Construction bottleneck

[jomni]

I'm a newbie and I get construciton bottlenecks once in a while. I tend to order a lot since I have so much money flowing. Then I notice as the orders pile up, the current items under construction gets stuck at xx%. Why do they get stuck? Missing parts? How do I ensure these bottlenecks don't happen? And how to get out of this mess?

EDIT: Saw a thread in the War Room. It says resources take time to get to where they're needed. Also ferried by limited and uncontrollable freighters. Lol!

[Grisha]

That's exactly true, jomni. You need to be aware of resources and which ones are in short supply. In the beginning with one space port, it's easy to get bogged down since there are only so many yards to construct and you also have no control over private ship orders. So, if you have a lot of state ships being built and the private sector is building a lot of private ships, then you're going to have a choke point.

ORIGINAL: jomni

EDIT: Saw a thread in the War Room. It says resources take time to get to where they're needed. Also ferried by limited and uncontrollable freighters. Lol!

[tjhkkr]

There are only a couple of solutions; many mines and many constructions ships to build mines... and a massive colonization program.

[jomni]

Yeah but to achieve that, you need to go though limited resources and building capabilities, thus the bottleneck. Anyway it's all fun.

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

There are only a couple of solutions; many mines and many constructions ships to build mines... and a massive colonization program.

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: jomni

Yeah but to achieve that, you need to go though limited resources and building capabilities, thus the bottleneck. Anyway it's all fun.

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

There are only a couple of solutions; many mines and many constructions ships to build mines... and a massive colonization program.

In the beginning of the game, it's easy to just build and build without understanding the consequences. Before building *anything* in the early-game, you should check your resource demand, then check your homeworld spaceport to make sure it's not overflowing with demand from the civilians, or your previous construction projects. Thirdly, check your F10 Ledger for any colony ships under construction.If you're facing a construction bottle-neck, consider scrapping all colony ships that haven't begun construction yet, and re-prioritizing your colonization efforts via the Expansion Planner. It's easy to get carried away with that one, sometimes.

Hope that's been at least semi-helpful!

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

There are only a couple of solutions; many mines and many constructions ships to build mines... and a massive colonization program.

These points would only solve anything, if they are at the root of the bottleneck. This isn't always the case.

In my recent game I have a shortage of transport. No, this isn't the truth. The real issue is hard to explain. It is a blatant failure of the civilian sector to do its taks sensibly.

I have gone through all freighters in my empire twice, about half a game year apart. this means I looked at their cargo holds and if there was something loaded, I looked where they were headed until I learned that the flag besides the cargo indicates the target empire of the shipment.

This is no lie: During both checks I performed, among all freighters with cargo, I found exacly one which's load was addresses to one of my own colonies. All other shipments went to other empires. In my empire there were about 150 operational freighters at the time. You can expect about a third to half of them to carry something.

There is something seriously out of whack here. [X(]

Then I went on, taking a few samples of freighters without cargo. Where were they going? What was their order. I was specially interested in freighters with order 'transport steel', because that is what my colonies with stalled production were lacking.

So, what do I find? Freighter goes to one of my (plentiful) mining stations. Fine. Look into cargo hold of mining station. I find (for example): some 1500 units of reserved steel, reserved for some freaking neighbor empire. Then I look through all of my mining stations with steel. All of the reserved steel is reserved for other empires! (with the exception of some couple of hundred units where my construction on a single space port is lacking close to 2K, not counting a dozen space ports under construction).

The only hope I have right now is for my mining ships, for those I do not know where they're going to deliver when they are finished mining. Or the freighters of other empires. I have no overview over what they might be doing for lack of long range scanner coverage.

The conclusion: Transport = badly broken. Wait for fix.

[feelotraveller]

I won't deny that your situation seems 'seriously out of whack' but one partial solution is to build more steel mines. It is obvious that other empires are suffering steel shortages too...

By the way what is the price of steel at the moment in your game?

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

I won't deny that your situation seems 'seriously out of whack' but one partial solution is to build more steel mines. It is obvious that other empires are suffering steel shortages too...

By the way what is the price of steel at the moment in your game?

When there already are enough steel mines, what you are proposing is absolutely not a solution. Please let me repeat it: What you think may be a solution is no solution at all. You are assuming something to be a problem that is not a problem.

I have an ample network of steel mines. All of them (with the exception of a couple recently constructed) have lots of unreserved supplies, lets say on the order of 5K to 10K (I could look again to assemble a more detailed report). What is reserved is reserved for shipments to other empires, probably more than 95% of it. There were, on my last count, a few hundred units reserved for shipment to my own colonies, most likely less than 500 units total. This count does not include possible shipments from settled colonies with steel resources, as there the local reservations can probably not be cleanly separated from reserves being prepared for shipment.

No, the real problem is the complete failure of the civil sector to recognize the shortage on my colonies and to address it the way it deserves, namely with priority before trade with other empires (which is otherwise a worthy goal, too).

Note, that the shortage affects only two of my colonies, which are among close to ten being able to do meaningful construction. Unfortunately, one of the two is the colony with the High Speed Shipyards wonder (not my home colony). It has a space port with eight construction yards. That is currently completely blocked with three dozen more construction jobs waiting. Most of them much needed civilian ships. The shortage in steel is about 2K units, two other strategic resources (one of them carbon fiber) are also in short supply but less so.

Besides that there are more than a dozen small space ports waiting to be constructed on newly settled planets. Those seem to be served with no priority at all.

Of course, if the situation continues that my freighters run errands for other empires, it is forseeable that the shortage will spread and begin to affect all of my productive colonies. I have done two extensive checks of the situation more than half a game year apart. The first of those was performed while I was already nervously waiting for the sitution to sort itself out with time. So it has gone on a good deal longer, yet there is no change in sight.

The main hope I have right now is that the upgrade to versin 1.7.0.6 may change something. Most of that happended while playing 1.7.0.4/5. The only glimmer of hope from the patch notes is that the civilian sector may be more willing to build ships. Throwing more freighters at the problem could thoretically help, letting lower-prioritized jobs, like supplying my central construction sites, slip into focus.

That other empires may have shortages too, is no excuse at all. My freighter network serving their needs ahead or even on par with mine is not excusable, it is an outrage!

This is why I call the transportation system broken. I hope, I made myself clear this time.

[feelotraveller]

Ah, okay. I did not realise that you had lots of unreserved steel at your mines. I have had similar sitations, usually with steel and caslon although occasionally with other resources, where although I have more than enough for my own needs it gets reserved for other empires before I can get hold of it, but only when there is a galactic shortage. Glad to hear that this is not the case in your game.

Still curious as to what the price of steel is in your game.

Uploading a savegame for Elliot in the tech issue forum is probably the best way to get the issue addressed.

[sbach2o]

Yes, it took me a time to make sense of what the 'reserved' column can mean depending on context. And then there's the flag besides it. That should always mean the empire it should eventually be delivered to, but I could still be wrong.

I think that, on colonies at least, you can often have more than one entry for a resource with the same empire. That may (I might be totally wrong here) differentiate shipments from local consumption. I'd like more info on this.

Regarding whether to treat this as an issue for tech support: I am not so sure yet, about how to present the data. Just dumping a save game and let them sift through it is asking a lot. This is time consuming work. A couple of save games spaced apart in time could be helpful, but more important would probably some clear statistics and stuff.

(and forgive me: I edited my original post with additional information while you already were replying - as I am doing with this one).

Still curious as to what the price of steel is in your game.

Almost constantly 2.5 for a long, long time. The global demand (according to Expansion Planner) is typically half of global supply, however that may be counted.

As local supply and demand I have almost equal figures, more often somewhat lower demand, also for some time. I don't know how that supply is counted, though. My mining stations are doing fine and have a good surplus. The main problem may be that I used to order a small spaceport on practically every newly settled colony for a while, although it may take several game years before the civil sector considers the first shipments there.

[sbach2o]

Btw: I can speculate about what may really be the problem here - it could be the 'global market' in Distant Worlds. Just like my freighters are running deliveries for other empires, theirs could do so for mine. I just don't see them (no long range scanners installed, yet), but somewhere there may be a freigter slowly limping along with that much needed shipment of steel for my idle High Speed Shipyards.

This game is in a 15x15 sector galaxy. I have contact to every AI empire and free trade agreements with most (those probably do not affect distribution of transport jobs, just what your revenues are). So the shipments I am waiting for may be from the other end of the galaxy, with the freighters doing them being long out of fuel and still the extremely inefficient default AI designs (so slow to begin with and then only a third of that speed).

All of this is speculation, though. I should have a look in the editor. Sadly I am missing out on the nice support overlays like 'civillian ship vectors' there. Will have to wait 'till tomorrow.

I have the impression (again, just idle speculation, no hard data), that the transport AI has next to no sense of distance when deciding from where to ship resources or from where to pull the freighter doing the shipment.

[feelotraveller]

Okay. Steel at 2.5 is massively high. Normal price is 0.8 so there is a huge galactic demand/undersupply. I am sure that this has something to do with your situation. But it makes it doubly strange that there is any unreserved steel at your mines, particularly if you have contact with all the other empires and trade agreements with most. You are correct that other freighters could be transporting stuff to your spaceports. I generally only catch these when they are unloading, making estimating incoming supplies next to impossible.

Keep us posted with what transpires. I, for one, am intrigued. [:)]

[Keston]

Sounds like a job for a trade embargo to shut down those traitorous traders?

[currierm]

ORIGINAL: sbach2o

Btw: I can speculate about what may really be the problem here - it could be the 'global market' in Distant Worlds. Just like my freighters are running deliveries for other empires, theirs could do so for mine. I just don't see them (no long range scanners installed, yet), but somewhere there may be a freigter slowly limping along with that much needed shipment of steel for my idle High Speed Shipyards.

This game is in a 15x15 sector galaxy. I have contact to every AI empire and free trade agreements with most (those probably do not affect distribution of transport jobs, just what your revenues are). So the shipments I am waiting for may be from the other end of the galaxy, with the freighters doing them being long out of fuel and still the extremely inefficient default AI designs (so slow to begin with and then only a third of that speed).

All of this is speculation, though. I should have a look in the editor. Sadly I am missing out on the nice support overlays like 'civillian ship vectors' there. Will have to wait 'till tomorrow.

I have the impression (again, just idle speculation, no hard data), that the transport AI has next to no sense of distance when deciding from where to ship resources or from where to pull the freighter doing the shipment.

I've seen exactly the same problem in my last 2 games, both with ROTS as I just bought Legends. I think it started with the last ROTS patch. There was massive demand for 3 or 4 resources (especially Steel & Gold) and strong demand for many of the rest. Total demand for Steel and Gold was 2X total supply at times. I was building mines everywhere to try and reactify the situation- I had over 100 steel mines and 60+ of gold. Over time, it did clear up and I was generating silly trade income in the meanwhile.

In looking at the missions for my freighters, I saw a very large number of my freighters outbound to other empires- one Teekan world had about 60 of my freighters incoming or outgoing. Many had piddly levels of gold and were traveling large distances. Outbound to his world they were usually well supplied with fuel, but many were coming back empty, which didn't help matters. I seriously considered embargoed some of the AI empires, but I managed to limp through it and my tech leveling was great with all the cash.

Anyways, in my opinion is does look like something is a bit broken. It probably didn't help that I started in a central location, was expanding very fast and had contacts with most of the AI's fairly early on. I also tend to underbuild starbases a little, but I've always done that and it didn't have nearly the effect. Basically, it felt like I was supplying about half of all the galaxy's resources.

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

Okay. Steel at 2.5 is massively high. Normal price is 0.8 so there is a huge galactic demand/undersupply. I am sure that this has something to do with your situation. But it makes it doubly strange that there is any unreserved steel at your mines, particularly if you have contact with all the other empires and trade agreements with most. You are correct that other freighters could be transporting stuff to your spaceports. I generally only catch these when they are unloading, making estimating incoming supplies next to impossible.

Keep us posted with what transpires. I, for one, am intrigued. [:)]

I am certain that, when I checked in RotS, only resources at planets with space yards were counted for supply. What I am seeing now suggests that this hasn't changed. My mining stations' stocks are overflowing. The civil sector is just completely inept in distributing the goods.

I continued that game with the 1.7.0.6 update installed. The first thing to note, was that the civil sector burned all of its 1.2 million of cash in a huge spree of shipbuilding. One result was a queue of ~150 ships waiting for construction on my High Speed Shipyards (up from ~35). The other was that not only Steel but also Carbon Fiber, Aculon, Chromium, maybe more strategic resources went into massive (pseudo-) undersupply.

Note, the High Speed Shipyards received the bulk of the orders. It seems, the AI is capable of taking construction speed into account, but not resource shortages when distributing shipbuilding orders.

It didn't take long for actual shipments of Steel to arrive to temporarily unblock the construction queue on that planet. They were, as I was speculating in my last post above, delivered by other empires' freighters (Side note 1: the editor doesn't show anything about cargo on freighters, no use trying to find hints there.) (Side note 2: the space port on the planet with the High Speed Shipyards has only two factories of each kind. Those are more than enough to feed the eight construction yards on steroids when they are producing at full speed. Although this may not be a concise test case - a lot of components were already pre-fabricated when the resource shortage was suspended.)

So now the production queue is down from 150 to about 90 ships. I wonder, whether it will stay there for another two or three game years (I'm not sure it was blocked this long before, but this is a conservative guesstimate).

Of course, the shipbuilding spree has create a couple more blocked construction queues on other planets. And the construction of small space ports on new colonies isn't progressing at all.

Another thing that is driving me nuts: Not only is my production powerhouse cut off from raw materials for shipbuilding. It also doesn't receive fuel stocks. So most of the ~60 newly built freighters started out without a drop of gas. No problem, one would think. That planet is actually a moon orbiting a gas giant with a mining station which is drowning in Hydrogen and Caslon (~ 15K each). But, all of these unfueled freighters were jumping straight into transport missions, sometimes to pick up cargo several sectors away, no detour for refueling, nothing, complete failure. [:@] Then it is no wonder why some orders take years to fulfill.

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: currierm

Anyways, in my opinion is does look like something is a bit broken. [...]

Good question... What I myself called 'broken' is now making some sense, although it isn't good sense. My last playing experience before Legends was in RotS, some earlier patch (around ~1.5.0.5). There I sometimes stopped and looked at what the private sector was doing - inefficient as heck, just as it is now, but in different ways. The 'new' trading behavior took me as a complete surprise.

On the other hand: trying to simulate a trading network of the scale we have in Distant Worlds is one hell of a challenge. Trying to optimize anything may bog our computers down too much, and every optimization bears the potential for hidden bugs, hard to track down. Probably all decisions must be kept as simple as possible to keep the game running smoothly.

One thing to keep in mind is that the AI doesn't take well to the increased distances in 15 x 15 galaxies. I'd advise everybody to avoid them.

[currierm]

ORIGINAL: sbach2o


On the other hand: trying to simulate a trading network of the scale we have in Distant Worlds is one hell of a challenge. Trying to optimize anything may bog our computers down too much, and every optimization bears the potential for hidden bugs, hard to track down. Probably all decisions must be kept as simple as possible to keep the game running smoothly.

Agreed. It's a hard system to balance.

I can't find the patch notes. But I seem to recall some earlier patch where the AI was changed to reduce the number of mining bases it builds. Around the same time, new colony worlds were given much reduced starting resources. Both of those changes are likely to put more strain on human/AI trading. From this thread it looks like there have been improvements since I was last playing. I'll have to see how my new game pans out.

[Erik Rutins]

Some of these issues can also come from the transition from one update to another, since we made some changes since release in terms of how many ships the private sector would build, whereas if you start a new game and stay with the same version the increase in construction should be more gradual and more manageable. The new v1.7.0.7 public beta includes improvements that should help address this as well. If you haven't updated to v1.7.0.7 yet, please give it a try and also try a new game with that version.

Regards,

- Erik

[MisterBenn]

Besides making sure freighters have adequate fuel, how can they be encouraged to help the construction process flow if local resource production and construction need are both plentiful? It sounds like they need encouragement to satisfy the local need (of their owner) as a preference. How do freighters select their routes? Do they consider their own profit? Presumably trade with foreign empires requires the payment of tax duty if there's no free trade treaty, that should provide some encouragement to stay local. Do the freighters consider the trip distance? A 50% better price for Gold is not worth it if it's a 10 month round trip across the galaxy.

Also (a bit more radical) it seems to me that when you agree a free trade agreement you end up diluting your own construction material supply with your treaty partner. This is perhaps more of a commitment than the Free Trade treaty suggests. Could there be separate treaties for trading luxury and strategic goods? Strategic goods are a minor form of military support and I'd argue the trade thereof probably lies between Free Trade and Mutual Defence treaties in the level of trust between empires.

Overall some method needs to exist which allows an empire to safeguard its military supply chain before those commodities are made available to the open market for free trade.

[currierm]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Some of these issues can also come from the transition from one update to another, since we made some changes since release in terms of how many ships the private sector would build, whereas if you start a new game and stay with the same version the increase in construction should be more gradual and more manageable. The new v1.7.0.7 public beta includes improvements that should help address this as well. If you haven't updated to v1.7.0.7 yet, please give it a try and also try a new game with that version.

Regards,

- Erik

I'm about 10 years into a game with the public beta and so far the resource situation looks much improved.