Smart Industry Placement (Beta)

Industries where they make sense, with complete supply chains for what your towns need: in the map editor, for new industries that appear during a game, and (optional) with an in-game tool. Beta: feedback very welcome (see the end of this page).

What it does

• Raw materials where the material is: logging camps in large forests, mines in or at the foot of mountains, farms on flat lowland, oil platforms and fishing grounds out at sea (never in small lakes).
• Complete, working chains: every cargo a town asks for gets a whole supply chain. A factory is only placed when its raw materials exist (or come first), and nothing is placed whose cargo neither towns nor other industries use. The numbers follow the game's own economy balance (for example about three clay pits per brick works).
• Factories in realistic places: consumer goods (brewery, food, furniture, textiles) close to the towns that buy them; heavy industry (steel, refinery, chemicals, bricks, glass, saw mills) near its raw materials and further from town; machine, tool and vehicle factories in between. All stay within commuting reach of a town.
• Room for towns: no industry closer to a town centre than 1.2 km (adjustable), so towns can grow and homes are spared the pollution and noise. Industries keep apart from each other too.
• Never on your network: land sites are checked by the game first, so nothing is built over roads, tracks or stations (sites at sea are refused by the game if blocked).

Map editor tool

1. Place your towns first (the tool needs towns). 2. Click the SIP button in the mod button strip at the top left. 3. Choose Industries on the map (the slider starts at what your towns need; the preselected value adds about a quarter for extra chains), Existing industries (Keep and add / Replace all / Keep and fill chain gaps) and Geography strictness (how good a site must be before the rules relax). 4. Click Generate. Regenerate gives a new layout, Undo removes it (including access roads; in Replace mode the original industries come back).

Industries of every climate (for example rubber and tires on a temperate map): turn on the mod setting Map editor: industries of all climates, then create or load the map in the editor. The map then uses the game's own "All Industries" chains (the same as Advanced settings > Industries for a new map) and keeps them when saved; the SIP window shows which chains the map uses. This cannot be switched inside a running editor session: the game fixes a map's industries and cargos when it loads.

New industries during a game (mod settings)

With all settings at their defaults the game spawns industries as usual. Change any of the first four and this mod adds new industries instead, once a game month when towns need more (never touching existing ones):

• New industries during the game What it does: All / Resources only / Production only / None. Resources only: raw producers, only where their cargo has a use. Production only: factories, only where their raw materials already exist. None: nothing new appears
• Placement of new industries What it does: The game decides (as usual) or Smart Industry Placement (the rules above)
• Speed of new industries What it does: Slow / Like the game (about one per six towns a year) / Fast; stops when the towns have what they need
• Industry distance from towns What it does: 0.6 to 2.4 km (0.37 to 1.49 mi), default 1.2 km; also used by the map editor tool
• SIP tool in the game What it does: Shows the SIP button during a game (see below)
• Map editor: industries of all climates What it does: Map editor only: the map uses every climate's industries (see above)
• Detailed log What it does: More lines in the game log, for bug reports

New industries get the game's usual "New Industry Founded" message. Closure of unused industries stays as in the game.

In-game tool (setting "SIP tool in the game")

The SIP button opens a small window:

• Remove all existing industries, Remove all existing resource industries, Remove all existing Production industries: two clicks each. Industries the game marks as yours (built by you) stay.
• Spawn industries & production chains with Smart Industry Placement Rules: fills the map as the editor tool would (every town need gets its chain, then about a quarter more). Existing industries stay.

These actions cost no money and do not change any town's opinion of you. Lines serving a removed industry lose that cargo. If the game's own spawning is still on, it keeps adding industries its own way.

Industry mods and other mods

• Industries that a mod adds to the game's economy (with their place in the supply chains): placed and spawned like the game's own, with their real recipes, in the years they are available.
• Changed base industries (other recipes or outputs): the mod reads what each industry really uses and makes.
• Industries you can only build from the menu (many industry mods add these, without economy data): the game never places them on its own and neither does this mod - there is no information on where they belong or which chain they serve. What they make and use still counts (a fish farm built from the menu supplies a town's fish need), and the mod never removes them on its own.
• Do not combine the in-game spawning settings with another mod that controls new industries (switches the game's spawning, limits or removes new industries): both would act. If such a mod turns the game's spawning back on, the game log and the in-game window show a warning. The map editor tool and the in-game tool work alongside such mods.
• Very large industries from mods are checked by the game before building, but their terrain may need levelling.
• Industry types the mod leaves out (no construction found, or not available yet) are listed in the tools' report.

Good to know

• On maps without open sea, oil platforms become oil wells and sand excavators sand pits; fishing is not possible, and food factories then use meat.
• "Production only" adds factories only where raw producers already exist. With the game's own spawning off, few new ones appear over time.
• Where a town is crowded by others, a large distance from towns can leave no room: the type is skipped and tried again later.
• Undo in the editor works for the last Generate of the current editor session only.
• On very large maps a Generate or Spawn pauses the game for a few seconds.
• How the rules work in detail: logic_readme.md in the mod's folder.

Changes in this version (beta revision 2)

New since the first beta (map editor tool only):

• New industries during a game can follow the mod's rules: settings for which kinds may appear, how they are placed and how fast (see the table above). With the defaults the game spawns as before.
• Industry distance from towns setting (default 1.2 km), used by all tools.
• Optional in-game tool: remove all, resource or production industries, or spawn complete chains; no cost, no change to the towns' opinion of you; industries you built stay.
• Map editor: industries of all climates setting.
• Better chains: factories only where their raw materials exist (or are placed first), only whole chains, nothing whose cargo neither towns nor industries use. Maps without open sea get oil wells and sand pits; food factories use meat when there is no fish.
• Better sites: checked by the game first (never over roads, tracks or stations), logging camps inside forests, industries apart from each other, consumer goods near towns and heavy industry near its raw materials.
• Industry mods: industries a mod adds to the game's economy are placed with their real recipes and years.
• Detailed log setting for bug reports.

Feedback

If a placement looks wrong or something fails, please post on the mod page:

• what looked wrong (a screenshot helps), the map size and climate, and your mod settings;
• the lines starting with [SIP from the game log stdout.txt (in the game's user data folder, under crash_dump), ideally with the setting Detailed log On. Every placed industry has a line explaining why its site was chosen.