Giving Life to City Industry

[colonyan]

[main point: Treat city industry in a city as one distinct cargo producer.
They require raw material as conventional industry, they distribute their
product in a manner like passenger/mail but in one way]

(Explanation Starts)

Medical Equipment/Instrument
Research Equipment/Instrument
Industrial Equipment/Machinery/Robots
Commercial Supplies (Vending Machines, office supplies etc)
etc etc

There are many many type of industry which function with much smaller quantity
of cargo shipment than compared to already pak existing industries.
They are too numerous and small quantity to integrate as industry chain.

ST could make use of city industry more by making them actually produce some
kind of (preferably one unified cargo type) cargo Which are to be distributed little
like passenger/mail manner.

For an example.

-1-
A city has a city industry block.
City industry wants more secure raw material supply to expand their business
and contribute to the prosperity of their home town/city.

-2-
So they decided to build a raw material warehouse in the city so transporter
can bring the raw material there.

-3-
Once they get the raw material, they start produce cargo.
Customers are everywhere in the world.
Other city commercial/industry/industry chain factories and raw producers
are their customers. Transporter must deliver their products to every
corner of the map world.

(end of example)

Main goal of this feature proposal is to provide player new type of challenge.

1. Passenger/Mail
They depart from everywhere and go to everywhere. (although preference is
present)

2. Industry chain
They work in structure way varying in its complexity as defined in pak file.
Their transportation requirement increases as number of final consumer increases.

3. City Industry
This is little mixture of 1 and 2.
City industry will import raw material (or any kind of cargo as pak designer wants)
and export product (one or very few cargo type preferably which has piece goods property)
as if passengers/mail departed from a central station.

Thus in short, they consume raw material(s) as an industry and generate cargo like
a large passenger/mail attraction to everywhere(other city industry or commercial and
industry chain factories/mine/fart etc) in the map.

More Variables
a. City industry in different cities could require different type of raw material(s) or none.
b. Should their raw material requirement depend on what? Size of city industry or the consumer demand?
   Then how to handle those demand?
c. How should city industry and residential/commercial buildings relate/balance as of the growth?
d. How to handle raw material producer placement.
e. How should the cargo departure contribute to the growth? Only the host town/city or cities near by?

after thoughts
I think the cities having their own industry(city industry) must benefit in their fast growth.
Commercial sector grow around those industry as derivative.
Villages/Towns near by could grow as bed town sucking(stealing) the growth partially from
the industry city? We can start giving the characteristics to the cities based on this.

Since this touches different game function/mechanism, I wanted to hear what people think
how it should function before making extension request if anyone find this interesting enough.

[grampybear]

 This is a great idea, now only if it could be implemented.  I have played Pak128 with this concept for some time now, taking city buildings,modifying the code and making them an "industry".  Ex, a restruant might use fish, meat, beer and wine; a small mini brewery for specialty beers needs grain,Glass, to be exported everywhere; the local pharmacy buys newspapers, natural food supplements; and the farmers market has cheese,wine vegetables. All these examples need small quantities of things. I generally build a small warehouse on the town limits and allow only small panel trucks to make deliveries into the town.  Some of the problems I have run into is the warehouse soon fills up with one item and stops receiving (playing just in time) also shortly into the game strange things start showing up directly at the small business ( cross connection)

[colonyan]

I have played Pak128 with this concept for some time now, taking city buildings,modifying the code and making them an "industry".  Ex, a restruant might use fish, meat, beer and wine; a small mini brewery for specialty beers needs grain,Glass, to be exported everywhere; the local pharmacy buys newspapers, natural food supplements; and the farmers market has cheese,wine vegetables. All these examples need small quantities of things.

This sounds interesting. Did you make them as normal industry or did you coded something
completely different in the way how it works?

Some of the problems I have run into is the warehouse soon fills up with one item and stops receiving (playing just in time) also shortly into the game strange things start showing up directly at the small business ( cross connection)

Its little inconvenient that user must control how much to bring to the final consumer.
Such as you make excessively long route for schedule to control the transportation capacity
to accommodate small consumer.

I wanted to see many many small consumers instead of few large end consumer.
Especially in the area of food/grocery/pharmacy and such in the contrast to the power plant for
an example.

[grampybear]

 I have always felt the game has many fine buildings that are used for eye candy only, so when I deceided that I wanted to build small cities I started making changes and since I can't draw a straight line with a ruler I make use of what we have. Changing the obj from building to factory and then adding input or output quantities, this allows the new industry to show up in the factory build menu. Example of my restraunt atttached, you will also note that I have other "goods" changes. To serve the restruant I create a "wholesale food warehouse outside of town where deliveries and pickups made.

[greenling]

Good morning
grampybear
your Dat file be write in old Style they are posible that the Makeobj not understand.
And you have be write goodtyps they are not be declare in all pak128 sets.
Then i be missing for what a Pakset the new modell be are it!
Please declare for what´s for pakset you want work!
Thanks

[Carl]

An interesting idea.

I would have thought there aren't very many goods which are distributed entirely by delivery -- most goods are distributed centrally, i.e. by users coming to pick them up (think food from supermarkets, etc.) So mostly this can be simulated with city industries that consume goods but don't produce any. Once again, think of the supermarket in pak64: this consumes various goods (canned food, etc) but the assumption is that customers will come to the supermarket to collect these.

Many of the realistic functions you're describing could, I think, be simulated by having more end-user industries in cities using the existing functionality. As it happens, I'm making a few new such industries for the next version of pak64.experimental, to simulate just this sort of thing.

However, there are disadvantages to this. Industries pop up pretty randomly and their appearance can't be controlled nearly as nicely as (for example) attractions can. So if I make a "office" as a factory building to consume paper, there's no telling when or where it will show up. I'd love to be able to do one of the following things:

a) Specify "build_time" parameters for some city factories, so as to better control when and where they appear

or

b) Have non-factory buildings (which can be controlled in the above way) consume goods


I take it that (b) isn't too far from your thoughts, colonyan.

[grampybear]

 I play ST in free mode and not to see how much money I can make but rather what layout I can build.  I place all my factories manually so I can control where they "pop up". I also like to use central warehouse for larger distribution. So for my supermarket industry I have a  market in each city as end user selling such things as meat, vegetables, beer, milk, and cheese but all coming from one large warehouse which only serves the supermarkets. Each store receives two types of trucks, one for piece goods and one for cooled goods. The goods to the warehouse might come from several suppliers across the map, after all there is more than one type of beer. My farmers market ( an end user ) is supplied directly from the wine grower, or the local farmer.     

[Carl]

Yes, that's one very efficient way to ensure everything ends up where you want it.

I should have been clearer that when I said "control", I meant control of the automatic behaviour of factories, through coding the pakset.

[colonyan]

Thanks you for sharing idea carlbaker, grumpybear.

I should add few points. City industry is 1x1 always.
"city industry" I mean in my very first post in this thread is the ensemble of
city industry buildings (which build same manner as residential/commercial) buildings
in a city. "A city industry" will share their dedicated raw material depot.
But individual city industry 1x1 buildings will produce raw material to be picked
if it is covered with cargo station. Or alternatively they build their own
product export warehouse so the pick up is concentrated.

So its not like if one specific mini industry building which called "city industry" pop up
which by him self consumes raw material and produces products.

I shall update my post to make it easier to understand.