Essential mods

[Blitz4]

Excluding all cosmetic mods, which is a lot, what mods are essential for the game to function as expected or to eliminate bugs.

So far this is the only mod that I'm aware of that's required to achieve above. What else?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2091824985


EDIT: I know some cosmetic mods that replace buildings fix issues with the vanilla building. I would consider that a secondary issue. Having a line of trucks waiting at a large customs house with 3 open slots. Now that's type type of bug that if can be fixed by a mod is Essential. So if thinking along the same mindset there's any mods, buildings or not, that fix similar big issues, feel free.

[Walta Gaming]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by Walta Gaming:

I found the small industry mods to really improve the game. Buildings like the vanilla steel mill, oil refinery, concrete plant, coal power plant, universities, radio station and prefab factory are way too big for realistic mode starts.

The vanilla chemical plant is the opposite in that it's way too small. It's a big pain trying to setup 5+ of these so having a huge one that employs 500+ workers is a big improvement.

Just part of the challenge in my opinion.

I find it's mostly a thematic problem. It also makes boarder post traffic a much worse issue that you can't do much about. If you can setup small factories early in the game you won't need a mod that improves boarder post throughput which makes things more fun IMO. Steel plant is OKish for it's size due to how steel is made IRL but the other buildings ruin how early game setups look. You usually start with a village but with the vanilla version of some buildings they are way oversized and you run them 80-75% empty. It looks very weird having a town of 500 people with brick flats right next to 2 giant universities that you need to build for critical research / education.

[Walta Gaming]

Originally posted by jan.mitiska:

Originally posted by Walta Gaming:

I found the small industry mods to really improve the game. Buildings like the vanilla steel mill, oil refinery, concrete plant, coal power plant, universities, radio station and prefab factory are way too big for realistic mode starts. These are all pretty critical buildings but they take far too much resources and space to build. The new buildings taken from the workshop and added into vanilla have been an amazing improvement but still the above buildings are too big when starting out.

The vanilla chemical plant is the opposite in that it's way too small. It's a big pain trying to setup 5+ of these so having a huge one that employs 500+ workers is a big improvement.

Small industries out there are usually either too small (aka not worth the output), or ridiculously overpowered (multiple the number of vanilla outcome). And especially things like steel mill etc. ARE MEANT TO BE HUGE! Nobody can build reliable steel mill with decent output on their back yard ;)

Vanilla universities regarding - yes, they are huge (except small party HQ), but even on hard money and realistic mode they are pretty workable with and once you find out they do not need to be in your city center with whole of their footprint, you can make them work pretty well for you.

At least if you do not need to greedily have all 3 university types in your 3k pop starter town, then yes, you probably need to go for mods :)

I find most small industries to be useful in clearing out boarder traffic. It's also a lot of fun making your own materials and managing those logistics rather then just buying most of what you need. The issue with universities is that with research enabled the technical and party HQ buildings are manditory. You can't play the game long with 5 small DO's and any sort of planning requires the resource map.

[Sirius Czech]

You do not need any university for research to have a village of 500 people. 500 workers are hardly sustainable community in terms of finances anyway, but even a city of 1000-1500 workers (+ kids) are absolutely ok to run with small party HQ and eventually researched logistics and separation.

There is no need to go directly for oil, map research or anything like this. You can always start on
- food, alcohol, meat
- fabric + clothing
- tourism (with small party HQ)
- importing and burning of hazardous material
- any of above combined

- with solely this you can get to construction materials as well as a byproduct

Yes, if you want to grow your city to 3-5k, them maybe a proper university on top of "city hall" (which I usually call party HQ on central square) might be a way and then a technical university is a good way to go, but then a dorm or two is a welcome addition as well and it will spread educated workers all over the republic in the end, rendering many villages without the need for university in return.

[Walta Gaming]

Originally posted by jan.mitiska:

You do not need any university for research to have a village of 500 people. 500 workers are hardly sustainable community in terms of finances anyway, but even a city of 1000-1500 workers (+ kids) are absolutely ok to run with small party HQ and eventually researched logistics and separation.

There is no need to go directly for oil, map research or anything like this. You can always start on
- food, alcohol, meat
- fabric + clothing
- tourism (with small party HQ)
- importing and burning of hazardous material
- any of above combined

- with solely this you can get to construction materials as well as a byproduct

Yes, if you want to grow your city to 3-5k, them maybe a proper university on top of "city hall" (which I usually call party HQ on central square) might be a way and then a technical university is a good way to go, but then a dorm or two is a welcome addition as well and it will spread educated workers all over the republic in the end, rendering many villages without the need for university in return.

No you don't need oil / coal / iron to make money but it is manditory for the most important part of the game, planning. If you don't know where resources are you might be building onto one of them or you may need to start a 2nd city early if the resources are far away from your first city. You should not be building a 2nd city until you have 2 universities in your first starting town which is a bit much when all you can build are the large vanilla ones. Even when I used tinny modded universities they were way more then enough for my starting / 2nd city.

[Silent_Shadow]

You can simply do a quick sweep of the area you want to build on for iron/oil/coal without having to do any research by just selecting the relevant mine and mousing over the ground, and there are ways to expand into distant areas. This is all just part of the challenge.

I would also say that only the technical office university is required for progression. Pretty much all of the other techs (including distribution offices) are luxuries in my opinion, and the red techs can be worked on by just a small party HQ if you really want them.

Thematically, it also doesn't make sense for a small building to make certain products efficiently, like steel for example. Small buildings should be way more inefficient than larger buildings or at least produce tiny amounts so you have to make a complex of them, like with chemical plants.

[Walta Gaming]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

You can simply do a quick sweep of the area you want to build on for iron/oil/coal without having to do any research by just selecting the relevant mine and mousing over the ground, and there are ways to expand into distant areas. This is all just part of the challenge.

I would also say that only the technical office is required for progression. Pretty much all of the other techs (including distribution offices) are luxuries in my opinion, and the red techs can be worked on by just a small party HQ if you really want them.

Thematically, it also doesn't make sense for a small building to make certain products efficiently, like steel for example. Small buildings should be way more inefficient than larger buildings or at least produce tiny amounts so you have to make a complex of them, like with chemical plants.

I 100% agree smaller buildings should be less efficient then the larger ones. I wish workshop ones where like this but I guess it's just easier and more popular to use the vanilla ratios. It would be fun to demolish the small factories and build the larger ones over them.

I would not say the DO is a luxury since DO's are critical to use vehicles efficiently. Otherwise you will be stuck with trucks waiting around a lot of the time which gets very expensive.

I would be happy if we had a small version of the technical university that's my main point I guess. Prefabs / steel / cement / oil refinery / power plants would also be great but there workshop mods for these that fit pretty well. Maybe when an official early start game mode is made we will get more small buildings.

[Silent_Shadow]

Distribution offices are only cost effective if you have a lot of very low throughput lines that could all be handled by a truck or two instead of each line having their own truck, like for supplying a bunch of fuel stations. The materials for building a DO are comparable in cost to two or three trucks, so unless having a truck "assigned to multiple lines" in a DO will keep it moving and able to handle the equivalent of multiple lines, you might as well buy a new truck and have it spend its extra time waiting at a building you've already paid for instead of a DO (or just not buy it if you don't need it).

In the early game, there aren't many cases where DOs are financially the best option, so the few free DOs we start with are more than enough for quite a while.

[Sirius Czech]

DOs are great for fuel supplies and city supplies - if you are playing vanilla, there is simply not an option of supplying shops reliably with only lines without using a massive vanilla loading station for extra parking spots. And once you start needing food/meat/alcohol into more buildings (hotels, prison, orphanage, second shop...), you are much better with DO and you save costs and space of loading station as well.

DOs are also crucial for exporting of (only) excess goods. Yes, with one city you can easily place a line for food that takes it from factory, makes a stop in city warehouse and export only remaining things, but it
- cloggs customs more then needed, and
- costs more fuel to do this way as well
- is definitely not usable for more cities/areas

Same goes for harvesting, as trucking things from silo when needed to another factory based on how much crops is remaning is not possible in standard setup.

....
But I agree that small party HQ is definitely the way to go for this and then it makes only one university. Same as quick scanning of terrain with mines so you know if there is anything in next location and so on.

[Novu]

Not many mods are needed anymore as 3Division has filled in a lot of the gaps recently.

This one is more of a quality of life thing:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2986872515

[Walta Gaming]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Distribution offices are only cost effective if you have a lot of very low throughput lines that could all be handled by a truck or two instead of each line having their own truck, like for supplying a bunch of fuel stations. The materials for building a DO are comparable in cost to two or three trucks, so unless having a truck "assigned to multiple lines" in a DO will keep it moving and able to handle the equivalent of multiple lines, you might as well buy a new truck and have it spend its extra time waiting at a building you've already paid for instead of a DO (or just not buy it if you don't need it).

In the early game, there aren't many cases where DOs are financially the best option, so the few free DOs we start with are more than enough for quite a while.

Interesting I will have to use lines more often. I usually use DO's way more to avoid trucks waiting around and ques at loading stations. Also much easier to just check boxes instead of waiting for trucks to drive to depots so I am a bit lazy like that.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by jan.mitiska:

If you are playing vanilla, there is simply not an option of supplying shops reliably with only lines without using a massive vanilla loading station for extra parking spots. [...] DOs are also crucial for exporting of (only) excess goods. [...] trucking things from silo when needed to another factory based on how much crops is remaining is not possible in standard setup.

I disagree; all of that can be done efficiently without a DO:

• Supplying shops/orphanages/prisons/hotels - You only need to keep one parking spot open for emergency services and utility vehicles, and since these buildings tend to have multiple parking lots, you can have a truck or two sitting there for free with wait until unloaded checked; extra cargo stations are not really needed for this.
  
  The grocery, small shop, and pub only have the one parking spot, but you can simply build the small shopping center instead or just have a tiny truck not wait there. Early on this might also be one thing you use one of the free DOs for, and later on you could just use a set of forklifts for this and still spend less money/resources on it than a DO and a truck. For the pub, you can just have a food truck take tiny amounts of booze as a part of its run and later give the pub its own tiny truck once demand gets high enough.
  
  Ideally you would select a truck that has a similar throughput for a distance to what the building consumes, so that cost and waiting times are minimized. The FZK A07 truck is generally enough for food and other goods and you can get like 10 of them for the cost of one small DO, while the GZ-53 trucks come out in 1962 for cheaply handling meat. If you have multiple shops/hotels/etc. in an area, then you can just get a single larger truck and have it deliver to a string of buildings before returning for more goods.
  
  
• Exporting extra goods without partial loads or wasting fuel - The key is to use the mechanic of trucks where they skip stops set only to unload.
  Here is the setup I usually use:
  1. Load goods at factory or at its warehouse/storage.
  2. Unload goods at the consumer building(s) or at their storage(s).
  3. Unload at a collection point (skipped if there are no leftover goods).
  
  I usually use the small warehouse with two parking spots for the collection point and have another cheap truck here set to wait until loaded with anything before going to customs to sell a full load of whatever. Multiple lines for multiple city/areas can use this stop so long as the cargo type matches, and ideally this point is located along the return to their respective factories to minimize fuel usage. Detours aren't too bad though, because they should only happen when the truck has extra goods to get rid of.
  
  If you want, you could also have these trucks wait at the factory or its storage if no goods are being produced by checking wait until loaded. If you're producing a lot of extra goods, then you can simply have a truck or two making runs directly from the factory to the customs house with full loads and rely on the collection point truck to export the rest.
  
  
• For moving crops you can just have trucks on a line move crops from silo to silo and wait at either until full or empty. Extra parking spots are not required, as trucks should be moving most of the time and longer gravel driveways can cheaply accommodate extra trucks waiting to load or unload at silos that other trucks should not be visiting.
  
  The amount of crops farms produce and factories consume in a year is also pretty stable, so it is just a matter of assigning the right number of trucks for the distance to ensure they are moving for most of the year and that all the crops in a harvest get moved before the next one comes in. That the trucks' line will tell you its average circuit time makes it pretty easy to fine tune the number of trucks with a little math.

TL;DR: If you're not replacing a lot of lines with a DO and a truck or two or using the DO for backup options, you're basically just paying extra for a place for trucks to detour to and park at, or at best to minimize the management and design you have to do to keep the republic running efficiently (and even then you have to be careful to avoid some issues with the DO).

Fuel economy can go either way, as DOs can be set up to only take full loads, but DO trucks cannot reliably haul stuff on the trip back to the factory and they usually detour back to the DO.

[Sirius Czech]

My trucks in DO are usually able to pickup another job and as the DO is set near center-point of its trip anyway (logicstics area), they are working fine.

The fact is I also use DOs pretty extensively so they do replace lots of single lines. At the game start, I tend to have one meat truck delivering it directly (wait until unloaded) and that takes up half the slots in small shopping center (2 slots). The other slot is used for covered hull(s) to supply the rest (food, clothing, electronics) and I basically use free DO and medium-sized truck for this. Pretty cost effective as it runs only when needed and nothing more si needed. Later on this free DO is replaced by 5slot vanilla one or the big one (depending on how big the city I plan is) and it also gets to be placed near my central logistics point (large covered warehouse+large open warehouse+meat storage connected via 4-slot vanilla loading station and in newer games also accompanied with vehicle repair station hooked to the covered storage).

Basically the setup up to 4-5k people are two small covered hulls and one small meat truck in this DO, that is supplying the whole city (shop/s, prison, orphans, cafe, restaurant, hotel... whatever needs it). Big meat truck is either still going to shopping mall only or is later repurposed into another big DO called "IM/EX" (import/export) and is trucking in meat to main storage here and there and/or is used to export excess meat from slaughter house after it is built.

I feel like I am saving tons of fuel by playing with DOs, though I do use lines a lot, too.

BTW factories have sort of predictable output if you have stable cities, which is not always my case :D

[Silent_Shadow]

I don't think DO are all that great at saving fuel; lines only lose fuel if you have them running inefficiently, and you'll have to wait years for the savings to pay off the cost of the DO or a larger truck, which is money that could have been spent on expanding the republic's industry, transportation, services, etc. at an earlier time.

The only time I can justify a DO is when money doesn't really matter anymore or the price of one and a truck or two is less than the cost of a bunch of lines with their own trucks. I don't even think they are good for farm layouts.

[nekys]

Mods add more variety, s there is nothing wrong with that. Sure some are like cheating but it is up to you to use them or not. I really like some thin conveyor towers that need only a footpath, not a road, some really heavy trucks and perhaps the most "cheat" of all, the gravel using water purifiers, purify water for free! Well, almost for free. Oh and those smaller universities are great and the friendship fast food, works great inplace of a grocery store. I also use some DOs, i like the fact there are small ones with 1 3 or 5 vehicles.