Please auto balance between colonies when temperature changes

[Herr Schadenfreude]

Everytime I see the temperature change coming, I cringe because I know that I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes with the game paused while I rebalance all of my colonies to maintain optimum resource trade to my capitol city.
This consumes most of my game time and I don't think it's the point of the game to be constantly pausing the game while I slide trading bars back and forth. The entire point of establishing colonies is to ensure that my capitol city has an influx of a specific resource. It makes no sense for me to even spend the resources on colonies if I'm just going to spend 2/3 of my game time constantly rebalancing resources to ensure that the colony doesn't die just because the temperature changes every 5 minutes.

[Perverius]

Originally posted by Herr Schadenfreude:

Everytime I see the temperature change coming, I cringe because I know that I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes with the game paused while I rebalance all of my colonies to maintain optimum resource trade to my capitol city.
This consumes most of my game time and I don't think it's the point of the game to be constantly pausing the game while I slide trading bars back and forth. The entire point of establishing colonies is to ensure that my capitol city has an influx of a specific resource. It makes no sense for me to even spend the resources on colonies if I'm just going to spend 2/3 of my game time constantly rebalancing resources to ensure that the colony doesn't die just because the temperature changes every 5 minutes.

Technically it's what 'meet the demand' button should do but I'm not sure if it's working as intended. Actually I think it's broken unless I don't know something.

[Herr Schadenfreude]

Originally posted by Perverius:

Technically it's what 'meet the demand' button should do but I'm not sure if it's working as intended. Actually I think it's broken unless I don't know something.

Sometimes I get the "meet the demand" option and sometimes I don't. But even that button doesn't work 100%. The UI in the game doesn't really help with this kind of decision-making, either.

[Airatome]

Originally posted by Perverius:

Originally posted by Herr Schadenfreude:

Everytime I see the temperature change coming, I cringe because I know that I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes with the game paused while I rebalance all of my colonies to maintain optimum resource trade to my capitol city.
This consumes most of my game time and I don't think it's the point of the game to be constantly pausing the game while I slide trading bars back and forth. The entire point of establishing colonies is to ensure that my capitol city has an influx of a specific resource. It makes no sense for me to even spend the resources on colonies if I'm just going to spend 2/3 of my game time constantly rebalancing resources to ensure that the colony doesn't die just because the temperature changes every 5 minutes.

Technically it's what 'meet the demand' button should do but I'm not sure if it's working as intended. Actually I think it's broken unless I don't know something.

Maybe a bit of both?

The meets demand button meets only the demands AT THE TIME of pushing it. And needs constant rebalances as things change. It's static, not dynamic.

But ALSO, I have noticed when I hit that button it will designate an exorbitant amount of resources sometimes instead of JUST meeting the needs of the city or settlement. No idea why it does that. And Ill have to manually adjust it down at that point.

[Airatome]

Originally posted by Herr Schadenfreude:

Originally posted by Perverius:

Technically it's what 'meet the demand' button should do but I'm not sure if it's working as intended. Actually I think it's broken unless I don't know something.

Sometimes I get the "meet the demand" option and sometimes I don't. But even that button doesn't work 100%. The UI in the game doesn't really help with this kind of decision-making, either.

Unfortunately, Frostpunk has incorporated a little bit of 4X style game play into this entry, and as a result , this is just one of those things that need constant watching.

The moment a whiteout hits I am immediately turning things off. Turning things down. Turning heaters on. Rebalancing from Frostland stuff that got turned off by the whiteout, and Rebalancing my income and outgoing resources.

And then it passes and it's back to business as usual.

But I see how all that time spent in pause mode can be annoying. Unfortunately that's a design decision, not a flaw. It appeals to some people to have that much control over a city. And some people not so much.
They went in favor of more control than less.

[Ridesdragons]

I hadn't mentioned this because I thought it was well known already, but the meet demand button does, actually, meet the demand. the problem is that it doesn't meet demand the way you think it does.

say you have a colony, and it has a demand of 50 materials a day. you click "meet demand" and it will supply the colony 50 materials a day. working as intended.

fast forward a couple of months, your colony has grown a bit, and now it needs 50 more materials a day. you click "meet demand" and... wait, now you're delivering 150 materials a day, that's 50 materials too many, what gives?

basically, what's happening is that the button looks at the colony and goes "the colony needs 100 materials a day" and adds 100 materials to the transfer list. this completely ignores what you're already transfering. so if you're already transfering 50 resources a day, it'll add another 100 resources on top of that, for 150 total. so, if you want to use the meet demand button, what you must first do is set the amount transfered to 0 (might have to close out of the trade window afterwards). then click meet demand. now it's suddenly meeting demand like expected.

yes it is dumb, and it will probably get patched as soon as the more major bugs (like fuel sources just shutting off randomly, bricking your run) are done being fixed, but it is possible to work around it, if a bit annoying.

[Airatome]

Originally posted by Ridesdragons:

I hadn't mentioned this because I thought it was well known already, but the meet demand button does, actually, meet the demand. the problem is that it doesn't meet demand the way you think it does.

say you have a colony, and it has a demand of 50 materials a day. you click "meet demand" and it will supply the colony 50 materials a day. working as intended.

fast forward a couple of months, your colony has grown a bit, and now it needs 50 more materials a day. you click "meet demand" and... wait, now you're delivering 150 materials a day, that's 50 materials too many, what gives?

basically, what's happening is that the button looks at the colony and goes "the colony needs 100 materials a day" and adds 100 materials to the transfer list. this completely ignores what you're already transfering. so if you're already transfering 50 resources a day, it'll add another 100 resources on top of that, for 150 total. so, if you want to use the meet demand button, what you must first do is set the amount transfered to 0 (might have to close out of the trade window afterwards). then click meet demand. now it's suddenly meeting demand like expected.

yes it is dumb, and it will probably get patched as soon as the more major bugs (like fuel sources just shutting off randomly, bricking your run) are done being fixed, but it is possible to work around it, if a bit annoying.

Thank you again, dragon rider, for figuring out what's actually going on with a thing. I thought I was going crazy because I couldn't find a pattern 😅

You've been a wonderful help, even when you have to drop in and correct me 😶 🙌

[Ridesdragons]

I aim to please lol (you'll likely see fewer corrections from me in the coming days, I've already got nearly 70 hours in the game, finished a utopia run and 2 story runs, including a captain run, don't wanna burn out, so I'll be rotating to other games for a bit while the game gets some patches)

[Perverius]

Originally posted by Ridesdragons:

I hadn't mentioned this because I thought it was well known already, but the meet demand button does, actually, meet the demand. the problem is that it doesn't meet demand the way you think it does.

say you have a colony, and it has a demand of 50 materials a day. you click "meet demand" and it will supply the colony 50 materials a day. working as intended.

fast forward a couple of months, your colony has grown a bit, and now it needs 50 more materials a day. you click "meet demand" and... wait, now you're delivering 150 materials a day, that's 50 materials too many, what gives?

basically, what's happening is that the button looks at the colony and goes "the colony needs 100 materials a day" and adds 100 materials to the transfer list. this completely ignores what you're already transfering. so if you're already transfering 50 resources a day, it'll add another 100 resources on top of that, for 150 total. so, if you want to use the meet demand button, what you must first do is set the amount transfered to 0 (might have to close out of the trade window afterwards). then click meet demand. now it's suddenly meeting demand like expected.

yes it is dumb, and it will probably get patched as soon as the more major bugs (like fuel sources just shutting off randomly, bricking your run) are done being fixed, but it is possible to work around it, if a bit annoying.

Thanks for explaining. Looks like in current state it's only useful the very first time and any consecutive use it's simply easier to adjust manually. I'd say it's definitely a bug.

I'd personally love to see that function to keep automatically adjusting as long as you don't go negative on source side (and would be awesome if there was a checkmark to go negative and transfer from stockpile as long as it lasts), right now even if it gets patched, it's not a game changer.