Transport ships not filling their cargo holds

[PaulP]

Is it normal for cargo ships to carry tiny amounts of cargo from place to place, causing resources to not get spread around?

For instance, I have a base with 50,000 korabbian spice. A large cargo ship arrives. It picks up 50 spice, then flys across the galaxy with it. Runs out of fuel halfway there (with no attempt to refuel), and 10 mins later it arrives and deposits the 50 spice. The colony quickly uses up the 50 spice. I control the spice, I have 50k extra sitting around, yet NONE of my colonies stay above 100 development for more than a couple minutes at a time because ships only transport like 50 or 80 at a time. If they are going to only ship small bits at a time to each planet, couldn't they at least ship a large amount to a nearby spaceport for local deliveries instead of literally flying across the galaxy every trip?

I'm having the same issue with most luxury resources - ships grab teeny bits at a time. Every single mining base I have is 100% full to the brim with cargo, yet all my colonies are low development due to lack of luxuries and space ports are out of things and can hardly even build ships without a 30 minute wait while resources are slowly carted a few hundred at a time. Most of my planets and bases don't even have enough fuel, so my fleets all have to go to the gas mining stations to refuel properly.

This has happened in 3 games so far, so im not really sure what to make of it.

[Lonck]

Its because this game is gay thats why this is happening.  My capital ran out of steel while my colony on the same system had 2k.  Construction ships go to capital to grab resources needed for construction only they don't pick up the steel cuz there is none, but they still try to build the station.  I tell them to go to colony and take steel but the idiots go to capital instead.  Then the PRIVATE sector queues 100 freighters on the capital spaceport only they can't be built cuz theres no steel in the capital.  The few freighters I do have around transport polymer and caslon from capital to colony, both have 3k+ of both resources.  In the mean time my stations stop extracting cuz they are full. I've asked this question three times on these forums and nobody seem to answer. Prolly cuz nobody knows.

[PaulP]

Seems like the cargo transport system needs a bit of an overhaul...

Maybe it should prioritize hauling resources off mining stations and to nearby colonies - taking full loads each time instead of a few hundred. Then the areas with large amounts of resources could be targeted and distributed to other nearby colonies, also with large loads at a time. Maybe it could pick the largest colony in each system to act as hubs (or maybe prioritize based on which one has space port?), collecting large amounts of the local resources and trading large amounts of resources it has and resources it doesn't have to other local hubs - that way each hub would have a big stock of all resources. Then ships could deliver full cargo holds of mixed supplies from each hub to other colonies and stations.

That way it could keep the mining stations mostly empty, loading everything onto main colonies where everything could be evenly distributed across to all the rest. This way instead of a ship grabbing 50 spice and flying across the galaxy it might grab 20,000 spice and fly to the nearby hub, then grab 10,000 spice and 10,000 of some other local resource and fly across the galaxy, then smaller cargo ships could grab a few hundred of each and distribute it to the other nearby colonies on that end of the galaxy.

[Nibelung44]

I admit I'm confronted with the same types of problems... Example my capital has run out of Caslon, but the refinery over the gas giant in the same system is full of it ... Minutes and minutes passes (even hours), and there is still no massive transfert to the capital, the stocks never goes up as expected.

What's more, ships continue to wait for refuel both at the gas giant but also at the capital... They don't recalc  their possibilities.

I think too the cargo spreading could use some serious overhaul... The spread is not good most of the time, and we can't even do something about that !!

[forsaken1111]

Do planets essentially have an 'infinite' sized cargo hold? If so, shipping priority should be to get resources off of mining stations and onto the nearest planet with a starbased and then shipped out. I was under the impression that the dotted lines on the map were your empire's major shipping lanes but I often find large lines of ships not following these lanes, and consequently running out of fuel which wouldn't happen if they simply hopped from starbase to starbase.

[Aures]

The lines are determined by the presence of space ports in a system and the traffic flowing from one system to another. Systems without a space port get two lines max I believe (and systems with bases but no colonies get none) so it is possible and expected for lots of ships to go along the same route without generating a line in some circumstances. For systems with colonies (and especially space ports) the actual connections are determined by traffic flow (and I think the need to form a connected network between all your systems), so if you see a lot of ships going between two systems with space ports but don't have a line connecting them there is either a good reason for it (in terms of systems between them that connections pass through and/or other routes with even more traffic) or the pattern of lines will eventually reconfigure itself so there is a line along that route.

[elmo3]

Maybe freighters could have some kind of "wait until full" order.  That would cause them to wait at a mining station until their hold is full before leaving.

[Aures]

Logistics is hard (believe me, that is what I work with professionally) so it will take some really savvy AI code to get it working sensibly.

But what is clear from this discussion is that if the base is full and the amount present is significantly greater than the reserved amount, take as much as the cargo hold can fit (as trade also happens between empires there will need to be special code to handle that, even the simplest of cases is far from simple). That would go a long way to fixing the bases are full but economy is starved of that resource issue. Cases that are not so clear cut will need even more subtle logic, working out a sensible way to implement a margin of safety/anticipation of future demand will be a headache. And there is much more to do besides that.

[diablo1]

Its because this game is gay thats why this is happening.

LMAO ROFLMAO that was like just too funny dude. You have 100's of players saying how great it is and then you come up with that. Simply too kewl for words.

BTW you don't have this type of minimal resource hauling in X3:Reunion:Terran, ships fillup to the brim if there are resources available and I can't keep enough whiskey on tap at my little distillery. Sounds like Distant Worlds needs the transport engine of X3 to me. X3 has space jumping transports also that can jump huge distances and pickup cargo and then jump somewhere else to deliver it....does Distant Words have these types of transports?

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: diablo1

Its because this game is gay thats why this is happening.

LMAO ROFLMAO that was like just too funny dude. You have 100's of players saying how great it is and then you come up with that. Simply too kewl for words.

I actually found it kind of offensive and childish, but ymmv.

[adecoy95]

considering how many resources this game has, i think the transports do an EXCELLENT job moving cargo around. the only times i have had serious resource problems is in the early game. one time i had no direct access to steel and my insect neighbor decided that all my transports had to die (he had the steel i needed).

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

considering how many resources this game has, i think the transports do an EXCELLENT job moving cargo around. the only times i have had serious resource problems is in the early game. one time i had no direct access to steel and my insect neighbor decided that all my transports had to die (he had the steel i needed).

It does a passable job now, but as others have observed the transports won't actually FILL UP. If I have 10k units at a mining base, why not take a full load with you rather than filling up 2% of your hold and flying off?

[adecoy95]

the only times i have seen a transport do that is when you have to have those resources ASAP, for like a stalled base or ships waiting to finish construction.

after its done the other, more full transports are not too far behind.

honestly tho, i suppose i can relate to the luxury resources, i never see them get transported properly. perhaps the amount that planets use over time could be lowered?

[Nibelung44]

I think the freighter must indeed also takes into account what is in store, and not what is requested. If the mining station has loads and loads of a resource, then filling up the cargo hold is not a bad idea, whatever what is really needed by its destination... Some simple checks can make sure this does not go overboard, but this criteria is lacking it seems in the game.

[forsaken1111]

In real shipping it is almost sacrilege to run a transport truck 'empty' as the trip costs money and generates no income. Empty space on a freighter would be money not being earned, and I would think the civilians would want to maximize profits. Picking up a full load of a resource is the best way to do this, and even if the destination (a construction ship for example) can't handle all of the transported product, the freighter can then offload it on the nearest world/spaceport.

[adecoy95]

honestly i was not aware that development level of a planet can go down, i thought it could only go up, and that even without access to huge amounts of luxurys it would go up on its own eventually, i guess i was mistaken.

perhaps this is why i spend most of my end games with 90% of my income coming from my starting world.

or maybe its all that spice.....

[forsaken1111]

He who controls the spice, controls the universe!

THE SPICE MUST FLOW

[Scritty]

Not sure logistics is that hard.
Bur lead time rules/stock replenishment/a 2 bin or multi bin system is the sort of thing that you can mock up in excel in about 10 minutes.

It's not like we are asking for an entire MRP system to be implemented - just some simple stock replenishment calcs. A simple CLAUDE sum would do thye trick.

C = Capacity (amount that can be shifted in one "unit" or ship)
L = Transport Lead Time (How long it takes from start to finish to travel and fetch the stock)
A = Stock Availability (How much is available)
U = Daily Usage
D = Demand Material Requirement (How much is needed)
E - Expenditure (How much you can actually afford)

It's all about satisfying D

While E>0 (or a factor of C*E>0) The number of ships travelling should be

D/C while A>0
L = current stock levels/U

With conditions set for overstocking if required.

Scritty

But as we are dealing with private citizens, maybe there are other factos (they can't afford the stock for instance)

I'll bust out my old IMPCON set up or get the MM and PP modules of our SAP trial system on it if needs be.

[Aures]

Yeah, logistics is not that hard IF you are doing internal logistics. External logistics with unpredictable pickups and deliveries are a different kettle of fish entirely. CLAUDE sum is all well and good if you have dedicated ships that are doing nothing but shuttling back and forth, but every transport mission in DW is a one off. The values it produces might be useful for setting some kind of heuristic demand figure (or more precisely some kind of handle on how much capacity needs to be involved in transporting a particular good from A to B) but it is hardly a comprehensive solution for what the private economy should be doing when.

To take just a few examples:
U=daily usage, except for luxuries (and even they will vary due to migration/growth) is not a constant and depends entirely on what is queued up where. For most materials it will depend on what is being built there, fuel is just unpredictable to a large degree since the ships that will be picking up fuel won't have even decided to head to the stop for refuelling yet. Once you are talking about moving resources somewhere so they can then be redistributed again it is even more complicated. Just guesstimating with a large margin of safety is probably ok if there is a lot of spare material around.
L= Transport lead time, also unpredictable to some degree. You can somewhat estimate whether the ship will run of fuel and so get a hyperdrive speed but the jump time initiation is random, calculating the effect of orbits would eat serious processor time (when multiplied by the number of ships/routes), you can't predict wait time to get a docking bay (no such thing as booking slots in DW) and you can't tell where the transport ship that accepts the mission will be exactly.

I know there are lots of pieces of software that can assist in this kind of task but processor cycles are at a premium in DW, anything that is going to be run for tens of thousands of ships going between thousands of destinations in addition to everything else DW already does needs to have a very low overhead.

I am not sure if there is even any expenditure or profit involved in the transport of goods in DW, it is all very stripped down. From what the galactopedia and empire summary say it looks like the only input of money into the private economy is colony revenue (GDP) and this is shared among the entire private sector of an empire. The costs are taxes, fuel usage and maintenance fees (the private mining bases appear to be very nice in that they give all their resources to the empire for free). Private freighters do not buy goods or sell them and have no need to make a profit themselves, they simply grease the wheels of the economy. There is no transfer of cash involved in moving your own resources (except for selling fuel to the private sector), and any trade between empires is a matter of state funds. It is all just a big heuristic to make it look like there is a real private economy with lots of individuals working for their own benefit.

Good prices are set on a galactic level, there are no price differentials driving the flow of goods. If I was going to set up a game with a bunch of private freighters I would let demand and supply determine the local price (as diablo1 said, something more like X3 but obviously with something better than the simplistic stock level equals price equation X3 uses) and give the freighters the incentive to maximise their own profits. In theory, everything would work itself out on that basis and it is simply a matter of giving the freighters routines to determine how to maximise profits. But any overhaul of the economy that major might have to wait for another expansion. It would be at least as involved as the change to the research system between original DW and ROTS.

In the mean time we are probably stuck with tweaking the current system ie changing when a trade order is put out for a freighter to respond to and how much of a good it transports. Things like my earlier suggestion that when picking up from a source that is full/near full the freighter should carry as much as it can. I'll add to that list that the very fact that a mining station is reaching full capacity should invoke a request for a freighter to transport goods to wherever they will fit. It should be relatively easy to stop mining stations from reaching full capacity (unless there aren't enough cargo/docking bays or galactic supply is through the roof). Getting from the current system to anywhere near an optimal distribution network is a much bigger ask.

[PaulP]

ORIGINAL: elmo3

Maybe freighters could have some kind of "wait until full" order.  That would cause them to wait at a mining station until their hold is full before leaving.

The problem isn't that they aren't waiting until they're full, it's that they are only taking a job to transport tiny amounts. The station will have 25,000 of the stuff but they'll show up and grab 200 because thats all they calculated the demand to be. Then they arrive with their 200 caslon, dump it off, and its job done. Then the ship and its escort refuels and oh hey the planet needs another 200 caslon, time for another ship to go get some.


A simple hub and spoke system would solve the issue. Just have each system pick the largest space port in the system (or largest colony population if two planets have the same sized space ports) and have that port act as the local hub. All the mining stations and planets within that system and in nearby systems without space ports would ship their goods to the closest hub. Each hub would be linked to nearby hubs. Every so often the game would compare the resources between the hubs and make bulk trades where gaps exist. This way resources would be exported in bulk across the map from hub to hub until everyone has a big stock. Then the current system of small scale demand trading where it sends a few hundred at a time as needed could be used for transporting resources from the hub to the planets and other resource users (star bases, construction ships, etc). This way players would have some control over their economy - building space ports in central locations to ease the transport network, and building space ports on borders with other empires in order to trade with them.


An even simpler fix would be to just make it check if the receiver is a planet/space port, and if so grab extra. It could grab up to half of what the sender currently has extra in stock, that way one ship would never empty a place out completely but it would still get a full hold as long as it is well stocked - or at least bring a bit extra for other uses. This way my large cargo ship sending 200 caslon would instead grab the 200 and then an additional 9800 since the station has so much, then the planet wouldn't need to make another request for it for a long time and the ships would have time to fill the gaps on other resources.