When chemicals become available, pharmaceutical factories stop requiring vegetables. But after 1975, they start requiring vegetables again. The .dat file does not explain why. Is anyone able to explain the thinking behind this, please?
1860-1920:
InputGood[0]=vegetables
InputCapacity[0]=30
InputSupplier[0]=2
InputFactor[0]=80
# Chemicals are not currently available before 1910;
# but many pharmecutical products were made with coal tar.
InputGood[1]=Kohle
InputSupplier[1]=1
InputCapacity[1]=50
InputFactor[1]=20
1920-55:
InputGood[0]=Chemicals
InputCapacity[0]=64
#InputSupplier[0]=1
InputFactor[0]=100
1955-75:
InputGood[0]=Chemicals
InputCapacity[0]=96
#InputSupplier[0]=1
InputFactor[0]=100
1975-end of game:
InputGood[0]=Chemicals
InputCapacity[0]=80
#InputSupplier[0]=1
InputFactor[0]=67
InputGood[1]=vegetables
InputCapacity[1]=40
#InputSupplier[1]=1
InputFactor[1]=33
Homeopathic remedies? ;D
Levity aside, I don't know the specific reason, but I'd have thought that vegetable and other plant-based extracts with potential medicinal uses, such as castor oil, would be available throughout the 20th Century. I don't know if they would count as mainstream medication however; very common medicines like ibuprofen and aspirin appear to be completely synthesised.
EDIT: Actually, my first comment may not be so far from the truth! Perhaps the the reappearance of vegetables is indeed intended to represent the sort of products available at 'health food' chains such as Holland & Barrett?
My commit of 2019 corrected the situation that, prior to game year 1910, the required chemicals input was not produced by any factory; I replaced that with coal (as in coal tar; which perhaps should itself be a by-product of... well, how detailed do we really want to be?). I have opened a pull request which consistently adds vegetable inputs.
There was a recent news story that a pharma company up in Canada developed a new drug to help fight COVID that is all plant based and that they found one of the plants in their drug has similar qualities to the COVID virus. I actually found this interesting.