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PR#142: Textile Export Warehouse

Started by Matthew, March 08, 2023, 04:52:30 PM

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Matthew

PR#142 is for a textile export warehouse. If accepted, this would improve the pakset's realism and gameplay.

Realism

This pakset is intended to simulate Great Britain and Ireland since 1750. By far the most distinctive feature of those islands' economy in that era was that they lived or died by trade. 1750 was about the last year that Great Britain in particular was able to feed itself. By the mid-1950s, less than 40% of the UK's food was grown or raised within its borders. The situation could have been different in Ireland, since it had the potential to feed its smaller population, but its incorporation into the British economic system meant that southern Ireland became a net exporter of food, with an increasing specialization in dairy and beef that is still continuing today. Everything else eaten in both islands had to be imported and therefore paid for with exports, which were themselves made largely from imported raw materials. Britain was the world's greatest example of an open trading economy.

At the moment, none of this is represented in the pakset, which presently models only the domestic economy. That is a very sensible limitation to what is presently achievable with Simutrans-Extended. I know that in the future there are dreams of modelling overseas trade through the use of portals, but James has indicated in the past that it is a lower priority than the consist/layover/maintenance project and the town growth rework, which potentially puts it into the 2030s. Nothing in this pak is an obstacle to those intentions, but what can be done in this decade?

What we can do is to represent the domestic consequences of international commerce. And the most important of these was the existence of the great docks of Belfast, Cardff, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, London, Southampton, etc. They had a pivotal influence on the development and structure of domestic transport links. The 1761 extension of the Duke of Bridgewater's pioneering Canal was built to link the oceanic port of Liverpool with the mill metropolis of Manchester and the east Lancashire coalfield. The world's first inter-city railway, the Liverpool & Manchester, was created to compete with that Canal for that oceanic goods traffic (passenger transport was a very secondary motivation). Brunel's Great Western Railway linked London with the transatlantic docks of Bristol. From Bridgewater to Brunel and beyond, the docks were critical nodes in the transport network. Or one might even say that these were, so to speak, the portals at which the domestic economy exchanged goods with the oceanic merchants. These paks provide a small step towards modelling this. This is a dockside warehouse, such as those found at the great docks.

Gameplay

This pakset is blessed with a diversity of industrial chain structures. However, my unscientific guess is that these are the two most common patterns:



Many small farms supply a large factory which feeds many small shops.



One or two large mines or quarries supply a large factory which feeds many small shops.

The shops are usually very small, often demanding less than five units of cargo per month, or less than one cartful, which makes freight operations finickity and often unprofitable.

These paks, combined with the existing textile mills and sheep farms, provide a different industrial structure, which is rare if not entirely absent before electric power stations appear:



Just like the great docks, this warehouse is a voracious consumer of goods and a large employer. Players will hopefully be eager to feed it, generating more competition, and it might even tempt someone into entering freight operations for the first time.

As mentioned earlier, simulating the onward movement of goods from the exporter's warehouse across the oceans is out of scope. This follows the precedents set by many existing consumer factories: we do not attempt to simulate the movement of milk from the dairy to the doorstep, coal from the coal merchant to the bunker, or gas from the gasworks to the hob, even though it would be possible to adapt Simutrans to this end if we wished.

Images

This warehouse is a simple model of the Bonded or Bute Warehouse at the Bute East Dock in Cardiff. I chose it because floor plans, photography, and historical data were easily available on the World Wide Web, which made the task much easier for a mediocre artist such as myself. Special thanks go to the Welsh taxpayers who funded Coflein, the online database of listed buildings in Wales.



I believe that this is the first time that a 3D model made in Blender has been converted into a Simutrans building that is more than 128 pixels high (i.e. two tiles required on the Z-axis). I will write a post on how to replicate this soon.

Most Simutrans buildings are drawn to face the road. This building was intentionally configured with its 'back' to the road so that the winches face the water whenever possible.

Parameters

The Bute Warehouse was opened in 1861, but it followed the model pioneered by Jesse Hartley & Philip Hardwick's design for the Albert Dock in Liverpool: an iron-framed warehouse that could handle goods while they were still on the ship (or more often, lighter), rather than being dumped on the quay before transfer to or from a warehouse. I have therefore set the start date as 1841, when the Albert Dock began construction (after a delay due to Parliamentary proceedings).

I have submitted a series of paks rather than a single one in order to make an innovative use of Extended's factory upgrade system. The first three variants of the exporter (1841, 1871 & 1901) each increase the warehouse's demand for textiles (and its workforce), in proportion to the dramatic growth of the UK's textile exports in this period. The final variant (1931) has a much lower demand, reflecting the collapse of such exports as the world turned to protectionism after the Great Depression. The dates attempt to dovetail with the 32-year period of obsolescence in the default simuconf.tab in order to emulate the rise and fall of the industry. I am not quite sure how this will interact with the factory expansion feature (as that requires operating a factory for many decades, which is the kind of test best suited to the Nightly builds) but I have tried to set sensible values.

The paks are currently set to appear on urban coastlines in the regions which had major ports facing the Atlantic, i.e. suited to oceanic rather than European trade, in line with the general pattern of UK textile exports in the 19th century. The distributionweight is moderately low since the intention is to have a very small number of significant ports.

Future Dreams

If these paks work well, then I have ideas for improving the artwork, adding more import/export warehouses, and requesting a feature in Standard that would make better dock artwork possible. But I would like to see whether the paks will be accepted before proceeding further, as I have already sunk many hours into this project.
(Signature being tested) If you enjoy playing Simutrans, then you might also enjoy watching Japan Railway Journal
Available in English and simplified Chinese
如果您喜欢玩Simutrans的话,那么说不定就想看《日本铁路之旅》(英语也有简体中文字幕)。

jamespetts

Thank you very much for the work on this, which I can see was considerable. I am impressed by the warehouse graphics, and would be most interested to learn your technique for producing larger buildings in the future (this deserves its own tutorial thread, I think).

I am somewhat concerned, however, that this warehouse concept will not be compatible with the planned export feature that you mention: I am not keen to add things to the pakset which are not fully compatible with future plans. Specifically, I am concerned that this will create significant anomalies when the new system comes implemented, and it is difficult to see how these can be overcome.

Another issue is this: the fairly recently introduced logistics system works on the basis that consumer industries' demand will fluctuate depending on the number of visiting passengers. Each visiting passenger in effect purchases products from the industry (unless the visitor demand be set to zero, in which case, the demand functions as before). This system also is not entirely consistent with the use of industries as exporters.

Another problem is likely to be that these warehouses will not, as in reality, cluster in docks, but rather will appear anywhere on the coastline (or, at least, on the coastline in cities or not in cities, depending on the graphics). Has any testing been done as to where these actually tend to appear in games?

As to the warehouse graphic itself, this is generally good, but two observations: (1) the texture, I think, seems a little too dark/saturated. I wonder whether you might see if you could reduce the saturation and very slightly increase the luminance? (2) There do not appear to be any doors at the back of the building:



I should be grateful for your and others' thoughts on the above issues and in particular the compatibility with planned features.
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