[1.0.2.8] Poor behavior regarding Caslon shortages and delivery

[dostillevi]

First, a description of the issue.

1. A mining base has a shortage of Caslon (say, it has 3380 out of 3400 desired).
2. A freighter picks up let's say 600 Caslon to fulfill the order, arrives at the station, and delivers exactly 20 Caslon.
3. The freighter then tops off it's tanks (consumes 15 Caslon from the station's reserves) and leaves the station.
4. Now the station still has a shortage, even though it just received a delivery (3385 out of 3400 desired).
5. Now there is a freighter with left over Caslon idling outside the station.

Issues:

It is currently impossible to meet the demand for Caslon at mining stations. This happens because:
a. The mining station only has one quantity which is both the quantity below which there is a shortage, and is simultaneously the quantity that the station requests for delivery.
b. The delivering freighter will always consume a portion of it's delivery to fill it's own tanks, leaving an immediate shortage at the station.
c. Having a small shortage at all times results in a significant amount unnecessary Caslon deliveries, occupying freighters who are unnecessarily burning through the very Caslon they're delivering.

Freighters frequently complete delivery runs with cargo still left on board. This happens because the freighter will only deliver exactly to the quantity the station desires, but will pick up more than that quantity from the source. This also seems to have some impact on what the freighter will do next. It needs to offload the existing cargo somewhere to free up space for other cargo, so as far as I can see, the freighter will wait around for another order to come in for the goods it already has in it's hold.

Solutions:

1. Every resource consuming object should have additional numbers tied to resource supply. Currently there is the max capacity the station can hold of a given resource, the capacity that triggers the "shortage" status, and the reserve which I believe is the amount of the resource required to fulfill the needs of ships en route to the station. The "shortage" status value should be split into two values, one of which is a low limit that triggers the shortage status, and the second should be the much higher "requested" amount which is how much the station wants to have. These should be significantly far apart, for example 20% of capacity and 90% of capacity. These percents can be fixed, or could be reasonably calculated by each station based on delivery and consumption times. Stations should always keep a reserve of space.

2. Whenever a cargo ship drops off cargo, it should drop off ALL cargo that the receiving station can accept, regardless of whether there's currently a shortage or if the amount delivered will go over the requested amount. I would even go so far as allowing cargo ships to deliver MORE cargo than the absolute capacity of the station. This way cargo ships don't end up with left over cargo, and thematically the overage can be explained away by storing things in passage-ways and the like, and no other cargo could be dropped off until the existing overage is cleared through normal consumption (or if a shortage is triggered on a different resource, the station could be treated as a source for delivery of it's overage resource to other locations so cargo ships would move it away).

[Erik Rutins]

Thank you for this report. Very clear and we'll do something to improve this.

[dostillevi]

Thank you for this report. Very clear and we'll do something to improve this.

Thank you! One more very important observation: when the cargo ship finishes it's run and still has a cargo full of caslon, it doesn't wait for another order of caslon, but instead, it's cargo disappears as soon as it takes another run. I just watched a freighter space 2385 units of Caslon.

Here's an example that I've been able to document with screenshots and a save game for reference: https://imgur.com/a/txzYWEz

In the save, please look for the ship Intrepid Escapade, about to drop off Caslon at the Andrumida Minor (Can we please change system names?) 3 Mining Station. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-lHqai ... sp=sharing

[Franky007]

WOW; if this behavior is widespread it means that a lot of the cargo are lost !!
I hope that the dev will look at that in priority.

I have 2 suggestions for this problem:
1) If enough Caslon are at the station: the ship should refuel BEFORE unloading it's cargo.
2) Reduce the Maintain level by 25%, but let ships unload cargo over 25% of the Maintain level.

[Erik Rutins]

Normally the only case where cargo would be "spaced" and it was like this in DW1 as well is if the destination's capacity is completely full when the freighter arrives. We'll investigate.

[Deuslinks]

One more very important observation: when the cargo ship finishes it's run and still has a cargo full of caslon, it doesn't wait for another order of caslon, but instead, it's cargo disappears as soon as it takes another run. I just watched a freighter space 2385 units of Caslon.

Can confirm this just watched some freighters doing a delivery from mining station to home world. It had Caslon, Argon, and Krypton. Only delivered the Caslon as that was the only resource under the desired amount. Hauler Parked itself nearby then all cargo left in it disappeared as it went back to pick up more goods from the mining station

[dostillevi]

Normally the only case where cargo would be "spaced" and it was like this in DW1 as well is if the destination's capacity is completely full when the freighter arrives. We'll investigate.

The behavior of Calson refueling and the fact that a shortage is triggered as soon as any amount of a resource is consumed likely make the disappearing cargo issue seem much larger than it would be otherwise. I'd be curious what portion of produced resources are lost to spacing. Hopefully that's something you can look into on your end. I suspect right now it's a fairly large portion of all resources produced, given that any use of a resource triggers the "shortage" status, and freighters always seem to pick up much more of a resource than was requested by the destination (likely intentional and desired since it can reasonably be assumed the destination will have a much larger deficit by the time the ship arrives).

That said, spacing seems like sub-optimal behavior for a functioning economy. I'm sure you've worked very carefully on the economy and so you'd have a better perspective on it than I do, but I'd rather see stations be overloaded with excess cargo and have the station deal with that overage in some way, than see that cargo dumped.

From my perspective, the following changes would make for a more efficient and functional private economy, and sum up the ideas stated previously:
1. Separate the "shortage trigger" resource amount from the "amount desired" by a resource consuming object (station, ship, etc), with the shortage triggered amount very low and the amount desired close to object capacity (taking into account the desired amounts of other resources).
2. Have cargo ships unload all cargo at their destination, as long as that cargo is normally used by the destination (i.e. no steel being offloaded at mining stations). Even if this puts the station over-capacity, it ensures that cargo ships aren't spacing large quantities of cargo. Also this should happen less frequently with #1 in place since the difference between the shortage trigger and the amount desired will mean when a station requests a delivery and the station will want much larger amounts delivered. More frequently, a delivery might bring the station out of shortage status, but not bring it all the way to it's desired amount. When this happens, the station would stop requesting deliveries until it re-enters shortage status.
3. When a station is over-capacity, no further resources can be delivered. There are a variety of ways to handle this situation, but the key would be to handle the situation where a station goes into shortage on a resource while being over-capacity in total. In that case, the station MUST space some of the over-capacity resource in order to make room for the other resource it needs. Otherwise, the station could become a temporary source for the resource it has too much of.
4. If a cargo ship does finish a run with excess resources for any reason, it should immediately deliver them to a spaceport or planet before taking any other orders.
5. Planets should have no max capacity for any resource (not sure if this is true currently).

There's likely to be some economic "fallout" if these changes are implemented:
1. Far fewer resources would be lost to spacing, overall making most resources more abundant.
2. Far fewer delivery runs would be requested, and when requested they would want much larger quantities of resources. This will free up freighters to complete other runs, potentially easing shortage issues elsewhere that were occurring because freighters were constantly delivering small amounts of Caslon.
3. Fewer delivery runs and less spacing of Caslon would dramatically change the amount of Caslon available in the galaxy.
4. Rare resources will likely seem less rare, since there's likely a portion of those resources being spaced after delivery.
5. The private sector might need to reduce how many cargo ships it makes, since more would be idling based on the more efficient utilization.
6. Some stations might run out of resources if the resource shortage trigger is too low compared to the amount of resources that station consumes. However this is already a problem right now due to all the spaced resources and the number of unnecessary runs being made by cargo ships. If the shortage trigger is calculated rather than being a fixed percent, then it could be based on averaging utilization and delivery times to optimize the shortage trigger amount.

Of note regarding going over station capacity, mining facilities appear to continue mining well beyond the amount of cargo they should be able to carry. Take a look at some of the Caslon mining stations in my save and you'll see they have far more caslon in stock than their storage capacity (assuming 1 caslon occupies 1 unit of space). Thus,there's already precedent for over-filling stations.

[Akry]

Spacing the cargo is one thing, I dare say even minor incovenience. The much much larger issue this makes it that it basicly ties up a frighter permanetly by making new caslon orders as soon as one was finished.

I'm not sure how much freighter construction a mining station triggers, probabaly 5-8? maybe , wild guess, having 1 tied up from that is a pretty significant amount. Combine that with other issues (freighters gang upon a low yield station only to transfer miniscule amounts that was mined before the last frigther dokced, transporting miniscule amounts to a colony that only desires a 100 of a luxuroy) and you get the issue where the number of hauling jobs are far greater the amount of freighters available.
This results in freighters assigned for jobs from very far away (because the first available freighter is by Murphy's Law must be the one most further) having the freighter fly empty at great distances, which only worsen the issue.

Finally we reach to the problem where planets dont get resources for years. Sometimes they even ran out of caslon, not only because they use so much for basicly nothing but because there are simply no free freighters.

[fitzw1zard]

1.0.3.5
The problem still exists. And this causes a chain of problems with the entire economy of the game.
Are there any plans to fix it?