Hello, Capitalism Lab team! I'd like to share two suggestions based on my experience of hundreds of hours playing and creating custom scenarios with the MOD Kit. These are ideas focused on the visual and structural organization of industrial sectors, something I believe many players would appreciate.
1. Standardize Factory and Farm Sizes via Mod
Currently, I'm trying to overwrite factories and farms in the MOD Kit to standardize their sizes (e.g., all 4x4), out of personal preference and to maintain a more organized urban layout in custom scenarios.
Current Problem:
- When trying to overwrite existing buildings from the base game with new layouts in the MOD Kit, the game crashes or becomes unstable.
- From my observation, the AI tends to create many small factories (2x2 or 3x3) and rarely upgrades to larger ones, even when it's already financially strong.
- This detracts from the urban look and feel of industrial parks when I start to organize the city more realistically.
Practical suggestion:
- Allow the MOD Kit to stably replace original buildings (with the same Namecode), even if it's just a matter of layout or size.
- Or, if this causes structural issues, it might be possible to make certain types of buildings that the game doesn't allow overwriting uneditable using the MOD Kit—this would avoid confusion for those trying to edit and potentially crash the game.
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2. Assign each factory type to a Product Class
It would be very interesting if each factory type could be assigned to one or more Product Classes (such as Food, Electronics, Textiles, etc.).
Why?
- This would allow the AI (or the player) to use specific factory types for specific products.
- It would create a much more organized and thematic look: for example, food factories with their own look, electronics factories with a different style, etc.
- It would open up space for more creative and visually immersive mods, even allowing for different architectural styles per sector.
Possibilities:
- Link buildings to the Product Class in the Building.txt file
- The AI would automatically choose the factory type based on the product class it's trying to produce
General benefits of suggestions:
- Improves the stability and usability of the MOD Kit
- Raises the aesthetics of created scenarios and cities
- Offers more control for themed and organized creations
- Encourages the AI to behave in a more realistic and visually coherent manner