Other things that were discussed for 1.07 that I remember right now are:
- Food which would replace Medicine - there were some plans to include the Cannery and maybe Cereal Factory.
- Some cargoes with low demands: Aluminum, Dye, Paper, Rubber and Tires. (Aluminum introduction could be shifted forward {see below}. The others could use muni building demands.)
- Introducing Furniture as a cargo much earlier. This would help make some demand for Dye. Realistic also. Possibly a smaller output industry, or just use the current one?
Ok, now some questions
Thinking about the Assembly Line idea. The idea is good, clean and simple. However, I noticed that TM has the Industrial Assembly Line appear in 1890. This is sensible, but I don't think that an Assembly Line makes realistic sense before then. Maybe we need to make a smaller output industry for before this time, such as the Hardware Store from TM (renamed of course, maybe Manufacturing Workshop {?}). This could represent the more localized manufacturing from earlier eras. Maybe Furniture could use another TM building and be similar.
Stoker had this idea for early low-output industries. It has popped back up in the discussion a couple more times. I haven't done any testing. There would need to be a definite advantage to build the currently available full output industry (i.e. Furniture Factory) when they are introduced. Is it possible to make an industry obsolete, i.e. it wont appear in the build list anymore? Obviously any industries already built or seeded on the map would stay. Maybe we could change their conversion rate to be less than ideal, making the player want to sell/avoid/replace them. For example 3 Lumber = 2 Furniture, instead of 1 Lumber = 1 Furniture.
This brings up some other questions as far as when to integrate the introduction of cargoes. There are a bunch of new cargo additions between 1880 and 1910, and then only Plastic, Uranium and Waste are left to be introduced in the rest of the 20th century. Gumboots pointed out that Aluminum wasn't used even in aircraft before 1920. We could realistically move its introduction forward to 1930 or maybe even further forward. Wikipedia has a nice little chart that shows world production of Aluminum went over 5M tons around 1960 and has been steadily climbing since then to around 45M tons today.
If Machinery is to become available in 1860 and it is the "main" demand for Ingots, what happens to Ingots before this? Also what to do with the Tool and Die producing Parts/ToolsDies/ForgedMetal, before Steel is available in 1856?
Maybe we could keep the current Iron to Goods conversion at the Tool and Die prior to 1856. Would want to stop it much sooner than 1876 though, as the overlap would create a problem of what is getting produced Goods vs Parts/ToolsDies/ForgedMetal. A couple of years grace period would be nice. We could change it to be less than ideal (4Iron->2Goods) in these transition years.
Lets take the Manufacturing Workshop and use it for an early chain such as (Ignots->Goods) before 1860. In 1856 we can add one or more chains involving Parts/ToolsDies/ForgedMetal. By 1860 could be integrated so that we could have combinations of Parts/ToolsDies/ForgedMetal with Wood and Ingots. Depending on testing, we should probably phase out Ingots demand after 1860 if we want to keep most of the Ingot demand for the Machine Shop.
I am trying to think of a reason why we need to justify having a Tool & Die convert Steel to Parts/ToolsDies/Forged Metal. I am almost feeling it is a little unnecessary. Could Ingots possibly be called SoftMetals or Light Metals? That sound really lame, but I am trying to justify why the Machine Shop would combine Parts/ToolsDies/Forged Metal, with Ingots, even though Ingots aren't processed as much. The supposition I am making here is that Steel is much harder to process than the more easily workable metals such as Tin, Zinc, Copper, Lead. Ingots is very vague for these things, but probably still the best general-yet-semi-specific term to use.
I am just thinking here and asking many more questions than answering. Would love to hear what anyone thinks.
sidekikd34, for me, ToolsDies is the best suggestion for T&D output thus far. Thanks.