Hello
I noticed a little annoying thing with power stations 1885-1915 year. They seem to bunch together a bit to much.
Also coal mines closing all the time in this time period are terrible - the game should only choose the ones that are not in use. It breaks multiple chains at one time and brings the company close to bankruptcy.
Thank you for your feedback. Issues such as these are actually very complex to solve. Firstly, there is no code anywhere in the game that tries to distribute industries (including power stations) in any particular way in the map. The code for industry placement is unchanged from Standard. Adding code for even distribution would actually be quite complex (simply spreading them evenly around the map, which would be quite a complex algorithm in itself, would not do, as there is no point in forcing power stations to be built in a wilderness if all the population is only in certain parts of the map, for example).
As to the closing coal mines, the idea is that older types of coal mine are replaced with newer types. They can either upgrade to newer types, or close and in due course be replaced by others elsewhere (as would happen in reality when mines became exhausted).
Is it so complex? Would not a simple check that if there are more than 3 power stations within the city limit be sufficient?
As for the mines I was afraid that this is the case. I agree that it sounds sensible, but also very hard to play. Imagine that within this period you connected many mines to industries. Within 20 years you loose all the profit from infrastructure you built and go instantly bankrupt without a warning as all chains relying on coal get liquidated. Thats extremely annoying. And few years later (after you rebuilt all the surviving chains of course) all the power stations get the same treatment. No small transportation company can survive that. It is a little like godzilla wrecking havoc in Simcity.
The solution would probably be increasing the probability of upgrade or switch of supplier rather than closing if the industry was used by the player within the last 3 years end extending the period of replacement by 5-10 years.
In real life it is fine as you now how long more or less the mine will last, and industries usually just switch suppliers - worse case few shareholders get thrown on to the streets and few commit suicide. Not a big deal.
I will need to consider increasing the upgrade probability. I am currently staying with my parents, and cannot work on the code easily, as I have not managed to set up a graphical debugger on the computer that I use here. What sort of upgrade rate were you seeing, and what sort of rate accords with reality so far as you can find from reliable sources?
Has anyone else any thoughts/data (especially data) on these issues?
To warn the player about the closing mines for earlier.
Use a limited amount of mineral reserves, with a large volume and a smaller number of mines (complicate the code).
Open in place of closed mines (or close to them) new factories, for example, quarries of sand, stone or clay.
Make garbage collection from them
Use it for new type curiosity - "abandoned mine"
I should love to have a proper simulation of mineral reserves one day, but, given current priorities and limitations on available coding time, that is likely to be far off unless we can get a few more coding volunteers.
My skill too low. Maybe to future.