Modding difficulty or industry

[YFriuli]

I like how with the "basic" industrial model difficulty all industries produce goods, because obviously not all goods were transported by train. What I don't like is that stations will pay for any cargo. Ideally, I would prefer a difficulty level where all industries will produce goods (basic) but stations only pay for demanded goods (expert).

 

Alternatively, I guess, industries could be modded individually so they'd produce goods in addition to converting. So a steel mill would produce steel out of iron and coal, but also produce steel on its own.

 

Unfortunately I have no idea how to mod the .pk2 files (I assume that's where the data is stored?) so I'm looking for some pointers here.

 

 

 

On an unrelated note, I noticed that some cities placed in the map editor disappear (i.e. they have no houses/industry) in the game when there is a building (e.g. a harbour) nearby that was placed by hand. Is there any fix for this other than randomly moving the city around until it appears?

[YFriuli]

So I figured out that game data isn't stored in the .pk2 files, but directly in the .exe instead. I guess modding the difficulty level is a lost cause, but considering all the changes in the US History map modding industry should be possible. I don't understand how to add new production data, though. Could someone explain to me how to do this? I'm somewhat familiar with hex editing, but I'm not sure where to begin here.

[jeffryfisher]

The industrial conversion table in the EXE file has room in some buildings and not in others. I'm accustomed to supplying coal and iron to my steel mills, so I'd never tamper with them, but I think they are one of the ones with room. Even so, I'd recommend that you just jump up to expert level economics.

For a discussion on modding, find the thread with "Historical" in its name (about a mod).