Alternative Manufacturing Recipes for Products

[Brutus]

So I had an interesting idea recently and tried it out.

I added a version of Canned Soup that replaced Aluminium with Steel as Input but also retained the one with Aluminium in the list.

The end result was that you could make Canned Soup with both Aluminium and Steel as inputs. Aside from a few UI issues it is actually completely functional in game and can be used even as-is. You can totally sell your steel canned soup in a retailing store.

Therefore I think it would be an awesome functionality and addition if in a future update to capitalism support was given for the ability to produce multiple versions of a product with proper UI support and manufacturing guide support.

This allows for all kinds of interesting alternative production methods.

Many car parts such as engine and car body could benefit from this change as well where Steel could be replaced with Aluminium. Beds can be made from Steel or Aluminium rather than Timber. This way the producer can decide which input to choose for a certain product depending on quality and availability. Often times especially in the beginning of the game, you don't have the spare cash to buy a resource location. This would provide an ideal alternative method for many products and provide variety in how to manufacture goods.

I was wondering whether such a thing was feasibly given full support in the current engine? (question directed at David)

And I was curious whether a lot of you modders and players think this is an interesting idea to pursue as possible addition to their own mods (question to the community).

I for one think it's a very fun and cool idea

[David]

I was wondering whether such a thing was feasibly given full support in the current engine? (question directed at David)

It sounds very interesting. In fact, I don't recall anyone doing something like this - you are the first one who pulled off such a trick . Would you please send me your mod file and I will look at it with the dev team and get back to you.

[Brutus]

I was wondering whether such a thing was feasibly given full support in the current engine? (question directed at David)

It sounds very interesting. In fact, I don't recall anyone doing something like this - you are the first one who pulled off such a trick . Would you please send me your mod file and I will look at it with the dev team and get back to you.

It's incredibly easy, I'm surprised nobody has tried it before, all you have to do is edit the manufacturing.dbf and add an extra line for the new recipe. In this case I duplicated the Canned Soup and Canned Corn line and replaced Aluminium as Input with Steel. Packed it up and ran it to see it if crashed for duplicate entries in the same file. To my surprise it didn't. It actually functions albeit there are some issues that make it inconvenient to use at the moment.

I can't seem to post the entire mod file here so you'll have to take it from my google.drive directly.

link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
(these are just the vanilla files from the modkit with only the manufacturing.dbf file edited to test out this gimmick)

Some issues I've found currently in order of appearance, mostly entirely UI related.

> In the manufacturing guide. Whether you put an alternative recipe first or last in the manufacturing.dbf order does not matter, it will still be random which one will be shown 'first' by the in-game guide every startup. Sometimes it's the Canned Soup using Aluminium that comes up first and other times it's the recipe that uses Steel as input that comes up first. It's entirely random at startup of a game which one comes 'first'.
> The recipe that isn't shown 'first' will not register whether there are available inputs for its production in the manufacturing guide. Even if there is Steel and Frozen Chicken for example, if the game decides that Aluminium and Frozen Chicken recipe comes 'first', then it will not give the green tick after a product listing to indicate the availability of resources for an alternative recipe.
> Whichever recipe is 'first' will be used when automatically setting up a factory for a product using the automated factory setup button from the firm itself (starting from the booklet and using the ''Setup Factory" button shown in the example). Meaning whatever recipe the manufacturing guide lists 'first', it will always quick setup that one up by default even if you are on the recipe page that uses Steel as Input as in this example image.
> When using the toggle analysis mode button in a factory, it will not properly function for an alternative recipe that isn't listed 'first' in the manufacturing guide. It will show Aluminium as Input even if Steel was the actual input for this recipe or vica versa which ever recipe the game decides is 'first' that playtime.

+ However in the manufacturing guide, you can actually use the little directional arrows at the top right to switch between alternative recipes for a product. This is entirely functional funnily enough. In the possible scenario that alternative recipes are implemented, it would be nice if there was a second set of arrow buttons here that listed the number of alternative recipes and allowed you to switch between recipes for this specific product.

Other then these issues, it will work perfectly fine if you setup the inputs in the factory manually. You can produce both recipes and combine them as they will simply churn out the same normal Canned Soup/Corn product only using different inputs. Quality may also be different and quality weights due to the different recipes may also be different but this may actually provide interesting mechanics for modders to play with where product quality can be made more or less dependent on the materials used.

AlternativeRecipes.png (498.68 KiB) Viewed 1576 times

As you can see the game is perfectly happy to produce Canned Soup using both Aluminium and Steel as Inputs even in the same factory.

MultipleRecipeInput.png (200.74 KiB) Viewed 1574 times

[paulwoman]

I love the idea There is a need for a poll ^^

The problem with "alternative recipes" is that they also need different names... Which in fact does not make it so "alternative".

For example, the current "bed". It would need to be called "Wooden bed" and "Metal bed".

[Brutus]

The problem with "alternative recipes" is that they also need different names... For example, the current "bed". It would need to be called "Wooden bed" and "Metal bed".

Bed by itself is ambiguous enough that it can refer to any kind of bed. Single-beds, double-bed, king-sized beds, children's beds. Made of steel, aluminium, timber or plastic for all I care, they are all 'Bed' in my opinion and should compete for the same 'Bed' market. I personally prefer not to have different product names in this case as my original idea was to simply have alternative ways to manufacture goods that ultimately serve the same product market. Naming conventions based on the input just makes it more confusing and harder to implement than is necessary, though I admit I do somewhat see the appeal of your idea. It does sound somewhat immersive if the game decides to name the product ''Metal Bed'' or ''Wooden Bed'' depending on the Input used. However ultimately I don't want these to be different markets or appear as if they are different products.

It becomes a pain for some goods as well such as the Canned Corn or Canned Soup. I mean does it really add anything if it said ''Steel Canned Soup'' or ''Aluminium Canned Soup''? For the consumer it's just Canned Soup. They tend to not nearly care as much what the Soup came in.

[saffgee]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but I've already been doing this in my mod for quite a while
The original idea was for my historical mod and that it would allow products to be improved over time by phasing out old manufacturing methods and bringing in new ones, but allowing for both to be used simultaneously for a period. The increased use of plastics after the 1950's was my inspriation to experiment with this. Obviously you need to create a few bridge products to make this work (ie you can't phase out steel entirely or any of the other staples) so you create a sub-step to give you that flexibility or you just use products that really did get phased out by better ones, like Bakelite for example. Using this feature was also going to be one of my core enhancements for the whole electronics piece, where certain manufacturing techs and materials simply become phased out over time and are replaced by better ones, thus allowing for a seamless transition over the years. A case in point was when adding the nine generations of console and for televisions, where not only the tech changed dramatically over the years, but also the specific materials used (a key feature of my mod is the number of detailed and very specific product inputs, which does make this a bit easier).
I've never been a fan of the customisation element of the game, and after playtesting with multiple manufacturing blueprint it was clear it was stable enough to be mainstream as a feature and would replace customisation for me. In any event it was useful to differentiate between distinct methods of producing and selling goods as an ongoing concern, not just historically and for phasing out - this was the enhancement I allude to in my Mod teaser ("mind blown"). I did actually mention I'd successfully play-tested this feature to you David on discord, but I guess it went under with all the other stuff we were discussing. I genuinely don't remember if I included one or two examples of this feature in my latest release, but it would have only been for a few products (I think Lager was one), as I've been largely holding the feature back for the big release which unfortunately is loooooong overdue now. The reason why people may have never noticed it until now is because you need to use the forward/back arrows to navigate between the multiple blueprints as the overview itself only shows one product per line and as discussed in this thread, the AI cannot use it as far as I can tell.

Brutus you did identify some of the issues with it as it stands, but these are actually not that bad and hopefully easy to fix - for one on the order of the recipes, in my game, the same recipe always shows first regardless of whether you start a new game or any time you load up, and if it were random this would not be the case, therefore there is certainly an underlying logic to it. I haven't exhaustively investigated this and tbh I don't remember as it was a while ago that I was playing around with it, but I'm fairly certain there is a way to affect it even if its not the order in the manufacturing file. I'll try to remember what it was.
Using the manufacturers guide when you setup a factory it does indeed continue to spawn the "first" blueprint into the factory, despite the alternate blueprint being selected. I would suggest this is one of the easier elements to fix though and was on my wishlist to ask David for with my 2.1 release.
One way to get the AI to use the alternate blueprints though is simply to phase one of them out (need bridge products for this as I said before). Not as elegant as I'd like, but it works. The bigger issue I found was that when pushing the envelope on these kind of design features, the AI rarely manages to keep up. David and team have made some enhancements over the last year though and many of my early mod features have now started to work a lot better, so I do feel there has been improvement on this front. I'm therefore hopeful that the AI will use this feature correctly as and when it is fixed.

Either way, I guess my secret is out now and its not like I had a copyright on it anyway....it is a cool feature and it definitely adds more flavour for the player, even if the AI struggles. I've been playtesting my mod iterations as I've been going along and having well thought through manufacturing options is really fun. In my current version for example its cheaper to use plastic bottles for milk, but I set the quality lower for the milk (by virtue of tweaking the numbers in the manufacturing sheet) and even though they are produced faster (by changing production speed), it is ultimately all about the fine tuning between the different elements in both manufacturing.dbf and producttypes.dbf. Modders will need great attention to detail if they add this as a feature as its not as simple as just replacing one material with another from a game balancing perspective.

[Brutus]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but I've already been doing this in my mod for quite a while I guess my secret is out now and its not like I had a copyright on it anyway..

I honestly kinda figured you'd known about and experimented with it at the least your mod is light years ahead of mine so it was doubtful that a good modder like yourself wouldn't have attempted this already

Well maybe we can get some proper support going for alternative manufacturing integration into the core game. It'll help a lot of other modders and enthusiasts

Brutus you did identify some of the issues with it as it stands, but these are actually not that bad and hopefully easy to fix - for one on the order of the recipes, in my game, the same recipe always shows first regardless of whether you start a new game or any time you load up, and if it were random this would not be the case, therefore there is certainly an underlying logic to it. I haven't exhaustively investigated this and tbh I don't remember as it was a while ago that I was playing around with it, but I'm fairly certain there is a way to affect it even if its not the order in the manufacturing file. I'll try to remember what it was.

That would be helpful to know indeed. For myself there were too many bugs still at the moment to consider this 'feature' stable enough as it is just barely functional enough for an experienced player but it is not functional enough for the AI's or new players I suspect. The problems aren't that bad but make the game appear somewhat broken and incomplete ... and the fact that I get OCD over a simple button not having a proper edge is enough for me to stay away entirely from broken UI elements through adding unsupported features

[saffgee]

That would be helpful to know indeed. For myself there were too many bugs still at the moment to consider this 'feature' stable enough as it is just barely functional enough for an experienced player but it is not functional enough for the AI's or new players I suspect. The problems aren't that bad but make the game appear somewhat broken and incomplete ... and the fact that I get OCD over a simple button not having a proper edge is enough for me to stay away entirely from broken UI elements through adding unsupported features

You're not wrong, but I always kind of figured that much of what I do requires a leap of faith anyway and the mentality of a role player - if I want to have people trained in a university and add that in, then I just have to accept that because of mechanics, the players and in particular the AI might also produce shirts or whiskey there. The "stable" refers only to the fact that it doesn't crash the game really, its still a player only mechanic because of the way the AI accesses only the top blueprint - but it is at least fun for the player nonetheless imo.

[David]

link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
(these are just the vanilla files from the modkit with only the manufacturing.dbf file edited to test out this gimmick)

I tried to download it but Google Drive prompted that access request is needed. I have sent an access request to you. Please approve it.

[David]

> In the manufacturing guide. Whether you put an alternative recipe first or last in the manufacturing.dbf order does not matter, it will still be random which one will be shown 'first' by the in-game guide every startup. Sometimes it's the Canned Soup using Aluminium that comes up first and other times it's the recipe that uses Steel as input that comes up first. It's entirely random at startup of a game which one comes 'first'.

> The recipe that isn't shown 'first' will not register whether there are available inputs for its production in the manufacturing guide. Even if there is Steel and Frozen Chicken for example, if the game decides that Aluminium and Frozen Chicken recipe comes 'first', then it will not give the green tick after a product listing to indicate the availability of resources for an alternative recipe.

> Whichever recipe is 'first' will be used when automatically setting up a factory for a product using the automated factory setup button from the firm itself (starting from the booklet and using the ''Setup Factory" button shown in the example). Meaning whatever recipe the manufacturing guide lists 'first', it will always quick setup that one up by default even if you are on the recipe page that uses Steel as Input as in this example image.

> When using the toggle analysis mode button in a factory, it will not properly function for an alternative recipe that isn't listed 'first' in the manufacturing guide. It will show Aluminium as Input even if Steel was the actual input for this recipe or vica versa which ever recipe the game decides is 'first' that playtime.

Having Alternative Manufacturing Recipes for Products is really cool.

I will forward all these to the dev team. Hopefully they would fix them in v6.9.00.