that these limits with the current method should be much higher than 4,096 tonnes.

Finally, I will refer to these tones. Everywhere in the game in each set, fluids have a separate unit of measure that expresses volume. By changing this approach, you don't really make anything easier, because you change something that players are used to, and newcomers will play with a different set sooner or later, so they won't run away from the problem anyway. Also, a ton in your set doesn't weigh a ton. For example, 61 tons of chemicals weigh 73 tons, and 61 tons of oil weigh 53 tons. The argument with the use of tons is all the more flawed because, in addition to liters, which I think are a poor unit of measurement in the game, there are also cubic meters, which give values close to a ton and make much more sense when the mass of the liquid is different.

One more thing. Delivering the maximum amount of supplies to farms, mines or oil rigs will be enough for them for over 14 years. I think it's a bit too long.

I'm not sure I understand your concerns about processing industry productions. If you deliver all the required cargos, you get a 1:1 conversion rate from the base cargo (Logs, Wheat, Lumber, etc) to the finished product. If you're getting significantly less, the problem is not having enough Workers. That is intended to be the main challenge of this economy (not unlike the current US economy ), with the Renewed Village Growth GS requiring various products for town growth. My last test game used Low town density and Very Low industry density, and I struggled to get enough Workers at first until I grew my towns and built commuter railroads to gather Workers from nearby towns.

LaChupacabra wrote: ↑27 Oct 2021 21:51 Another problem may be the clou of this set - the loggers camps. They are generally designed for tropical climates where trees grow very quickly and there is never a shortage of them. Here, if the player has a very large company that supports several dozen of such enterprises, the need to check whether there are still trees everywhere will be quite unpleasantly engaging. This industry will also not be able to function with the tree growth switched off. It will, but it doesn't make sense.

Ah, but I've adjusted the rate at which Logging Camps cut trees to compensate for the slower tree growth in other climates. This NewGRF is designed to be used with tree growth switched on, but it seems I forgot to note this in the gameplay guide — now fixed.

LaChupacabra wrote: ↑27 Oct 2021 21:51 As for the workers, the problem is that you don't see how many of them are delivered to the factories, because they disappear immediately.

If you deliver Workers to a factory with a waiting stockpile of cargo to be processed, they are consumed instantly. However, factories will stockpile up to 200 Workers if no cargo is waiting. If you haven't seen them stockpile yet, you need more Workers.

LaChupacabra wrote: ↑27 Oct 2021 21:51 The problem here, however, is the rapidly declining transport rating and the disappearing cargo from the station. It's hard to transport it all at once. You can, but it won't necessarily look good.

This is intentional, at least for Wheat, which uses custom station rating logic to penalize stations where too much Wheat (> 500 tonnes) is waiting. It's not quite as effective as I'd like since station ratings can only change by 2 points every 256 ticks, so perhaps I'll experiment with more brute force methods like having the industry stop producing until the backlog is cleared. The idea is to mimic the seasonal wheat harvests in Canada where grain cars are stored for much of the year before being pressed into service during the harvest. If the player can simply take their time transporting Wheat over the entire year, the challenge is gone.

LaChupacabra wrote: ↑27 Oct 2021 21:51 Another problem arising from seasonal production is too low acceptance of raw materials. It is very easy to overfill warehouses and therefore I believe that these limits with the current method should be much higher than 4,096 tonnes.

From my experience in my test game, your problem is again one of not enough Workers. I have no problem keeping the stockpile below 4,096 tonnes. If you're playing on a larger map and have connected more Farms (I have ten connected to my Bakery) it may not be able to keep up, but then serving a second Bakery may be a good idea.