Industrial subtypes - what do they do?

[Unassigned]

It appears there are 3 "Industrial Subtypes" (Anchor, Mechanical & Out) for I-d, I-m & I-ht buildings. I'd like to know what these subtypes signify, especially pertaining to creating growables from such buildings (I haven't found these terms explained anywhere on SC4D or Simtropolis), so if anyone has knowledge of this, please explain.

[jmdude1]

uhm, sim-al2, you may want to re-read the question. 

i think unassigned is looking for the subtypes for each type of industry: anchor, mechanical and out.
its an interesting question, youve got me wondering too. ive seen some creators upload anchors before but i never really thought about it. 

[BarbyW]

sim-al2: did you actually read what Unassigned was asking? Your reply bears not relationship to his question. It is too late for me to answer tonight but I shall tomorrow if no one else has.

[sim-al2]

Sorry. I've never heard of these before. Then again there are huge gaps in learning to make stuff for the game.

Edit: Why have I never heard of these before? I never seen anything about anywhere, not even in the game files!
You would think that if it existed, there would be something about it. And stop making fun of me. I just wanted to help.

[jmyers2043]

The large Grundstroms Cooper is an example of an anchor building. It needs road access. Other lots (Mechanical and out buildings) can grow behind it or beside it and in a sense attach themselves to the anchor in similar manner as farm fields to a farm building. The I-D anchor occupant groups are: 0x00001002,0x00014200,0x00003000. The first octal number, 0x00001002 stands for "Industrial Building". The second number, 0x00014200 stands for "Dirty Industrial". And the last, 0x00003000 number stands for "Anchor".

An example of a dirty mechanical would be the Maxis chemical storage tank or the Maxis petroleum tank. These can grow on their own along a street thus acting like an anchor or grow behind a 'real' anchor building, not needing road access. The occupant group numbers for an I-D mechanical are: 0x00001002,0x00014200,0x00003001. In this case the 3001 stands for mechanical building.

An example of a dirty out building would be the various Maxis storage sheds. These (if memory serves) must have an associated anchor building and cannot grow on their own. The occupant groups are: 0x00001002, 0x00014200, 0x00003002 where the 3002 number stands for out building.

Each industrial type has all three sub types. An I-D has Anchor, Mechanical, and Out buildings. I-M has the same as does High Tech. An example? The satellite dish or the testing bays are examples of High Tech out buildings.

Size does not matter.  While Dirty Industrials like Wallace Petroleum are large it is also true that Farley's Foundry is a Dirty Industry Anchor which fits nicely on a 1X1 lot. But generally speaking size is a good indicator.

So now you know what occupant groups to use when manking dirty industrial anchor, mechanical, and out buildings. But what about I-M and I-HT?

An I-M anchor has the following occupant:
0x00001002,0x00014300,0x00003000

A High Tech anchor is:
0x00001002,0x00014400,0x00003000

Note the second octal number. That second number is what makes the building I-D, I-M or I-HT.

Hope this makes sense and helps...

[Unassigned]

sim-al2, to my complete surprise I encountered these industrial subtypes when I was going to make myself an industrial lot and found I had to pick a subtype. Incidentally, the subtypes (with values) are listed in RippleJet's Occupant Groups and Occupant Types thread.

Thanks jmyers2043!  Your answer certainly helps, I can get on with my lotting now. Though I'd still like to know

• why these subtypes exist, i.e. how are they supposed to add value to the gameplay and how can they be leveraged?
• whether it is required to specify a subtype for an industrial building (possibly excepting I-r). And does the game use default values if none are specified?
• why I-r has only one subtype (Out) defined, what's the point of offering a unary choice ("Any colour you like, as long as it's black")? Or is the choice here actually between "Out" and no subtype (by which I think I mean a subtype value of 0)?
• where, oh where is that secret fount of arcane SC4 knowledge which you adepts have access to and how do I get at it?

[Diggis]

• where, oh where is that secret fount of arcane SC4 knowledge which you adepts have access to and how do I get at it?

It's Barby. 

[Andreas]

Though I'd still like to know

• why these subtypes exist, i.e. how are they supposed to add value to the gameplay and how can they be leveraged?

My best guess is that Maxis wanted to simulate the expansion of industrial facilities, i. e. a company starts with an assembly building (anchor), then adds a few storage tanks and machines (mechanical) and finally a warehouse (out). Obviously, it doesn't really work that way, since any anchor building is the cornerstone for any mechanical and out buildings of the same type (I-D, I-M and I-HT), but since you can easily zone deeper than the usual three or four tiles, as with RES and COM, mechanical and out buildings can fill up any blanks that remain in between the anchor buildings, even if there's no road access. It also guarantees a more varied look, even with a limited number of available buildings.

[RippleJet]

• why these subtypes exist, i.e. how are they supposed to add value to the gameplay and how can they be leveraged?

In addition to what Andreas' said, there are a few other things worth mentioning for gameplay:

• Two anchor buildings cannot grow next to each other (for some reason high-tech is an exception to this though).
  The space between the anchors has to be filled by Mechs and Outs.
  
• If you route query any mechanical or out industrial building, you will notice that sims come to job via the anchor building.
  And freight leaves the industry through the same anchor.
  
• If a dirty anchor building gets replaced by a manufacturing or high-tech anchor (or if a manufacturing anchor gets replaced by a high-tech anchor), any mechanical or out lots behind the original anchor will loose their road connection.
  People working in a dirty out building cannot get to work via a manufacturing or high-tech anchor.
  In those cases you should bulldoze the filler that lost its road connection.

• whether it is required to specify a subtype for an industrial building (possibly excepting I-r). And does the game use default values if none are specified?

Yes, you have to specify an industrial subtype. Otherwise they would not grow at all.
Removing the subtypes is the easiest thing to create an industrial blocker
(just like removing all four building styles for commercial and residential buildings).

In the developer exemplars (those that are modded in CAM) there is a property called Style Percentages.
This property determines the percentual distribution between Mechanical and Out.
For all industrials (including I-R !!!) these percentages are 50% Mechanical and 50% Out.

• why I-r has only one subtype (Out) defined, what's the point of offering a unary choice ("Any colour you like, as long as it's black")? Or is the choice here actually between "Out" and no subtype (by which I think I mean a subtype value of 0)?

Maxis must have made some changes to I-R at a rather late stage. I really don't know why they are all Out (and not Anchors). Those changes obviously are in the exe file. Otherwise the 50/50 distribution as set in the I-R developer exemplar would soon hamper development, since there are no I-R Mechanical buildings.

I am not aware of any testing with I-R Anchor and Mechanical buildings though.
If the subtype isn't taken into account at all, maybe they would grow jsut as well as the existing Outs...

Worth some testing, maybe?

• where, oh where is that secret fount of arcane SC4 knowledge which you adepts have access to and how do I get at it?

It's called SC4Devotion...    (and Barby is part of that)

[Unassigned]

Noted...testing farms with exotic subtypes are now in the backlog 

Thanks to all who answered, this was all very useful input. And RippleJet has a point with SC4D, questions asked here are certainly answered.