Cargo delivery rates diminishing over time were the intended counter to this, but they were both tuned too low in the original TTD and the largest map size in o

Cargo delivery rates diminishing over time were the intended counter to this, but they were both tuned too low in the original TTD and the largest map size in original TTD is the smallest map size anyone actually plays in OpenTTD so you hit the price floor with plenty of distance still available to outweigh it. Cargodist is one way around this as the cargo has a set destinations when generated, but for performance reasons it only considers connected industries so it still relies a bit on the player being "honest". The FIRS newGRF industry model is another. Rather than secondary industries scaling their output infinitely with input, they have a max output reached when a threshold of different input types is provided, which encourages you to connect up other instances to get more cargo.