Modding how-to: stone quarry conveyors and three-way substations

[jaykray]

DISCLAIMER: modding games that don't yet officially support mods is unsupported, dangerous, and can mess up many things including breaking the game entirely. Your mods also will almost certainly get overwritten when new updates come down.

Anyway, I've been experimenting with modding the game. Unfortunately the text-based stuff you can mod is pretty limited, this game is very code-oriented and not architected for easy modding. Hopefully that changes in the future.

Two usable mods I came up with are three-way substations (that can accept power connections from any of three sides instead of just the back), and stone quarry conveyors.

The three-way substation is a quality-of-life improvement, I was getting annoyed at always having to snake power lines on the right angle. I thought there would also be a way to create a combo substation-switch, but I don't think there is -- this power only flows to the substation, not out of it. Power routing appears to be in the code.

Conveyors at quarries were more of a "can I do this" thing based on some posts I read where people wished they could do that. Obviously this is over-powered compared to how the game works now. The good news is, yes you can. In fact adding conveyors, factory connections, vehicle spots, and road connections to any building is pretty easy.

Both of these mods are easy to perform - just a copy and paste.

The files that determine building setup are in (STEAM DIRECTORY)\steamapps\common\SovietRepublic\media_soviet\buildings_types

ALWAYS BACK UP FILES YOU CHANGE. Please don't ask for tech support here if you mess the game up!

Three-way Substations

In the file "electic_substation.ini" (it's misspelled), below this bit:

$CONNECTION_ELETRIC_LOW_INPUT
-5.5697 0.0 0.4294
-4.5697 0.0 0.4294

Add these lines:

$CONNECTION_ELETRIC_LOW_INPUT
0.0 0.0 -5.5697
0.0 0.0 -4.5697

$CONNECTION_ELETRIC_LOW_INPUT
0.0 0.0 5.5697
0.0 0.0 4.5697

That's it. While I did this to make it more convenient to run lines, you can also connect different power sources to different inputs and the substation will have redundant power supply.

Conveyor belt connections for quarries and gravel processing

In the file "gravel_processing.ini", below this bit:

$CONNECTION_CONVEYOR_OUTPUT
-40.7938 0.4334 -29.6172
-39.7938 0.4334 -29.6172

add these lines:

$CONNECTION_CONVEYOR_INPUT
70.7938 0.4334 5.1986
69.7938 0.4334 5.1986

$CONNECTION_CONVEYOR_INPUT
70.7938 0.4334 -6.8970
69.7938 0.4334 -6.8970

$CONNECTION_CONVEYOR_INPUT
70.7938 0.4334 -17.6172
69.7938 0.4334 -17.6172

And, in the file "gravelmine.ini", below this line:

$CONNECTION_ROAD
-5.2140 0.0 -0.1071
-4.2140 0.0 -0.1071

Add these lines:

$CONNECTION_CONVEYOR_OUTPUT
5.2140 2.6 0.1071
4.2140 2.6 0.1071

That's it. Quarries will now have a conveyor output, and gravel processing will have 3 conveyor inputs. (You could probably add up to 6+ if you wanted to.)

This works as you would expect. Quarried stone flows directly to the gravel processing plant. If a truck comes to a mine to pick up stone, the conveyor stops while the truck is loaded. Trucks can still also deliver to a conveyored processing plant, they just dump into the hopper. The graphics are a little off since the conveyors just hang in space because they have no graphical place to connect to, but that's just cosmetic.

You have to restart the game for these to work. They do seem fully compatible with saved games; any buildings you placed before modding the file don't seem to get the changes, but new buildings you place will.

Anyway, in no way do I recommend modding this game yet, but there was very little info out there on what is possible so I just wanted to tell you, yes some modding is possible, but not that much. You can add new vehicles into the game, but you can't add new buildings into the menu, you have to mod existing buildings (as far as I can tell).

I've been able to do other things like make a warehouse with more/less factory/road/rail connections, and increase/decrease number of conveyor connections on anything, but until you can add new building types, that is going to have limited usefulness unless you want to permanently change a core building type.

In the lines above, the 3 numbers are X/Z/Y coordinates, controlling the placement of the connection. You can experiment with changing the numbers, that's what I did to get the location of the gravel processing inputs. It is possible to create bad connections that disrupt other parts of the building or interfere with other connections.

If anyone has figured out a way to ADD buildings to the build menu, or how to mod the map beyond the resource distribution and elevation levels, please let me know!

It looks to me like it would be possible to mod the coal plant to burn oil, but unless we can add buildings to the mod menu, that would be a one-way street.

I'm currently working on a little modding script that changes the resource consumption/production numbers of the supply chain buildings every game, so I can have a different challenge every time I play in figuring out how to become profitable without going bankrupt. If anyone has worked out how to mess with default/starting prices for resources on the market, also please let me know!

[jaykray]

Here are some screenshots!

3-way substations in the field:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754861459

Redundant power to a substation:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754864808

Gravel processing being fed by 3 conveyor belts from quarries:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754861503

[archiver213]

very cool, especially the 3 way substations, lots of people complain about the right angle issue in fids.

[jaykray]

Thanks -- the 3-way substation definitely helps in those situations where your inbound power lines come in on the opposite side from the single connection! The first time I played I was creating power line spaghetti everywhere.

[archiver213]

with game update 0.7.5.11 modifications dont seem to work anymore ?? game starts then crash at new game startup, when it reaches building types ??

[jaykray]

Mods work fine for me under 0.7.5.11, so I don't think it's that. What are your mods? I've heavily modded the game and it is working fine for me. Maybe your mods themselves have corrupted the building files?

[deathfloor]

Great mod, thanks a lot!

Keep us informed if you have further interesting modifications.

Working for me with version 0.7.5.11 (no other mods installed):
electic_substation.ini mod
gravel_processing.ini mod

Not working for me with version 0.7.5.11:
gravelmine.ini mod*
(game crashing during loading sequence)

*not relevant for me, since I don't have a single quarry and have been importing raw stones with trains from the border anyway, since it's a waste of workforce to produce something so cheap on your own (well, communism...)

[pryt]

Just a thought, maybe the game has issues with updating existing gravel mines when some are built and a road goes by closely.

Just a guess.

[jaykray]

Weird, sorry to hear it, I haven't had that!

Do you have a blank line above "$CONNECTION_CONVEYOR_OUTPUT"? That may be required, not sure. I did quite a lot of messing around with ini files and never had any crashes.

I have been working on a productivity overhaul mod that is designed to make the game much harder and re-balance some industries that seem overpowered. So far it's working great, I'm doing more testing before "releasing" it.

[archiver213]

i just used the mods that you wrote above. electic_substation.ini, gravel_processing.ini, gravelmine.ini .. They all have a space below the line which you said to add the lines. I've double checked them to make sure they are identical to what you wrote.

The issue was that a copy of the originals was in the folder, once I moved them out it loaded without issues.

[jaykray]

Aha. Yeah if the files have .ini extensions they will get loaded, what I do is rename my backups to .bak.

[archiver213]

I had just copy/paste them, but if going back into game after it starts, some of the files automatically have Copy in their name, so by either method they work fine..