I use the factory_spacing setting in cityrules.tab to push the factories further apart, most of the time in the upper 20s range of tiles, though over games this has become progressively larger. Perhaps that one helps.
You're welcome about my design efforts. The real work will be in the coding anyway, and my feeble skills at coding in general and non-existent ones in C++ are not nearly up to that job.
I get the impression from looking at the increase_industry_density function that the expansion of power is part of increasing the density and therefore governed by the conditions for such an increase. But regardless of wether or not this is the case, I happen to agree with your point to make electricity a true supply/demand chain, and it would take a relatively minor design change:
Every first of month: If Criteria for industry expansion are met. For each factory on the map (including power stations). For each good consumed by this factory. If the total number of suppliers * their production < the demand for a good in a single factory: Build and/or crossconnect a new supplier for that good. Report on the action(s). If no industry chain needs expansion. Build a non-electricity consumer (but not the rest of the chain). Report on the action. If extra electricity is needed. Build a new power station (but not the rest of the chain, it will come in later months). Report on the action.
Well, if you remove the calls to baue_link_hierarchie in the power stations and 'other' industry chains sections of increase_industry_density, and modify the 'check unfinished business' section along with the baue_link_hierarchie function, you should end up with something like this:
Every first of month: If Criteria for industry expansion are met. For each factory on the map. For each good consumed by this factory. If the total number of suppliers * their production < the demand for a good in a single factory: Build and/or crossconnect a new supplier for that good. Report on the action(s). If no industry needs expansion of it's chain AND extra electricity is needed. Build a new power station (but not the rest of the chain, it will come in later months). Report on the action. If no industry chain needs expansion AND no extra electricity is needed. Build a non-electricity consumer (but not the rest of the chain). Report on the action.
Well, from looking at the code, the function baue_link_hierarchie seems to already have the code snippets for:
If the total number of suppliers * their production < the demand for a good in a single factory: Build and/or crossconnect a new supplier for that good.
It seems to loop through this until the entire hierarchy for a certain good is completed.
What I think you'd need for your question and would also bring my dream industry model a lot closer is to rework those snippets into the following function (called once every month):
For each factory on the map. For each good consumed by this factory. If the total number of suppliers * their production < the demand for a good in a single factory: Build and/or crossconnect a new supplier for that good. Report on the action(s).
This will fill any blanks left by closing industries..
If you feel it helps, I could start a game on the same map (if you have a savegame at startup for me), or a game with the same (default) settings, and report how it's going and how and why I make my decisions in my screenshots threat on tt-forums.
I think your p****engers service in the first post needs more p****engers. You need to have several buses full. I suppose making multiple lines to give more coverage to the rest of the city might help, but I'm not sure. Also, you might want to try a point to point (A-B-C-D-E-D-C-B-A) connection, or have the same bus run the circles in both directions (clockwise then counterclockwise or vice versa).
Well, I ran into some malfunctions with the makeobj MERGE command (it returns copying and the name of the file to be made, and proceeds to make a pak file over 200MB in size). I still have a few workarounds to try though.
Edit: The workaround that solved this problem was to give instructions to create the merged pak file in another directory, something that is not necessary with makeobj-standard.
And of course it did turn out to be a compilation error. Sorry for the gaffe...
From what I see, this is true, but only for the last consumer created. This one is stored in a variable, which is then checked on the next occasion. Once all hierarchies have been satisfied, the variable is set to NULL and a new consumer is created, which is then placed in the variable.
"In relation to an earlier suggestion about the ratio of production and consumption of farms and shops: whilst there is much to be said for lowering considerably the consumption of shops and increasing their distributionweight, care should be taken not to increase the production of farms too greatly, or else each farm will require a far more substantial transport link than would in reality be required. The idea, for example, that a single farm deserves a railway line all to itself is absurd, and the industries should be balanced with this in mind."
Yes, good point. Basically I want farms (especially in the 19th century) that can supply a few of my (very low productivity) shops, or, with many combined, a mill or factory. I also want a few more fields to make them look bigger. But you're right, I should be careful to keep the balance such that they can only be served properly by carts or trucks.
Well, I'm perhaps not the best one to answer your questions, because I'm playing more in the 1700's - early 1800's. But I'll give it a shot.
First of all, you may want to check your maintenance_building settings. Bus stops can be very expensive at the normal settings, which are difficult to overcome.
Your train service has an obvious catch. You have a single train of 5 tile length. If you make a p****ing loop and run two trains with cheaper running costs, less powerful locomotives pulling 3 tile length trains, you save the maintenance costs of 4 tiles (which are quite expensive) for a cheaper extra section of track and maintenance-free signals, and your two trains should be able to make enough profit to overcome the maintenance costs.
The same should go for the other routes. Your vehicles should maximise profit by having the greatest performance for the lowest running costs (if in doubt, especially the latter), and your traffic density should be high enough to make the combined profit of the vehicles overcome the maintenance costs.
If this doesn't help, you can also try trucks, as roads are cheaper.
"If this is (...) not remedied by the natural process of new industries of the same sort as those that had closed opening and linking into the isolated industry,"
Is that even possible? Granted, I've never quite seen the source code of Simutrans Experimental, and only today took a quick look at that of Simutrans standard, but I get the impression that industries don't open that way. Instead, I get the impression that a full industry chain opens, and then if that last industry chain has more commodities to be supplied, there will be "industry expands it's chain" events until all of the commodities have been supplied. But I don't get the impression that it's possible without extensive modifications to get the effect that closing of industries fills in the variables that are a condition to check if an industry chain needs to be expanded? Or is there something I don't know?
I'll answer your point on the farms in the "Rebalancing industry" settings.
The files were from your jamespetts-simutrans-pak128.britain-c838202.zip. The Makeobj is version 5.0.
I've done more compiles with the same .dat files and the same makeobj, and got the impression that it did work with previous Simutrans-Ex versions. I'll do a check with Simutrans-Ex 7.3 (which I still have available) and the same BritIndustry-Ex.pak file to be sure and report back to you.
Edit: I just realised I made another foolish mistake. I need a special Experimental Makeobj. I've downloaded it and will recompile.
While in Simutrans Experimental 8.2, using PAK128.Britain-Ex 0.6 unmodified, the industry works normally, once I use my reduced productivity shops (Greengrocer, Baker, Diary and so on, all industries that consume good but do not produce), and unmodified farms, none of the farms have fields.
This can be worked around for game purposes by increasing the productivity of the farms. Farms will still not have fields, but produce more.
I'll make a savegame of this event and attach it when I have the opportunity.
I have my autosave_every setting at 12 in Simutrans\Config\simuconf.tab and no setting in the pakset simuconf.tab. Nevertheless, I only get one autosave per year instead of the usual one every twelve months.
Yes, I did use the 'increase industry density', which more or less would give the same effect as having industry density take care of the industry (random industries). And yes, when I'm ready for my Proof of Concept test, I will use the 'build industry' and 'link industry' to control precisely where the industry is placed to simulate the effects described below.
Well, the sheep farm closes, but (possibly as long as there's one sheep farm left), the textile mill does no such thing. Because there are 16 sheep farms needed to provide for one textile mill, this does cause some trouble.
What happened was that I would have a nice transport system set up, and then the industry would close in that area, and the replacement industry I ordered (remember, the industry was maintained manually in my Proof of Concept game) opened up in a completely different area where there would be no industry. Also, several industries would close in just a few months (and new ones reopen).
I'm also sorry to misformulate my point on the industry. Yes, I do modify the .dat files extensively to this effect. But the part of industry distribution I do not yet make an req for that. What I will do is use the manual settings of the public service player to simulate the effect as a Proof of Concept.
Using semi-random industry creation creates quite some havoc in my game once industry is replaced, and also in terms that the larger towns don't necessarily have the new industries (making trade potential a little too unpredictable). I'm considering to start a new experiment, this time setting up certain rules that make industry endpoint creation as well as the kind of endpoint creation a factor of town growth (so a town will first want vegetables and fruit, then later milk, then flour (the flour mill takes some labour), then meat, then alcoholics and so on, a bit like in the old Ceasar III game.
Also, I consider experimentally reversing The Hood's theories on farms in my game. Instead of having many farms service one shop, there will be one farm serving many shops with very small production. With factories like flour mills, textile mills and breweries, this will of course be more balanced.
My recent experimental game gave me some experience in how the industry settings appear to work.
From previous games, I know that industry creation is still on a 'per chain' basis, using the original events.
However, when closing, industry can close on both a 'per chain' and a 'per industry' basis. So an individual industry can close, cascading to all suppliers if not having a contract to any other industry, but also individual industries can close, leaving consumers hanging in mid-air.
As you remembered, we talked about changing the way industry creation behaves. I think the solution lies in having industry creation behave on a 'per industry' basis as well, using the demand of their potential consumers as a criterion. This leaves the endpoints of course, which pop-up as normal.
I doubt I can program it, but if I have time, I'll attempt to look at the code, to see how the current logic works precisely, and see if there are hooks on which a design can be made.
Maps with large cities should be alright, but... As long as there's no cap on the homeless number prohibiting growth, they need the room to expand. If you keep your cities spaced well apart and in fairly flat landscape, they should have plenty of room to expand into.
I've seen this kind of problem before. In my mountainous terrain, sometimes cities end up boxed in (no more roads can be built without raising or lowering land. The town continues to grow, but (almost) all of the citizens are added to the homeless pool. As far as I can tell, there is no check to stop city growth if the number of homeless becomes too great.
The workaround I found was to raise/lower strategic corners of the land so that the town can build roads on the newly created flat land/slopes. After that it should expand to accommodate the homeless people.
Well, economic development is moving in that direction of course. But some relatively cheap transport would still help further. Also, I now consider abandoning my test game and starting anew with still further ideas on how to make the industry work the way I want to.
But that's off-topic for this one. Here I was wondering about the locomotive running costs...
Thanks for the offer, Isaac. But I've seen some of that site, and for me, the tt-forums have facilities that suit me more for this kind of thread. Also, two switches in short succession would be too much.
In any case, there's a link here, and I'll be happy to also answer any questions here. If the link goes too far back in the thread, I'll repost it.
You're right about the high p****enger levels in Simutrans Standard. What I meant to say was that the size of towns and villages in Simutrans and the number of shops and industries are normally much lower than in real life. Given that I've been able to get the trade potential in tune with the population and industriousness, it is no wonder I can't find traffic potential for 1840's locomotives. I don't have major industrial centers like London, Birmingham or Manchester on my map...
Well, in the 1830's and 40's, obviously the rail lines being built were mostly the big intercity rail links. Liverpool-Manchester, London-Birmingham-beyond, East Coast Mainline, Great Western Railway and so on. Thousands of tons of freight and hundreds of p****engers per month were probably the order of the day for that. A backwater region like mine (16000 odd souls and a few industries here and there, with at best some 80 tons of cargo per month per train) would be connected much later generally, with simle tank engines or perhaps even a shunting engine.
That said, Simutrans normally of course has less traffic potential than real life, so perhaps something can be said for lowering the running costs.
In my experience, a locomotive that has a running cost of no more than 1.50 should be fairly profitable with a train of some 75 tons. A locomotive with less than 1.00 should be profitable pulling 50t and for one of 2.50 or more you need at least 100t.
Also, in my experience, one needs between 4 and 6 profitable trains to offset the maintenance cost of a not-too-expensive rail line in this era.
Up to the 1840's, some of the locomotives available (Puffing Billy and Locomotion) have running costs that allow reasonably profitable trains with few cars. But after 1844, these locomotives are retired. The cheapes replacement (Lion) has a running cost of 2.64, which needs something in the order of a 100 ton freight train to be profitable. The other ones are even more expensive. This makes railways only profitable with very large trade potential.
This to me seems fairly realistic, and to be sure the maps in my game represent much more backward areas than the big cities that were first connected. But I was wondering if there are any plans for somewhat cheaper engines in this period.
Ordinarily I would alter some of the locomotives' running costs for my own game and continue, but in this case makeobj refuses to cooperate...
I do not have a specific model in mind. The running costs should be in the category of the Adler/BadVIIa, and if the performance is in that category, that should make the company management very happy.
Thanks.
By the way, is Pak.German open source? You may have followed my experiments with lowering the production of industry endpoints. It might be interesting to experiment with Pak.German as well.
First off, please allow me to say I enjoyed my Pak.German games thoroughly.
However, I feel I run into a snag in the late 1850's. There is a gap between the retirement of the Adler in 1857, and the Introduction of the BadVIIa and SA_IIIb_T in 1866. Though the Crampton fills in that gap in part, it's high speed of 90km/h, and even more so it's high running costs of 7.04/km (compared to 1.97 for the Adler and 3.99 for the VIIa), I feel the need for a cheap freight engine that doesn't necessarily need to have great performance.
