I've started to get into Pam's Harvestcraft, and have discovered the Shipping Bin. If I let myself, I WILL abuse the crap out of it.
So to keep myself from drowning myself in a pile of emeralds in the next five minutes, I've instituted a rule that they can only be placed down in a central trade town. trade towns are not allowed to produce ANYTHING. Each Shipping Bin is only allowed one crop, and I can also place down a Market next to the Shipping Bin, but each Market (is that the right name?) is only allowed to sell the seed of the Shipping Bin next to it.
.......iiiiif I don't have a Shipping Bin next to it, the Markets are only allowed 1 seed.
This will force me to build up a bazaar of sorts, which is cool all on its own.
.....aaaaaand each stall in the bazaar will need to have a house to house the merchant.
I'm also making a rule (that I will refine as I get further into Pam's) that there should be restaurants/street vendors "selling" food produce, combined from all the produce/fish/etc brought into town, but each one can basically only specialize in one thing (soups, a couple kinds of fish, livestock meat, etc) or in a few end-process items.
All in the name of forcing myself to build up a trading outpost as opposed to throwing down fifteen chests and throwing things in them randomly.
once I tinker with this a bit, I'm probably going to write this into the challenge.
Probably also going to make a town that's only notable because it's slightly superior in technology related to a few agriculture things (Forestry Squeezer, Pam's Presser), but is incapable of growing its own food or growing its own resources. it will keep its technological edge as I progress.
Probably also going to do a Botania town like this, too.
Give me a reason NOT to build everything in one place, but build up a bunch of places (an agricultural town, a mining town, a magic town, a tech town, and a centralized, administrative trading town that does not produce anything on its own but instead takes in items from everywhere and then turns around and sells them to all the other towns) simaltaneously.
This may be coming to me because I'm realizing that I'm falling into my usual building sprawl of everything being built in the nearest available space.
Probably gonna pack up the bees (probably 160 Queen/Princesses I have at this point) and the saplings (a full stack of IC2 rubber tree saplings in my sapling/wood chest, with the start of another stack to go--woo) and go start a bee/tree town.
The farm/plantation town will stay where it is.
Gonna start a ranch somewhere (track down those donkeys again and catch as many as possible).
Gonna start a fishing town either in a swamp or in that one giant Testificate village I found. Fishing in the sense that I'm going to be using Giacomo's nets. which are amazing.
Then set up the trading hub/administrative hub/capital somewhere......
get some minor power generation and minor tech (get crap out of bees, fruit, veggies)
Maybe get a Railcraft city going with some coke ovens, turn it into the refinery/smeltery place that well-to-do folks don't wanna live by. The town in charge of transportation, and (at this point) getting roads/paths between all the cities and eventually rails (but not yet).
Basically have a general "power level" (that is strictly enforced in the Capital/trading hub) across the entire civilization, but specific areas get a bump in a certain areas. The tradeoff for this would be that the towns that have the bumps literally cannot do anything else, and require imports to keep themselves going.
