New Cargo info, and a request!

[wsherrick]

Wolverine has brought up an important point. What time period are we discussing? Most of these new ideas seem to be aimed at post WWII. That is fine, but a balance of new products over time is best. For example, glass making made great progress during the steam age. Sand for glass, glass for bottles, bottles to the brewery. Glass to houses for windows. Sand for concrete of course after 1890. Try to think of how the uses for an existing material or product can expand as time rolls along or how to combine these existing products into new ones. Aluminium currently is demanded only by tool and die companies. That is one existing product that could be expanded a lot. Aluminum could be used in any industry that requires steel or we could bring back the old cannery from RRT2.

[Gwizz]

In looking at the new cargo list, I got to thinking about how the cargo items are hauled through-out history.
(Food for thought)

1. Mixed cargos, (general merchandise)
2. One cargo car loads or
3. Unit trains

1. Generally: Dye, Ceramices, Elrctronics and medicine are mixed cargos. Money as cargo in early days were often moved in mail cars. I'm sure there would be exceptions for all cargos, both way.

My not sure how to paint the box cars for general cargos with a broad brush to be both supply and demand cargo.
Generally these cars could have about the same cargo rot time.


2. Concrete and Machinery were most often One cargo loads.

3. Ore and Rock most often are unit train loads over a distance.

Rot time for 2. & 3. could be 5.5


Possibly reskinning the food box car as a general cargo car would be most realistic.

I question money as a cargo. In the early days money was a regional supply. Later railroads did help move money but the use of a special car was limited. This is not to say that money could not be used as a cargo on a map.

Other Questions:

Which of these cargos might need their own buildings?
Could a new building simplify a cargo chain?
How much room in the game engine do we have for new buildings?

[Wolverine@MSU]

I assume that you can ADD a demand to an existing building. If so here are my thoughts on where cargoes could go:

Rock/Sand - Warehouse for now, if buildings become available then Cement Factory, Asphalt Plant, contruction/Building Companies.

Ore - Warehouse for now. Later - Smelter

Dye - Textile Mill, Warehouse. Later - Newspaper/Printing Plant, Paint Factory

Ingots - Warehouse, Tool & Die. Later - Banks, Electronics Factory

Machinery - All factories (Auto, T&D, Lumber Mill, Refinery, Meat Processor, Aluminum Mill, Power Plants etc.) and Warehouse. Demand should be relatively low compared to main inputs for the factories.

Money - Houses, all Factories/Plants (payroll), Dept. Store/Retail, Ports, (in theory, all buildings should demand money, although to different degrees). Later. - Banks and any other new buildings.

Ceramics - Warehouse, Dept. Store/Retail, Oil Refineries (refractory catalysts), Bakeries. Later - Aerospace Manufacturers.

Concrete - Warehouses, Houses (general city demand). Later - Construction/Building Companies, Airports?

Electroncs - All buildings (after 1950s) with demand adjusted to suit needs.

Medicine - Warehouses, Houses (gen'l city demand), Dept/Retail. Later - Hospital, Nursing Home.

I don't know much about how demands are specified in the game or what might be reasonable base prices. If possible could someone post a list of cargo base prices as currently used in the game. It would be easier to come up with a price if we knew what other cargoes fetched. These are just my quick thoughts. Please feel free to add to/subtract from the suggestions.

[Hawk]

As for machinery, I agree-demand should be low but the price should be high, if it's controllable.

[pure al]

Excellent guys, all very valid and helpful points. Hopefully Milo will pop round and answer a few of the more technical questions, but what I can say is that the cargo’s date is set in the cty files, so yes we can make them appear at appropriate times. At the moment there aren’t going to be new buildings, these may come later with an expansion pack of some sorts. As is my understanding, these cargos (the main 10) can only be produced at ports/warehouses and Department stores, while demand can probably be added to any building.

Here’s what the icons look like currently:


Notice the newest icons at the end. (I spelt Deuterium wrong above)

And many thanks go to Hawk for letting us use his cleaner for the detergent icon:
[Image removed]

[Hawk]

Wrinkle reducer? I think you better scratch that. It's not working to well on me.

[milo]

Current cargo base prices:

Code: Select all

Alcohol         100
Aluminum         85
Ammunition      160
Automobiles     200
Bauxite          30
Cheese          235
Chemicals        30
Clothing         95
Coal             30
Coffee           45
Corn             25
Cotton           30
Diesel          100
Fertilizer       80
Furniture       220
Goods           170
Grain            30
Iron             30
Livestock        90
Logs             30
Lumber           85
Mail             80
Meat            195
Milk            110
Oil              40
Paper            85
Passengers       85
Plastic          85
Produce          45
Pulpwood         30
Rice             30
Rubber           30
Steel            85
Sugar            35
Tires            85
Toys            175
Troops           50
Uranium         200
Waste            40
Weapons         235
Wool             30

[Wolverine@MSU]

Thanks milo. I'll have a list of my prices soon.

What are the cargoes to be added? Do you have a final list?

[pure al]

Hey guys, thought you'd like to know that the cargo icons are on the ftp in Cargo_Icons.zip.

Milo there are a few in there that you haven't received yet. I take it all the tga files were working and you didn't have any problems?

[milo]

To be honest, I've been fighting the code side and haven't had time to build the cargo files yet. Also trying to figure out if it's possible to change building behavior based on the map file version, but that seems like too complex a change.

Any thoughts on playtesting the new cargos? Should we just throw them out there, or should we do a Beta 5?

[milo]

How much room in the game engine do we have for new buildings?

That's a good question. There are a total of 110 effect slots for buildings. RT3 comes with 68 building types and fills another 22 slots with ports and warehouses. The Gwizz Port is in enough scenarios that we should reserve a slot for it, leaving 19 slots free for new buildings. Adding more buildings probably causes warehouse 'Add Building' effects to start vanishing off the list, followed by port 'Add Building' effects. I haven't seen any tests in the code for maximum building counts, but I don't have enough buildings to test if the game works with more than 98 installed.

I'm strongly tempted to swap the positions of the ports and the warehouses in the effect list. Because ports require very precise water/land positions, 'Add Building' usually fails for them and isn't really usable in a scenario unless there's a lot of water. That could potentially give us another 11 building slots.

[milo]

Ran into a hitch - turns out that if only a port or warehouse produces a cargo, the cargo isn't considered active. None of the new cargos are showing up because there's no 'real' building producing them. I'll have to research this one more; not sure if it would break existing scenarios to let warehouses enable cargos.

I think I can squeeze enough room out of the translation table for 19 more entries (= 19 objects usable in both English and German scenarios). All of these will be used for cargo names. In addition, there are probably another dozen slots or so holding values that aren't used in the game, such as car names. I'm not sure how we'll handle translating building names yet; this could cause problems when trying to swap scenarios with Molse's crew.

How the devil did Ned Fumpkin build so much so fast? The sophistication of what he constructed for Atlantis is staggering.

[EPH]

Milo, I'm not sure what you are referring to here. In British Miracle the only things producing cotton are ports and warehouses. Cotton is enabled as a good in the master list, but there are no cotton plantations in the game. The ports and warehouses produce cotton just fine.

[milo]

You have cotton farms enabled, even if they can't actually be generated by a region; that's why cotton show up as an available cargo. If you disable cotton farms but leave your warehouses enabled, cotton vanishes. I don't have a 'real' building that produces concrete yet, so even if I create a warehouse that supplies concrete, it doesn't show up as an available cargo.

[EPH]

OK, I see that now. So the 'enable cargo' list in the editor is generated on the fly from buildings in the database?

[bombardiere]

About the newspapers. While in general, I believe, that these are cargoes, which belongs under what it transported in Mail. However I was leafing trough a book, which contains pictures of British Rails Mk1 coaches. And hey there was a picture of blue Mk1 Full Brake coach, which had a word Newspapers written with large letters on its side. So at least BR did transport newspapers with special cars.

I will try to look into prices too. Hopefully I get my version of the list ready this weekend.

BTW about cargo availability. I fairly certain that I did a scenario, which imported cotton and coffee without the farms being enabled. No actually I am sure! I checked it and I have a working scenario, which doesn’t have these building available, but I can still get cargoes from ports/warehouse.

It could be so that the game needs the building in general. It doesn’t need to be in a scenario, but it must be there in the game’s system.

[pure al]

Milo if we make the Department store create a few new cargos (or as many as possible really) it could be the building that activates these cargos in our scenarios. You said before that not too many scenarios had used this building, so this shouldn't effect anything. I can't remember exactly how may cargos can be created per building, but it's worth a shot.

bombardiere the newspapers cargo is not going to be a main cargo anyway, so we don't have to worry about it too much. It'll be up to the scenario designer to choose whether he wants to use it or not.

Thanks for helping out with the cargo prices list. Everyone else is also very welcome to say what prices these new cargos should be. (Milo posted a price list of original cargos above)

[milo]

BTW about cargo availability. I fairly certain that I did a scenario, which imported cotton and coffee without the farms being enabled. No actually I am sure! I checked it and I have a working scenario, which doesn’t have these building available, but I can still get cargoes from ports/warehouse.

Does your scenario work under 1.06? Wonder if adding express cargo to warehouses broke something.

[milo]

Found it. The rules for whether a cargo is available are slightly more complicated than I thought. Here's a list, where earlier conditions outweigh later conditions, and all cargos start in a 'limbo' state:

• Cargos that do not exist yet in the current game year (or do not exist on the start date of a tutorial) are disabled.
• If the wartime special condition is enabled, then anything that isn't meat, cheese, weapons, ammo, diesel, or clothing is disabled.
• Passengers and mail are enabled.
• For each port or warehouse enabled in a region containing at least one building, all cargos it generates are enabled.
• If Barracks are enabled, then Troops are enabled.
• If Recycling Plants are enabled, then Waste is enabled.
• If a building is type-2 (farms + factories), is not a port or warehouse, is not a recycling plant, and is enabled in the Industry page, then all of the cargos it generates are available.
• All remaining cargos are disabled.

Implications:

• Custom-placed ports and warehouses do not contribute to cargo availability, but ports and warehouses potentially generated by a region do. I think this explains why Bombardiere and I are seeing different behavior. Thought about just always enabling any cargo specified in a warehouse or port consist, but that breaks several scenarios that have unused recipes. It's also too expensive to scan all placed buildings for cargo generation.
• Type-4 buildings (stores, windmills, school houses, stadiums, etc) won't contribute to cargo availability, though I believe they can produce cargo.
• Troops are not a wartime cargo!
• The express skins (Prisoners, Newspaper, probably Money and Valuables) may cause trouble, as they won't have special cases like the 'Troops' entry above without additional code.

Tested part of this by adding my test warehouse to region 00's distribution - sure enough, the new cargos showed up.

[Edit - discovered more details about the region rule]

[milo]

Cool. Got most of the new cargos working. Looks as if we're still short an Ore icon, though I can probably do some manipulation of the Bauxite icon if necessary. Several of the icons, particularly Rock (Gravel), may need a single-pixel black outline to avoid becoming blobs against the green dialog background. Overall, though, this set looks terrific.

I'm also considering dropping Money to a Mail skin and introducing 'Crystals' as its replacement; while there's not a huge volume in them, they double as a futuristic cargo and as an input to production of Electronics and Valuables.

For some reason RT3 doesn't like the TGAs. Converting them back to .DDS files seemed to satisfy it. Not sure why. Sorry for wasting your time, pure al!

Still don't have skins working. Worst case, I can build an external utility that alters the cargos in a .gmp; that approach has the advantage that we can override anything about the cargo when skinning it, rather than just the name and icon, but makes scenario creation and editing a little more cumbersome.