[devel-new a6879f1a08] Industry placement and capacity

[MCollett]

• While I completely agree that the former 'intercontinental milk trade' syndrome needed to be curtailed, the current industry generation rules err substantially in the opposite direction. Suppliers and consumers are almost invariably placed so close to one another (and to towns) that there is simply no money to be made by connecting them.  And while any prospective steel baron would be delighted to find an iron mine and a coal mine just a mile away from one another, that rarely happens in the real world; typically you can build a foundry near to either iron or coal, but not both.  The very close placement has the additional consequence that town growth easily swallows up the primary producers that mostly should remain out in the countryside.  I suggest that 'typical' distances between connected industries should be of the order of the distance between neighbouring towns.
• Production and consumption capacities are systematically underreported.  As an extreme example, a hardware shop reports 'Max 2 units per month", but in fact consumes 41 crates of hardware each month (with no passenger or mail boost).

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your feedback. As to no. 1, may I ask what era that you are using? It might be helpful to see a saved game. As to no. 2, I will need to look into this. This is a separate issue, and it might have been easier from a bug tracking perspective to have put this into a separate thread.

[MCollett]

may I ask what era that you are using? It might be helpful to see a saved game.

I have uploaded my current game to
http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/Tamworth_1484205993_1806-11.sve

I started in 1800, and the savegame is from 1806.  I'm mostly just running passenger coaches, and the only industry chain I have connected is the one feeding the hardware shop in Thetford (551,394) (which presumably accounts for the town's explosive growth from an initial population of 3440 to its current 13720 in just 6 years!).  Besides the spectacular overconsumption (or under-prediction) of the hardware shop itself, the iron mine at (563,389) can actually produce over 100 tons per month, despite a claimed maximum production of 36 tons (and a mere 8% passenger boost).

You can see that all the industry chains are tightly clustered near to a single town each.  The growth of Thetford has brought not only the ironworks, but even the iron and coal mines themselves, into suburbia.

[jamespetts]

Thank you very much for that report: that is most helpful. I have now found and fixed a miscalculation concerning the distance of industries from one another. I have yet to look into the other issue.

Edit: I am somewhat confused about the other issue: with the exception of passenger boost, the "production" graph on the production/boost tab seems consistent with the "max. x units per month" figure.

[MCollett]

I am somewhat confused about the other issue: with the exception of passenger boost, the "production" graph on the production/boost tab seems consistent with the "max. x units per month" figure.

Yes, Production/Boost->Production agrees with the stated maximum (including the expected effects of the passenger boost), but it's lying.  The true figures (i.e. those matching the freight actually transported) are given by Goods needed->Consumed for the shop, and Goods needed->Produced for the mine.

[wlindley]

Suppliers and consumers are almost invariably placed so close to one another (and to towns) that there is simply no money to be made by connecting them.

The problem I see is that a simutrans shop is just as happy fulfilling its monthly quota with expensive imported goods as locally produced ones. If there were some price- and distance-driven supply/demand mechanism so our newspaper shops would demand nearly-unlimited local newspapers but only a small number of foreign papers, that would solve all these problems, no?