Hello there o/,

As I am working on an industry chart draft, I am trying to finalize manufacturing chains. Most of them are fine but I am having problem with one.

I borrowed some from Railroad Tycoon 2 having an industry chart as shown below



I am using the same convention when it comes to timber,

Lumber mill produces lumber -> Logging camp produces both log and pulpwood
Paper mill produces paper from pulpwood

Then, paper is used for package (box, carton etc).
My problem is I need one thing more that can be made of paper.

My initial thoughts were
- Newspaper needs paper (I don't favor this)
- Government may need paper to function (redtape purposes)
- There was no such plan but there may be an office building using paper as input for its own output
- Makes not much few sense but paper+chemicals might be used for making medical plaster / bandage.

So the thing is, I didn't fall in love with any of these options. So question is what purpose you would add to paper in a manufacturing chain?

Thanks in advance,

Thanks for reply.

My concerns are if it will be too micromanagement and ensuring there won't be devastating effects in case you don't have paper supply.

There can be also an option of making books from paper but same concerns apply imo.

Toilet paper?

Toilet paper?

Makes sense but not something I'd want in a game.

Logging produces sawdust and woodchips as a byproduct -> compost heaps for smaller-scale gardens

Woodchips are also used in school playgrounds and parks, among other things

Paper:

Some government currencies are made out of paper (but USA switched to a cloth-based frabric some time ago, iirc). i.e. the treasury department wants it.

Specialize paper is used for artwork (i.e. paintings and such).

Paper is used for snail mail - both the envelope and the letter within it.

If you go the paper = government / business route, you could make one "lawsuit" cost 10,000 sheets of paper, and that'd probably be on the low side. Or use paper for your justice-system / court-system.

Paper is used for books, as you mentioned. Maybe books are required by libraries, and because of e.g. unreturned books and books wearing out, the library requires a constant supply of books to continue running. Paper mill (paper) -> Publisher (book) -> Library (bonus to nearby schools, and YIMBY effect)

If nothing else, your sims better like making origami.

I am ok with pulpwood/sawdust/woodchip as there is an option of using them at power plant or compost in construction.

Paper:

If not changed recently, US currency is made of cotton based pulp involving flax and metal thread ( I have interest in this because I am evaluating if producing cotton paper is feasible nowadays ) Out of polymer ones, all banknotes are cotton based.

As game will be online, I don't want to limit people saying "if you want to send a PM, you need one sheet of paper" or "If you want to print money, you need paper". This is mostly because in a worst case scenario of people not being able to supply or afford cripples gameplay.

And for books, its an option but not one I favor because I have to rearrange whole education system and making books something rapidly consumable doesn't sound good. One of competitor games is handling this with consuming books to get more intelligence , this isn't a path I want to go.

Paper/card is also used as packaging in a lot of industries. Think about how much cardboard/paper Amazon gets through.

When I moved house a decade ago, I ordered a bunch of 84 litre packing plastic packing boxes from a company in the UK which makes them[1]. Each of them arrived in a cardboard box, which we reused for packing light stuff in...

[1] They have locking seal lids which meant my Lego collection could be moved at minimal risk.

Using paper for packaging is already one purpose of it, just I want to have a second purpose to ensure industry is less prone to supply/demand shocks.

"my bad" edit:

It will be an online browser game where each player will be a citizen of a country.

Is it really bad idea to use paper with chemicals as some form of first aid thing for minor healing up? I know cotton would be far better but don't want to include clothing line at the moment

(1) hygiene product are an enormous paper end-product: toilet paper, disposable diapers, feminine products (see other thread on YA games), paper towels, medical supplies, etc ... I wouldn't dismiss those so quickly

(2) the newsprint industry used to account for over 70% of all paper produced: it's still there and still legit in a game

(3) wood pulp is widely used to make rayon, so it can feed the textile/clothing industry

(1) hygiene product are an enormous paper end-product: toilet paper, disposable diapers, feminine products (see other thread on YA games), paper towels, medical supplies, etc ... I wouldn't dismiss those so quickly

(2) the newsprint industry used to account for over 70% of all paper produced: it's still there and still legit in a game

(3) wood pulp is widely used to make rayon, so it can feed the textile/clothing industry

As it will be an online game, every new product chain increases the minimum required number of citizens for a country to be even barely sustainable. Because of that I don't want to go into too much deep, personal hygiene is not a concern in the game as it's not The Sims only medical applications which is used for a mere simple hp feature.

Newspaper is a natural choice, but in these type of games newspapers are a frequent communication method in community so I don't want to make it dependent on a resource

Although it would solve many issues, I don't want to include a cotton and clothing line at beginning. Multitude of choices are good but their abundancy is not, I don't want to intimidate players with 1298312 options.