Quest to understand the Material Resources Distribution

[arvcran2]

Am really enjoying Distant Worlds Universe again with anticipation of DW2 around the corner.

I've been particularly delving into the Pirate Faction play perspective that forces me to manage material resource transportation resources, namely purchasing freighter and miner ships. I suppose I should say I am not forced to as I choose to play Pirates.

As empire faction play, many games I have played and been perplexed at the sheer volume of private sector traffic chaos . I have witnessed hundreds of idle private freighters cluttering my home world Spaceport, while having several lingering retrofit shortages, or construction shortages. These incidents plus the difficulty and intrigue of the Pirate perspective led me to my curiosity on how to run a private sector. Only one cannot entirely run it as we are not given any direct control once a private ship is added to our faction resources. Ok no problem a Pirate smuggler chooses how to make his or her coin .

As a current project of mine in the interest of getting better at managing my resources I am attempting to log the work that my freighters and miners do. This is a very tedious task. That requires patience and meticulous thorough following of all the private ships. The game is not designed to provide the player with tools to monitor material resources distribution. Although it has a lock on a single ship to 'watch' what it does concept this does not bode well with having the big picture and 'how does that task fit in with it' concept. Which I suspect is partially the reason why, in my humble opinion, resource distribution is in dire need of optimization, or at the very least fully understanding. Yes I am an analyst at heart .

I have started to slowly record while slowly playing a Pirate smuggler faction in a 4 X 4 spiral galaxy with 250 stars, few pirate factions, few independent colonies, and 4 empire factions. The task ahead is non trivial and honestly quite tedious. I am not sure how far I will get with this as the game progresses and the number of ships swell I may get saturated with all the tedious slow play and following each and every freighter/miner at source and destination points to determine what they are carrying and doing. Would be nice to know if the game has any options for logging private ship activity (RogerBacon?).

For now I am just going to use the game as is and record some info in a spread sheet to record private ship activity.

I will post observations to this thread as I gather them as well as edit the lead post (this one) with current up to date state of understanding, observations, and conclusions.

[arvcran2]

my challenges are as follows:

* Catch DWU time (date) as all private ship instantiates a mission and/or task.
* Determine goal of each and all missions and/or tasks assigned to private ships.
* Determine idle times of private ships for their life time.
* Determine mission times and task times for all private ships.
* Record location of private ship, cargo resource material holdings, destination of task on task initiation
* Record location of private ship, cargo resource material holdings on task completion
* Record associated tasks, and private ships, to sub-missions, and sub-missions to missions
* assess recorded information and determine AI Material Resource Distribution Methodology.
* Observe and point out inefficient behavior
* conceive work arounds to avoid inefficiencies.

It is important here to note that I am aware that a Pirate faction's resource distribution is somewhat different than that of an empire. Specifically because of the spaceports over gas giants concept. Other than that there is the smuggling concept that adds temporary requirements and has an impact on regular intra faction material resource distribution.

It is also noteworthy to mention that I am also interested in finding out where mining revenue occurs as well as material resource purchases occur in order to augment my ability to raise my economy into the black, or white as the game font is displayed in .

[arvcran2]

Here is what I understand is the primary raison d'etre of the private sector:

To make DWU coin by collecting and distributing material resources to the player's space ports, bases, and trade or smuggle in the Pirate sense to other independent or empire colonies.

This is how I understand the material resource economy paradigm and where I lack understanding at this time:

Spaceports have a constant demand of all resources or offer payment for material resource delivery.

Since resources are priced at a cost based on need this would automatically influence priorities of the private ships goal to make more coin and hence result in getting these resources delivered more quickly.

The question is when is a need altered or how are priorities set? Are they reactionary or preemptive?

I surmise that trade and smuggling simply add more cargo filling opportunity i.e. coin to be made how does the AI or individual private ship decide between opportunities, are fuel costs and time spent considered factors?
How does the empire or Pirate faction's plans influence the activity choices or how can it steer the private sector in the direction it requires?

[arvcran2]

Redundant back and forth Spaceport to Spaceport deliveries (time wasted and resources unavailable for construction)

Ok so I have played and tracked somewhat successfully the first 3 DWU years and already have some important findings to report!

My Pirate Factions has managed to oppress 3 empires and have ~50% controll of them but have not been able to control any Independent colony. I am planning to build my criminal network at the Human Continental colony and have build a Space Port early at the local Caslon/Hydrogen Gas Giant in that system in order to provide fuel access, disassemble(retire) obtained high tech ships. It may have been an overkill and poor planning as I will have to build a spaceport over the Continental planet as well. But it did uncover an interesting situation of resource distribution.

I am seeing freighters delevering large amunts of Polymer from OP-HQ to OP-CN and also from OP-CN to OP-HQ! You can surmise by this that the private ships do not care and nor does the AI implementation about efficiency. I mean this behaviour could possibly continue forever. But not knowing why this is taking place I cannot presume to say what will happen.

I suppose creating more freighter pickup sources closer to the spaceports could remedy this. But Pirate factions only have one Constructor. Looks like to me that Spaceports aught to have two types of cargo holds: 1 for ship construction and the other for redistribution. How to assign these is of course the rub! I suppose these would be defined by some ratio between current fleet numbers, ship construction resource requirements, and number of shipyard locations there are. There should also need to be some kind of future big picture resource estimate distribution before assigning tasks.

[arvcran2]

Inefficient use of cargo space v ship instances / not using correct size of freighters for delivery requirements

On my first smuggling opportunity, 3325 available Osalia units were tasked to be delivered by two freighters available side by side, from a single source of Osalia, at a mining station to a distant empire home world. One was a large freighter with 6000 cargo capacity that picked up second and carried the remaining 325 units that the first medium freighter picked up the lion share of 3000 units. Anyone can tell you that the medium freighter should not have been tasked for the 'mission' or sub-mission at all as the large freighter would have been enough.

How to avoid this kind of mis management without rewriting the AI code is a beyond me. Perhaps if I have less freighters that all have large capacities? This is not a solution!

[Retreat1970]

Interesting read. I don't feel there is mismanagement per se. It's not perfect and freighters have always got the job done. The whole system is designed to be hands off so you get what you get. Bacon gives more control which is nice.

[arvcran2]

Hey Retreat! I surprised myself, I think I am getting better.

I find the subject truly interesting. Code Force did an amazing job IMHO.

The private sector automation does work eventually. Winning Motto: Proper Competition requires getting there first, being better than the rest, and surviving to stay there .

The separate somewhat symbiotic relationship paradigm between the faction, or empire, and it's subjects, population and private sector, has really interested me about DWU!

Some of the 'inefficiency' or 'mismanagement' plays well for the faction for the following reasons that I can think of:

[*]every material transfer at a commerce center generates coin (not sure how or if this is the case actually)
[*]coin for the private sector is good to allow it to reinvest in the faction's designed transportation ships and mining bases.
[*]some resources are placed in deep space and protected from spaceport destruction due to natural events, war, or sabotage.

The aspects, that I can think of, which do not play well are related to the 'Winning Motto' I previously mentioned:

[*] inefficiency means waste if it is not implemented as risk management, and hence means you need more effort and time to achieve goals.
[*] mismanagement results in lower quality results, longer milestones, and hence risking not getting there first.
[*] supplying any survival mode, read dealing with being wared upon, is paramount in importance. Not being able to construct, retrofit and defend does not fit well with the Winning Motto.

Getting there first is not always a winning strategy of course, because, you have to survive the process and remain as well .

[arvcran2]

Resources you may have expected to acquire when capturing a ship or base are lost, presumably dumped by the faction as a last resort.

[arvcran2]

As a pirate faction Smuggling places a high priority on filling freighters to capacity and delivering to the requested Independent colony or Empire colony.

As already mentioned by NephilimNexus in Pirate related threads the Pirate faction will basically empty it's Spaceport stores of any relevant resources for smuggling. I have noticed that these missions once initiated will continue to completion despite being cancelled by the Independents or Empires. It is not factual but I believe that these shipments result in free resource deliveries. Now having mentioned that, it would appear that smuggling promotes mining revenue. That is, any resources picked up by your faction for the purpose of smuggling, appears to generate mining revenue so all was not lost. It just does not count toward any potential victory conditions related to smuggling.

I am not sure wither an empty strategic resource at a Spaceport takes higher priority than smuggling, further investigation is needed on this. It could be part of the smuggling effort.