Complex Industry Inputs Severely Imbalanced

[Marc Collins]

This is an old, old issue that I was hoping might get addressed in the latest update, but no. What causes a Goods or Machines factory to attract a completely imbalanced mixture of inputs, even over a very long period of time? Just an example, but my Machines factory is overflowing with stored steel, but can't seem to attract readily available planks, even when I set-up a separate and additional delivery line just for the planks to that factory. A short distance away, the Goods factory has enough plastic stored for years, but the steel doesn't get sent there. I would expect one of two things to happen:

1) The steel would be more evenly distributed between Machines and Goods, rather than starving one and flooding the other, because they both have plenty of demand and delivery routes. If the demand was not there, why would one input each be accepted on such a massive scale?

2) The inputs for either one would be attracted in some balanced manner, since one of each is required per unit of production.

Neither #1 nor #2 happens a significant majority of the time and this annoying imbalance occurs.

Can anyone explain how/why this happens? It does not make sense from any interpretation of the game's simulation...unless I am missing something. Thanks in advance.

[Sarsgamer]

So If i'm reading it correctly. You're trying to provide steel to a machines and goods factory from one steel factory? I honestly wouldn't even think to try this cause when the machines or goods factory upgrades to max each wants all 400 of the steel.

The demand is based on how much they want per year, but doesn't consider how much they already have. Like you can deliver just coal to a steel factory and they'll forever deliver coal even though it's never consumed since they don't get iron as well.

How the demand gets split, I'm not sure. Like when I start supplying crude oil to oil processor I usually start a route with two crude oil factories to supply the oil processor but they don't distribute evenly until the oil processor upgrades to max. One could be shipping 50 and the other shipping 150 at the initial stages... I think it's based on distance, but haven't paid attention that much.

[Blackdragonbird]

Do not setup your production chains this way. Every chain need to be isolated from the others. The only thing you can split is the final products between more than 1 city. The way the game was coded do not allow these split setups to work correctly.

And I don't believe it will ever change, the developers are focused in mainstreaming the game to make it more appealing to a bigger audience, which means focusing in graphics and shallow mechanics than in a more complex economical and logistical model.

[Vimpster]

If a factory demands 2 different products to produce something then the demand is perfectly balanced.

If, however, you are dividing the production of an industry to multiple destinations then it will never perfectly balance the distribution unless it can actually produce enough to meet the full demand of all destinations. If it can then it will send the exact amount each destination demands. If it can not then it will approximately balance it over time, but never perfectly balance it. One will always get some favour over the other.

I played a game where I connected all industries to all other industries and the game would always generally try to evenly distribute the supply to all its destinations, to the extent that all destinations were equally accessible. For instance if there was a bottle neck in reaching one of the destinations it would send less to that destination.

Here is an example of a single forest distributing to 4 sawmills. It can not meet the demand of all of them but it attempts to approximately distribute to each of them evenly.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2833639793

[poruatokin]

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this issue. The OP has described the problem excellently.
I have similar cases where for example, two steel mills at significant distance from each other are being fed by multiple common sources of ore and coal via freight hubs and ports. Both mills are almost non productive because one has 30,000+ units of ore in stock with zero coal while the other has zero ore and 30,000+ coal.
I see the same thing with Goods factories where one has humungous steel stock and the other has equally humungous plastic stock.
Someone above described that you need to make each supply chain isolated. My answer is, how the hell is that like any type of transport simulation? I want to be able to ship multiple materials around the map based on realistic demand, not on needless output. It is totally unrealistic to have to build separate stations and ports for every single resource.

Where a factory requires product A and product B, there needs to be some type of cap on the amount of A that can be stocked, if B is in short supply. Maybe there is a script mod that can correct this ridiculous behavior?

In this area TF1 was far superior to TF2. TF1 was demand based and goods would only be shipped if they could be used.

[Blackdragonbird]

Originally posted by poruatokin:

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this issue. The OP has described the problem excellently.
I have similar cases where for example, two steel mills at significant distance from each other are being fed by multiple common sources of ore and coal via freight hubs and ports. Both mills are almost non productive because one has 30,000+ units of ore in stock with zero coal while the other has zero ore and 30,000+ coal.
I see the same thing with Goods factories where one has humungous steel stock and the other has equally humungous plastic stock.
Someone above described that you need to make each supply chain isolated. My answer is, how the hell is that like any type of transport simulation? I want to be able to ship multiple materials around the map based on realistic demand, not on needless output. It is totally unrealistic to have to build separate stations and ports for every single resource.

Where a factory requires product A and product B, there needs to be some type of cap on the amount of A that can be stocked, if B is in short supply. Maybe there is a script mod that can correct this ridiculous behavior?

In this area TF1 was far superior to TF2. TF1 was demand based and goods would only be shipped if they could be used.

Like I also said, the developers do not care. A more complex economic and logistic system is being requested from TF1, and what they did with TF2 was exactly the contrary. Oversimplified it to the point of stupidity.

Keep asking, but it will land on deaf ears. The majority of actual player base still struggle with this oversimplified economic model, if we ever get something more complex and functional than TF1, the player base will shrink, which means less money, which means that they are not going to do it.

[lozacenz]

Originally posted by Blackdragonbird:

Originally posted by poruatokin:

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this issue. The OP has described the problem excellently.
I have similar cases where for example, two steel mills at significant distance from each other are being fed by multiple common sources of ore and coal via freight hubs and ports. Both mills are almost non productive because one has 30,000+ units of ore in stock with zero coal while the other has zero ore and 30,000+ coal.
I see the same thing with Goods factories where one has humungous steel stock and the other has equally humungous plastic stock.
Someone above described that you need to make each supply chain isolated. My answer is, how the hell is that like any type of transport simulation? I want to be able to ship multiple materials around the map based on realistic demand, not on needless output. It is totally unrealistic to have to build separate stations and ports for every single resource.

Where a factory requires product A and product B, there needs to be some type of cap on the amount of A that can be stocked, if B is in short supply. Maybe there is a script mod that can correct this ridiculous behavior?

In this area TF1 was far superior to TF2. TF1 was demand based and goods would only be shipped if they could be used.

Like I also said, the developers do not care. A more complex economic and logistic system is being requested from TF1, and what they did with TF2 was exactly the contrary. Oversimplified it to the point of stupidity.

Keep asking, but it will land on deaf ears. The majority of actual player base still struggle with this oversimplified economic model, if we ever get something more complex and functional than TF1, the player base will shrink, which means less money, which means that they are not going to do it.

TpF1's logistical system had some critical and game breaking flaws that resulted in unsolvable and crippling boom/bust cycles of production if you were actually Successful at meeting their transport demand.

The great virtue of TpF2's system is that it fixed that.

[poruatokin]

Originally posted by lozacenz:

TpF1's logistical system had some critical and game breaking flaws that resulted in unsolvable and crippling boom/bust cycles of production if you were actually Successful at meeting their transport demand.

The great virtue of TpF2's system is that it fixed that.

Trouble is they threw the baby out with the bath water. TF2 sucks.

[Blackdragonbird]

Originally posted by lozacenz:

Originally posted by Blackdragonbird:

Like I also said, the developers do not care. A more complex economic and logistic system is being requested from TF1, and what they did with TF2 was exactly the contrary. Oversimplified it to the point of stupidity.

Keep asking, but it will land on deaf ears. The majority of actual player base still struggle with this oversimplified economic model, if we ever get something more complex and functional than TF1, the player base will shrink, which means less money, which means that they are not going to do it.

TpF1's logistical system had some critical and game breaking flaws that resulted in unsolvable and crippling boom/bust cycles of production if you were actually Successful at meeting their transport demand.

The great virtue of TpF2's system is that it fixed that.

They overdid it. There was a mod that simply increased the size of the industry stockpiles, it alone was enough to mitigate a lot of issues with broken production chains and oscilating production in industries.

If the developers wanted, they could have fixed the broken points in the old system and improved over it, but they don't. And worse, they don't even allow modders to "fix" it, because some mechanics are so broken at the core that no mod can access it, or if it's accessible by the mods, it will limit what the mod can do.

An example is the OR mechanic of industries. This mechanic is not used any of the vanilla industries in the game, guess why, but, is documented. It allow industries to use different materials to make a product, like stone OR marble for ConMat. You can mod the industries to accept the 2 inputs, but it only works correctly if you feed it with only 1 of the possible inputs, if you feed the 2, the industry consume the 2 to produce 1, instead of choosing 1 of the inputs, and switching to the 2nd when the 1st is completely consumed.

Some modder asked for it to be fixed last year during the last beta. The developers said that it was working as intended and moved on.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by poruatokin:

I have similar cases where for example, two steel mills at significant distance from each other are being fed by multiple common sources of ore and coal via freight hubs and ports. Both mills are almost non productive because one has 30,000+ units of ore in stock with zero coal while the other has zero ore and 30,000+ coal.
I see the same thing with Goods factories where one has humungous steel stock and the other has equally humungous plastic stock.

It is important to note that how much stock pile an industry has of a product it consumes does not change the demand for that product at all. It demands a new amount per year regardless of what the internal stock pile is.

So for example a level 1 steel mill with 30k iron in its internal stockpile and 0 coal will still demand a new supply of exactly 400 iron and 400 coal from an iron mine and coal mine respectively. So the amount the iron mine keeps sending to your line would not be affected negatively.

[ob1wG!]

Originally posted by Marc Collins:

1) The steel would be more evenly distributed between Machines and Goods, rather than starving one and flooding the other, because they both have plenty of demand and delivery routes. If the demand was not there, why would one input each be accepted on such a massive scale?

If that were the case, it would only be a temporary fix. You'd still have to find a separate steel mill for the goods factory at some point.

Otherwise, it depends on which cargo you deliver first. I agree it's strange to see thousands of unused units of cargo, so perhaps it would look better if industry stockpiles also overflowed.

Most of the issue with cargo going the wrong way and clogging everything up can be fixed by setting what each route can pick up or deliver at every station on its route.

[ob1wG!]

Originally posted by Blackdragonbird:

An example is the OR mechanic of industries. This mechanic is not used any of the vanilla industries in the game, guess why, but, is documented. It allow industries to use different materials to make a product, like stone OR marble for ConMat. You can mod the industries to accept the 2 inputs, but it only works correctly if you feed it with only 1 of the possible inputs, if you feed the 2, the industry consume the 2 to produce 1, instead of choosing 1 of the inputs, and switching to the 2nd when the 1st is completely consumed.

So it can consume 100 Stone or 100 Marble to make 100 ConMat, but if I'm understanding you correctly, the industry would, when supplied with both, consume 100 of each while still only making 100 ConMat, rather than consuming only 50 of each?

[Blackdragonbird]

Originally posted by ob1wG!:

Originally posted by Blackdragonbird:

An example is the OR mechanic of industries. This mechanic is not used any of the vanilla industries in the game, guess why, but, is documented. It allow industries to use different materials to make a product, like stone OR marble for ConMat. You can mod the industries to accept the 2 inputs, but it only works correctly if you feed it with only 1 of the possible inputs, if you feed the 2, the industry consume the 2 to produce 1, instead of choosing 1 of the inputs, and switching to the 2nd when the 1st is completely consumed.

So it can consume 100 Stone or 100 Marble to make 100 ConMat, but if I'm understanding you correctly, the industry would, when supplied with both, consume 100 of each while still only making 100 ConMat, rather than consuming only 50 of each?

Yes and no. Is an OR rule, one OR the other. If you supply it with 100 of each it should consume 100 of one, then 100 of the other to generate 200 ConMat, but what it does is consume the 2 at the same time, like an AND rule, consuming 200 to generate 100 only.

[Marc Collins]

Thanks all for the replies. I don't want to get into the "politics" of TF vs TF2, but it does seem like certain "dumbing down" processes were taken a bit too far, even if the overall philosophy change was not completely negative, which it is not in my opinion.

But needing to have separate resource supplies for each industry is ludicrous from both a realism and game play perspective, if that actually resolves this issue. I am not sure it does, because I have had this issue so many times I do not think that every time it involved splitting source resources. Maybe it did? But why then do we have the "Consumers" tab available to see the split of where the production is going across multiple destinations? The list should show one and then others greyed-out or with an exclamation mark or whatever to designate that they need to be served by some other producer. The game appears as if none of this should be a problem and it handles these splits as part of normal game play--which it should.

I, too, would prefer this issue and basic road traffic illogic to be fixed ahead of sprucing up graphics or adding console players. The added sales from consoles will hopefully provide a budget to fix some of these basic issues, but the publisher may see it more as a cash grab or in preparation of TF3....

[poruatokin]

Originally posted by ob1wG!:

Otherwise, it depends on which cargo you deliver first. I agree it's strange to see thousands of unused units of cargo, so perhaps it would look better if industry stockpiles also overflowed.

Allowing overflow would be a horrible cop-out. How hard would it be to instruct the consumer factory to stop ordering a raw material once the stock level of that item reaches (for example) 1,000 to 2,000 units. This will shut down the supply line for that overstocked item. This might cause the transport line to lose money, but then the onus is on the player to ensure that each factory has access to balanced levels of all resources.

There will be those that want to continue playing the simple version, so this could be implemented as an optional global or individual factory toggle switch, named something like "Excess stock limit".

It's possible that a modder might even be able to make a relatively simple script to do this (and no, I am not a modder or do I have any skills, just suggesting).

[lemming3k]

Originally posted by Blackdragonbird:

An example is the OR mechanic of industries. This mechanic is not used any of the vanilla industries in the game, guess why, but, is documented. It allow industries to use different materials to make a product, like stone OR marble for ConMat. You can mod the industries to accept the 2 inputs, but it only works correctly if you feed it with only 1 of the possible inputs, if you feed the 2, the industry consume the 2 to produce 1, instead of choosing 1 of the inputs, and switching to the 2nd when the 1st is completely consumed.

Some modder asked for it to be fixed last year during the last beta. The developers said that it was working as intended and moved on.

Simply put it's not used in the vanilla industries because it isn't programmed into the game. Hence why mods trying to use that function still operate as AND because that is all that is available.
You can argue that it should be in the game by all means, but the devs code isn't broken at all in that respect and you can't build on top of what isn't there. It's also not unreasonable for them to refuse to add code to accommodate a mod since they have no ownership of the mod itself. What would people say if they wasted time coding something that didn't matter because a mod was removed or changed? And how many other people will want them to make further code changes for their mods too? No dev would do it.
Maybe they'll adopt the mod and add the code. Or make their own. Who knows. Until then we have what we have.