Cargo & Industry fixes for 1.06

[Gumboots]

Your answer to everything seems to be TM, but what bothers me is that it's not an answer that seems to appeal to many people.

Strange. I don't see that. He does mention TM a lot, but generally in reference to what you guys are doing.
To me that's not saying TM is the answer to everything. It's just referencing it in relation to a discussion.

Fair enough.


Also, just caught this:

One possibility, if rock is renamed to limestone, it could potentially then also go to a fertilizer factory to produce lime fertilizer. [Potentially waste could go there as well]

Agricultural lime isn't a fertiliser as such. It's mostly used to regulate soil pH. It'd probably be better to just send rock staight to farms. Quarries often produce rock dust as a saleable product anyway.

[Blackhawk]

Agricultural lime isn't a fertiliser as such. It's mostly used to regulate soil pH. You'd often get it from the same local supplier though, so perhaps the fertiliser factory could be an agricultural products supplier of some sort.

I feel like this is splitting hairs. I would imagine in the game fertilizer would encompass the wide range of whatever is used to aid the farms in its growth of crops.
Whether you want to call lime the more accurate term of a soil amendment, or as a fertilizer, as you say it would still likely be supplied at the same location. Various descriptions of fertilizer include calcium and magnesium as elements/nutrients included in fertilizers (besides the big 3, P/N/K), In addition to lowering soil acidity, the lime can put calcium and magnesium in the soil, so in that aspect it does add nutrients to the soil. Seems largely an issue over semantics. Which even some of the big box stores in the US call it lime fertilizer. (despite it's more proper name as a soil amendment).

[AT41B]

I am just a user of all the good works of the members in this forum. I have started dabbling in creating a couple of maps of local rails. ------ but to the point for what it is worth.

RUBBER, COFFEE, QUARRIES-- AFAIK - Rubber and Coffee are not a crop grown in North America and should only enter the economy through an import facility (by water ports, since in RT & TM, the only air transport is just flying over).

Quarries --- I know there are different types. Take Limestone for one, there are different crushed grades (size) from the quarry. Crushed limestone is used for railroad bed ballast, building gravel roads, etc. There are quarries for large slab type, but usually that is granite. Cement doesn’t come directly from the quarry, crushed stone is mixed with other materials such as clay and gypsum . That blend is then burned in a Kiln (furnace) and then grounded again. The yield of cement from the mixture going to the furnace is about 60% .
I know this is also splitting hairs, but it was just an observation as to the on going conversations.

Cotton Gins --- produce cotton bales and also the seeds are rendered into oil for cooking and other things, and the seed hulls are sometimes used in a cow feed mixture

[Wolverine@MSU]

.........I don't play any other games, so when I play a computer game, it is a Railroad Tycoon game.

jmo

Same here. I have limited "gaming time" so I prefer to spend it on a "thinking man's" game rather than a "shoot 'em up" or "wreak havoc and general mayhem" type game.

Comments on other topics in this thread:

1. I agree that the rock/ore chain should be split, with a furnace doing the stuff with rock and sand to make cement and glass, and a smelter to make ingots.

2. Coffee and rubber farms have to stay. They are global commodities, and are major agricultural products in the tropics/semi-tropics.

3. Uranium should stay (perhaps renamed, I think Ned used "Isotopes"), but should be used as an additional input for other things such as pharmaceuticals/medicine (think targeted chemotherapy, diagnostic imaging like PET scans), and perhaps weapons (we still have and manufacture nuclear weapons).

4. Cargoes and cargo chains should be kept as "generic" as possible and should be based on worldwide supply/demand. Things like "wire" or "salt" are getting too specific. Perhaps better categories would be "building materials" and "food additives", where the former would comprise all manner of products from gypsum board (drywall) to wire to nails to anything else used in the building trades (i.e. lumber + steel + rubber/plastic + cement + sand + etc. = building materials) and the latter could include all manner of food additives from salt to vitamins to flavorings to dyes etc.

5. I still think you/we need to decide whether this will be 1.06.1 or 1.07. That choice will have a BIG influence on how the project progresses vis-a-vis what sorts of modifications are prudent and/or desirable.

just my

[nedfumpkin]

Coffee, believe it or not, is the most valuable commodity traded globally, as in total value.

TM uses uranium to fuel reactors, isotopes are produce to be used in missiles or hospitals.

[Gumboots]

Comments on other topics in this thread:

1. I agree that the rock/ore chain should be split, with a furnace doing the stuff with rock and sand to make cement and glass, and a smelter to make ingots.

That will perpetuate the same problem that the existing furnace has: unpredictable behaviour when both inputs are available. Since that is the problem we are trying to fix, the solution would have to be a separate cement works and a glassworks and a smelter, rather than combining any two of those into one industry.

3. Uranium should stay (perhaps renamed, I think Ned used "Isotopes"), but should be used as an additional input for other things such as pharmaceuticals/medicine (think targeted chemotherapy, diagnostic imaging like PET scans), and perhaps weapons (we still have and manufacture nuclear weapons).

Everything is an isotope. It's a bit like "chemicals".

[Blackhawk]

5. I still think you/we need to decide whether this will be 1.06.1 or 1.07. That choice will have a BIG influence on how the project progresses vis-a-vis what sorts of modifications are prudent and/or desirable.

While I initially anticipated just a small update/fix to 1.06, I am open to a 1.07, although it would require more work and testing which is always a time permitting thing. The issue with a 1.07 is settling down on what changes that would be desired. Right now, it seems like the majority of our ideas are incompatible with each other. The only thing we have agreed on is the renaming crystals to sand, and some sort of glass factory/furnace/smelter separation, which feels more like a 1.06.01 than a 1.07.

If we can agree on some industry changes and/or cargo changes that perhaps we can get a 1.07.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Comments on other topics in this thread:

1. I agree that the rock/ore chain should be split, with a furnace doing the stuff with rock and sand to make cement and glass, and a smelter to make ingots.

That will perpetuate the same problem that the existing furnace has: unpredictable behaviour when both inputs are available. Since that is the problem we are trying to fix, the solution would have to be a separate cement works and a glassworks and a smelter, rather than combining any two of those into one industry.

You're absolutely right. I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention to the details of the discussion.

3. Uranium should stay (perhaps renamed, I think Ned used "Isotopes"), but should be used as an additional input for other things such as pharmaceuticals/medicine (think targeted chemotherapy, diagnostic imaging like PET scans), and perhaps weapons (we still have and manufacture nuclear weapons).

Everything is an isotope. It's a bit like "chemicals".

Correct on this one too; my bad!

[RulerofRails]

My personal opinion about 1.06.1 versus 1.07 is that 1.07 would be worth doing if we are can agree or decide on a decent amount of changes to distinguish the game. This might motivate map makers to actually make some maps for it. I think all ideas are good, the more the better. Most people who have played 1.06 will be familiar with the cargoes, and I think all of us are in some way resistant to change from things we know. Realism is good too, but not the only factor. Slightly less realistic cargo chains can still be made to add a lot to game play and be fun when balanced and well integrated. To me 1.06 cargoes still feel a little misplaced in the game. They haven't really been integrated into the whole economy well. This is probably more work than we realize. I am up for some testing duties when that time arrives.

[Gumboots]

Originally I was just thinking of fixing loco bugz when I proposed 1.06.01, so calling it 1.06.01 made sense. 1.07 can be anything people want it to be. It's just a name. We don't have to rewrite the game engine before we can feel worthy to assign it the name of 1.07. Most of the changes from 1.01 to 1.05 were just bug fixes of various sorts.

[Blackhawk]

We still haven't really decided what, if anything, we'd want to do here, but I'll throw out another industry idea.

If waste appeared earlier than 1987, a landfill could become a municipal building to create an alternate demand to the recycling plant. Not that it is necessary but it would another use for waste.

Anyway, I was again looking at some old notes on 1.06. I don't know if these are the final numbers the 1.06 guys went with for cargo prices but if so it could explain one reason why the furnace acts strangely at times. Their base price for Ceramics was 40, and the base price for rock was 20. Looking over the prices they listed for the original RT3 cargoes, the closest Input to output price is 50 away. (chemicals -> fertilizer). With the base prices of ceramics and rock being only 20 apart, it may be more reliant on supply/demand to influence its pricing than the other cargoes. The ore to ingot base price is 45 to 100.

Edit:
Quick test of an industry just doing rock -> ceramics. Nothing else on the map but a few quarries and a furnace. It converted but it wasn't converting as much as it should have been, while losing money. [rock at ~20, ceramics at 30, the labor put the industry in the red.] I placed several construction firms around the furnace to drive up the price of ceramics and the it converted much better and made a small profit. [Rock around 25, and ceramics around 50]

This quick test leads me to believe that even if another industry is introduced to separate the furnace's 2 industry streams, it still might not work that well unless there is a strong demand in the area driving up the price of ceramics. I suppose the solution would either be a 1 rock -> 2 ceramics (and possibly flood the market with ceramics) or changing the cargo price of ceramics.

If the price of ceramics is raised to ~70-75, and then raise concrete to ~120-130 [concrete's cargo price is 100 and electronics are 230.] The conversion of rock to ceramics should occur better, and with concrete an end cargo, the effects would be minimal. It would have a small effect though on the profitability of the electronics plant though during its phase of "ceramics + ingots" before its switch to "crystals + ingots."

[Gumboots]

Oh sure, you're still going to need demand to make any industry profitable. No industry makes money in an area with no demand. If you just have a furnace and quarries on a map with nothing else of course it'll go broke. Same happens if you just have a steel mill with no demand for steel, or whatever else. That test doesn't really tell us anything new.

The cargo price stuff is interesting though. You may be onto something there. I still think splitting production into two industries is likely to give the most predictable results though. That way there's no possibility of mix-ups. If you want to make ceramics out of rock, you build one industry. If you want to make ingots out of ore, you build the other. It does mean testing two industries, but OTOH fixing the existing furnace would mean testing one industry that does two different things, and trying to make it do what you want when you want. I'm pretty sure that's not going to be any easier.

[Blackhawk]

Actually, in my tests with a steel mill you don't need to create a demand for it to be profitable. Likewise with a textile mill or a tool and die using iron, or a lumber mill. Now if it runs for a little while then yes, the price of steel will drop because of the over-supply in the area without anything demanding it or hauling it away.

Now things like a fertilizer plant or aluminum mill, a demand needs to be created for both the input and output to get any sort of price for the cargoes. It appears to me that cargoes available early start with a price somewhat close to its base price, before slowly being affected by demand/supply. Later arriving cargoes (chemicals, bauxite) start at $0 and become dependant on there being some sort of demand for them before they develop a price.

In my test, just seeing what the inital base prices would do it was fairly accurate in seeing exactly how it would behave with a base price. If you let it run too long then the price of ceramics becomes depressed and it becomes less accurate. But the short run was accurate enough for the purposes I was testing for. When there is a price difference ~25 the furnace becomes slightly profitable. At 20 it's slightly unprofitable/break even. Which if it is around break even at a 20 point difference, than it is highly dependent on the demand to drive up the price of ceramics to make it profitable. Where as other industries if the cargoes are at their base prices, the industry will still be profitable, and the need for extra demand to drive up the output price isn't necessary the create a profit.


And I still agree and would plan on separating the 2 recipe streams. But only splitting it might not be enough for the rock --> ceramics recipe to work that well without increasing the price differential in the base prices.

[RulerofRails]

Ok, Blackhawk, I felt compelled to chime in here. The problems I have seen with the Furnace while playing have to do with the Ore side of things. Specifically when Ore is present at say $90 a load and ingots are less than that often less than $30 if a demand is far away. Somehow the Furnace throttles back its output to stay often barely profitable and uses the earnings from the profitable chain (Rock --> Ceramics) to process a little Ore at a loss. The problem with Ingot demand is that currently only the Machine Shop and Electronics Plant use them and it would be ridiculous to have those all over the map. If more uses for Ingots are available with new industries, the dynamic will change for the better. For now, it is always possible to collect Ore with a waiting train and haul it away to another Furnace or even destroy it to keep the Furnace pumping out Ceramics. Fact is, it is sensible and profitable to build Concrete Plants in 1.06 to make significant demands for Ceramics. Creating demands for Ingots is currently hard.

I haven't even played a 1.06 scenario with a working Electronics Plant yet. Does anyone know of one off-hand? Most scenarios seem to be set in the Golden Age of railways.

I can see what you are saying, but I don't think it is a problem because I think Rock --> Ceramics isn't supposed to be a really profitable industry. Even with the current conversion factors it should be making around 250k profit per year making 8 Ceramics. With the ridiculous upgrade to 16 per year it is possible to have it push 400k per year if you can haul away Ceramics fast enough or have a Concrete Plant next door.

[Blackhawk]

Without a doubt I think both sides could use a little improving. Yes, it is easier to create demand for ceramics compared to ingots, as any brewery/distillery and the construction firm creates a demand, as well as the easy to use concrete plant. Easy in that it's 1 cargo in, 1 out, compared to the machine shop and electronics plant and their 2 or 3 cargo inputs. A subsequent industry for ingots would be useful in driving up ingot prices and having the ore -> ingots convert more.

You can look at the Chile map though and occasionally find the furnaces not wanting to convert ceramics. The one that never makes money up in the mountains is attempting the rock > ceramics but because of its close prices it doesn't do it very well.

If you name some maps where you remember strange things happening with the furnace (or have any saved games from those maps) I wouldn't mind taking a look and seeing what's going on.

Maybe the ceramics don't need to be changed. Although the base prices of 20 and 40 seem so close that it becomes very dependant on the outside demand. It might be worth changing the price a little.

As for the ore -> ingots. If the mint is implimented, and potentially a jewelry factory/wire factory/etc or something else that would might use a 1:1 ratio, then the demand for ingots would stabilize it's pricing as well. [Ore's base price is 45, and ingots are 100, so it has a 55 price differential, it's just hard to maintain that without increased demand.] I think there is also 1 of the 3 recipes for the machine shop that doesn't use ingots. So there definitely needs to be another use/demand for ingots.

Edited: Adding a note for myself, the ore mines might be using the footprint of possibly the iron mine rather than of the coal mine. - Now Fixed.

Edit #3: Some testing would be required but potentially toys could be renamed to Valuables, and possibly increase their demand at houses to something similiar to goods, a jewelry factory could potentially have a ingots > valuables (toys) recipe. This along with a municipal mint building would help increase the demand for ingots.

[Gumboots]

In my test, just seeing what the inital base prices would do it was fairly accurate in seeing exactly how it would behave with a base price. If you let it run too long then the price of ceramics becomes depressed and it becomes less accurate. But the short run was accurate enough for the purposes I was testing for. When there is a price difference ~25 the furnace becomes slightly profitable. At 20 it's slightly unprofitable/break even. Which if it is around break even at a 20 point difference, than it is highly dependent on the demand to drive up the price of ceramics to make it profitable. Where as other industries if the cargoes are at their base prices, the industry will still be profitable, and the need for extra demand to drive up the output price isn't necessary the create a profit.

And I still agree and would plan on separating the 2 recipe streams. But only splitting it might not be enough for the rock --> ceramics recipe to work that well without increasing the price differential in the base prices.

I've never had a problem generating a demand for ceramics. I've found that building a furnace that only has access to rock, and plonking a concrete plant next to it, is a sure fire method of making good profit for both. I always expect to have to build or buy a demand industry for any output from anything, and I usually prefer to put them together so there are no supply problems and best profits all round. So on that basis I'm personally happy with the current behaviour, as long as the second production stream of the furnace isn't complicating matters.

[Gumboots]

Without a doubt I think both sides could use a little improving. Yes, it is easier to create demand for ceramics compared to ingots, as any brewery/distillery and the construction firm creates a demand, as well as the easy to use concrete plant. Easy in that it's 1 cargo in, 1 out, compared to the machine shop and electronics plant and their 2 or 3 cargo inputs. A subsequent industry for ingots would be useful in driving up ingot prices and having the ore -> ingots convert more.

You can look at the Chile map though and occasionally find the furnaces not wanting to convert ceramics. The one that never makes money up in the mountains is attempting the rock > ceramics but because of its close prices it doesn't do it very well.

When I was last playing that map through I thought about that furnace. I found that if I put a concrete plant next to it it suddenly started doing rather well, and the quarries went back to making good money too (this was after the nitrate price drop event). So that's not a hard one to fix. It just needs a demand for ceramics.

[RulerofRails]

Blackhawk, what kind of saves do you want? Here is a standard 1.06 one with Lirio's engines. What I have easy to access are mainly arop ones and most of those are too large to zip into less than 10MB.

This one is Novia Scotia. This map doesn't have Ore on it so it is essentially an example of how the Furnace should work without the Ore --> Ingots chain demand. I have two Furnaces working quite well that aren't next door to a Ceramic demand. Economy is in Prosperity. I am hauling away Ceramics pretty often but without waiting trains. Arop tends to make clusters of mines so that is a factor to think of here also. I guess a test would be to doze some and see what happens with fewer mines. Might try that later, no time now. On this map full yellow demand for Ceramics is about $80 a load. A note, testing with the Chile map may not be the most accurate as the terrain is quite harsh there.

[Hawk]

too large to zip into less than 10MB.

Attachments can be up to 15 MG.

[Blackhawk]

Off-topic from the furnace issue for a bit.

Stoker in the past mentioned he desired a smaller footprint for a quarry so they could be placed on hills/mountains. I've attached a couple pictures to get opinions. As to whether anyone else besides him would like a smaller footprint.

1. The current quarry. It takes a lot of space making it difficult to place on a hill/mountain. Potentially you can say it's large footprint makes it more realistic in that you shouldn't be able to place train tracks over the quarry.

Curent.jpg (41.46 KiB) Viewed 3516 times

2. Using the coal strip mine (repainted uranium mine) from TM. A little smaller footprint than the current quarry.

Option1.jpg (40.88 KiB) Viewed 3516 times

3. A repainted bauxite mine. Smallest footprint of the 3 options.

Option2.jpg (40.75 KiB) Viewed 3516 times