Broken Logistics Again.

[LoBlo]

Still running into the issue where I have 80+ new colonies without resource yet thousands of idle freighters that aren't moving any resources to the new colonies. I'm not sure where the bug is, but it breaks the economy of my empire as new colonies will never be resourced. If anyone knows the origin of the bug , let me know. Here's a link to the file download and screenshot.

LB.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SOBO89 ... drive_link

IdleFreighters.png (2.14 MiB) Viewed 2224 times

[ChrisGb]

You need to set the access right correctly as insteand of dl the save it asks to sent a requeest for permission...errr

The one thing coming to my mind watching this picture is Docking Bay Count on the Starport and Docking Bay Throughput.
Redesign the Starport, take some things away and put in max amount of Docking Bays and check the tech for Docking Bay throughput.

The scenario in the picture usually only comes along when logistics infrastructure cannot put up with the load and it start queueing up.
The Starport becomes the bottleneck then. Freighters hanging around with no mission as they cannot be assigned a mission due to mission queue/waiting time too long.

Also check the freighters manually, sometimes one freighter got stuck (waiting for a resource already booked and not in stock) and holding up all others.

I not sure this is a bug, just an unfortunate coincidence...
When your Empire gets bigger need up the Throughput of Docking Bays and the amount of Bays on Starport..especially the one at Home Colony

[LoBlo]

You need to set the access right correctly as insteand of dl the save it asks to sent a requeest for permission...errr

Ok, try it now to see if it works.

[ChrisGb]

You need to set the access right correctly as insteand of dl the save it asks to sent a requeest for permission...errr

Ok, try it now to see if it works.

not working,
you need to go to the file, open the option with the people+ icon and set access to "everybody who has the link" or something like that, dunno what it says in english as mine is in another lang

[ChrisGb]

Got the save
NO BUG! NO BROKEN LOGISTICS! Only broken gameplay - sry
Star-Port at Planet construction queue clogged up with hundreds of freighters and only 2 Yards and 10 Docking slots in total on the Star-Port. Planet surrounded by Freighter hulls in construction and not clogged up Freighters waiting while
right at that moment some retrofitting is going on too and state ships in construction also that take preference. No wonder this looks like a mess but there is NO BUG here!
Everything moving fine. Upgraded the Star-Port manually to the Large one that was already designed but took out all Figher Bays and replaced with Docking Bays.
There is no enemy anymore to attack this planet so why having fighter bays?

Balance in huge deficit cause of unmeasured conquering of Planets with unassimilated populations!!!
See lower part of colony list on screenshot with 4 colonies costing -33K up to -55K in support....for real?!

I upgraded the StarPort and let it run a little while on x4 and balance went back to positive. See Image. Starport with 4 yards and +20 docking slots.
Starpot construction queue however is clogged till the end of time. This also caused by adding colonies at a pace that overloads logistics by adding absurd amount of transport needs.

I mean, did you really look at what is going on or just posting randomly this must be bug ?!
The problem here is kinda of a real life one. You cannot just add indiscriminately territory and population to your empire and expect a very sophisticated logistics network to deal with it magically.
This will take probably decades to adjust itself.

I also wonder why continue the game at this point as there is no real enemy to beat anymore. Your empire is way beyond the threshold of invincible

[Jorgen_CAB]

This is a very common issue in my opinion... players can screw over the game very hard unless you don't pay close attention to what is going on. Said player then blame the game for their own mismanagement.

I have played many saves with these kind of similar issues in the past.

I never put fighter bays and only minimal weapons on space stations, that is what military defense platforms are for. Keep your space stations civilian not military. Most world only need small space stations... if there is a traffic jam at the colony then just add a bigger station with more docking bays and/or yards. Have dedicated construction stations with allot of construction yards but always include at least one docking bay to any station as they provide for much higher throughput of loading and unloading goods. Loading and unloading of goods outside of stations are atrociously slow now, this was in an update not very long ago. Docking bays now is more important then ever to have at least one on every station.

Maybe the AI design need to be updated too so they include at least one docking bays on all space stations, not sure if it currently do that but it should.

[Parrius]

So are you saying the issue is caused by hanger bays for fighters and not enough docking bays?

Leave hangers for defense stations rather than beefing up the spaceport? The spaceport should be for civilian use only.

Thanks for sharing this, I always loaded up my spaceports with weapons, shields and hangers for fighters. I have also encountered this problem at some of my colonies because of the small ports and obviously not enough docking bays.

[ChrisGb]

So are you saying the issue is caused by hanger bays for fighters and not enough docking bays?

Absolutely! Also by taking over too many worlds in short period of time, this why there is literally a thousand freighters in the building queue that can be seen around the planet as raw structures.
There is actually only few real freighters in the image as with 4 yards and 20+ docking slots delivery goes really fast and no freigter has to wait to unload/load, they come drop/take and off they go.

Leave hangers for defense stations rather than beefing up the spaceport? The spaceport should be for civilian use only.

exactly, additionally on the more important worlds you have a fleet there anyway....and later some defense platforms

[hurkle]

I just checked my max universe size game and have 7000 freighters, 1000 of those are being constructed (90% being constructed or retrofitted are at homeworld and its station which is a different problem), and have a grand total of 36 freighters doing nothing out of 6k. Am assuming those 36 are just finished missions and waiting for their next mission.

I also checked the passenger transports and 1 out of 1400 doing nothing, cant complain about that either.

Mining ships are 4000 and no idle ships. Win!

500 construction ships doing their thing with no idle ships. Win! Construction ships and colony ships are normally completely borked or very slow to get new missions in this game so is pretty unusual to see them all working.

I would say the game is working quite well here, and these numbers are the lowest I have ever seen for idle ships, and I never bothered messing with starbase auto construction so that never helped reduce possible load/unload type queue jams for me.

[LoBlo]

Got the save
NO BUG! NO BROKEN LOGISTICS! Only broken gameplay - sry

Well, wrong upload. I was experimenting with a "fix" where I had 20% of the freighters idle but intact and not moving (fully constructed). I wondered what would happen if I just scuttled all the idle freighters and my economy immediately tried to replace them with overloaded construction yards.

It's really not representative of the real bug. If I can replicate it again I'll post it again.

[LoBlo]

Got the save
NO BUG! NO BROKEN LOGISTICS! Only broken gameplay - sry

Alright. Here's another version of the same bug. Same game with the docking changes you suggested implemented. Still the same. Thousands of idle frieighters and over 100 colonies starved for resources. Even 10B population colonies without a single freighter in sight and 1000 of idle freights not responding to demand.

Here's the latest version to show the problem. Any suggestions?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vPDAxg ... sp=sharing

If the download doesn't work let me know.

LB

[MaximKI]

Thanks, we'll investigate.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Got the save
NO BUG! NO BROKEN LOGISTICS! Only broken gameplay - sry

Alright. Here's another version of the same bug. Same game with the docking changes you suggested implemented. Still the same. Thousands of idle frieighters and over 100 colonies starved for resources. Even 10B population colonies without a single freighter in sight and 1000 of idle freights not responding to demand.

Here's the latest version to show the problem. Any suggestions?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vPDAxg ... sp=sharing

If the download doesn't work let me know.

LB

I'm sorry but this whole debacle are player induced...

You have omitted building any medium freighters which completely borked the freighter logic.

Different freighters have different roles... if they are available you have to build them or the freighter logic will break.

After I added a medium freighter hull to the game then ALL freighters started working and I had a very healthy logistic going very fast after this.

I will also say it... and I know allot of people disagree... but adding so many small mining modules to your mining stations completely unbalance the mining game. I would recommend staying with only a single large one so the game stays at least somewhat competitive against the AI... but that is just a suggestion.

[ChrisGb]

I'm sorry but this whole debacle is player induced...

...knew it b4 dl the save
thank you for picking up the torch so it could not boil down to personal opinion
after I have seen the first one it could not be any other way

[R_TEAM]

Sorry to say this against the opinion of ChrisGb and Jorgen_CAB ...

But "if" it realy a mistake from the player ... if he plays the Game in the way HE want ?
If not an rule or an good visible warning stop it from (in the example here) not use medium frighters ....
So an player need an long list of things he should not do - as the Game cant use it or adopt to it and fail hard ??

Sorry - this is clearly an Game design Failure ...
In the way as the Game should work with only small frighters the same way as with medium ...
Or in the way to not tell the player that medium frighters are an musst have ....

The same is with the mining moduls .... IF i can design it that way ... and then the game runs wilde ... this is not an player fault .. ..

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sorry to say this against the opinion of ChrisGb and Jorgen_CAB ...

But "if" it realy a mistake from the player ... if he plays the Game in the way HE want ?
If not an rule or an good visible warning stop it from (in the example here) not use medium frighters ....
So an player need an long list of things he should not do - as the Game cant use it or adopt to it and fail hard ??

Sorry - this is clearly an Game design Failure ...
In the way as the Game should work with only small frighters the same way as with medium ...
Or in the way to not tell the player that medium frighters are an musst have ....

The same is with the mining moduls .... IF i can design it that way ... and then the game runs wilde ... this is not an player fault .. ..

Sure... that is one angle... but save yourself the trouble and use all the freighters and you will never have these problems. So even if you consider it a games design issue it still is player induced because there are no reason to omit the medium freighter, no reason at all.

To be honest there are many ways you can break game functions that the game don't really tell you about, but this one are particularly opaque.

About the mining modules... that is just a suggestion from my part... you can do it... but it is a huge balance issue and I don't understand why you can stack them in this game design, makes little sense. The small mining module also is more efficient size wise than a large one as long as you have the slots for them. All of this make very little sense to me and definitely is a game balance design problem.

[thegreybetween]

A good question for the devs to consider in all of this: How explicit is a lot of this information in the game's actual resources (galactopedia, manual, etc)?

With something like freighters, I don't recall seeing anything IN THE GAME that makes it clear what the roles of the different freighters actually are. Sure, we can see things like the size of the cargo holds and better fuel range from their spec sheet, but I don't believe it explicitly states things like "Small freighters won't take [Supply Job X] so you need to make sure you have Medium Freighters for that". People who read forums/discord are eventually taught that different freighters have roles that other tiers won't fill, but it is definitely not clear from the documentation and a player could be forgiven if they thought that an army of small freighters was just a less-efficient but workable approach and not an economy-wrecking failure. It's fine if you rely on research automation, because the game will eventually fill in that gap for you. But a manual player controlling research needs to have the tools to properly assess the priority of construction research if something as simple as "use more small freighters" breaks never-explained game logic.

There are a lot of aspects to this game that could benefit from a much more explicit treatment in the in-game resources. It should be clear to a player what is and isn't working based on their technology and construction choices, and a player shouldn't have to resort to posting a save and asking for help to discover that they broke something that was never explicitly explained in the system.

So yeah, I'd love to see more clarity in the galactopedia, tech descriptions, and advisor warnings to make these systems less opaque and easier for the player to correct without frustration or external lifelines.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I actually take issue with allot of these argument that the game don't tell me if I do X then Y will happen... it would be impossible to cover all options available in the game that would need to be explained.

The game by default will create all the freighter... if the player choose to not design them and break things it is their problem.

If they choose not to design and build construction ships nothing will get built the same thing with explorers... if the player don't design a mining ship the AI will never build them either and so you will loose some flexibility on mining resources.

The player need to make a considered effort to understand the effects of NOT do something that would otherwise be default behavior. Considering that freighters are completely automatic you might first consider what will happen if you don't allow the AI to use something it is suppose to use.

It is not that small freighters can't do all the jobs, they can and they will, the same for medium and large. The problem is that if a hull is available but not used it breaks the automation logic. If only small freighters are available then the AI automation don't consider those hull types when assigning freighter missions but will if they are available for use.

I presume they could tidy up the logic of when and how the AI assign the missions based on the ships that exist physically rather potentially. But I don't know how much of a problem this would pose in other ways. They also could force certain ship types to always exist too... like you can never delete the last of any civilian ship design and an automatic one will be created when you research them.

Currently the player can if they want chose not to make certain designs thus breaking parts of the the game doing so.

[thegreybetween]

If I have Lv2 blasters, I never NEED Lv3 blasters for the game to function. Yes, my blasters will eventually be very weak weapons, but my empire will still run if I choose to hamstring my fleet with crappy weapons.

If you do not research medium freighters, you cannot build medium freighters. That's easy to understand. But if you don't realize you NEED medium freighters and assume you can do everything with the less efficient smaller version while you prioritize other techs, there is nothing to compel you to research it, and you arrive at the conclusion that the game must be bugged when your empire automation breaks.

That's what I am saying - the game needs to explain any hidden or implicit mechanisms that could cause an ignorant player to assume the game is broken. I'm not saying the game needs to hand-hold you through efficient or effective empire building, and it certainly doesn't need to laundry-list the potential consequences of your actions. But if an automation system DEPENDS on you making certain research choices or it fails to properly function, then those sorts of dependencies need to be clear to the player.

This is not the first thread where a player makes a gameplay error that they conclude must be a broken/bugged part of the game. That means that the game isn't effectively communicating to the player what it needs from them. It isn't a design failure at all, and the game is brilliant. But if a player can hit a wall that feels like a bug because of an action they failed to take, communication can be improved. That's all I'm saying. "Learn 2 play" works for some games, but something this massive and opaque will just lose players and positive reviews if it expects people to trial-and-error their way through a vast tech tree to unbork a basic system that is never explained to them. And the fix is as easy as a Galactopedia page explaining freighter logic. Nice.

[AKicebear]

A good question for the devs to consider in all of this: How explicit is a lot of this information in the game's actual resources (galactopedia, manual, etc)?

I agree the documentation is badly lacking. In some cases it is from DW1 and incorrect for DW2. That would be forgivable during Early Access, but we're years past 1.0.

That the most experienced players disparage players making these mistakes, rather than understanding why they make them, isn't helpful.

I wonder how DW2 is doing commercially. These forums feel very quiet the last year or so.