Maintenance

[Thandius]

What exactly falls under "maintenance"?

I noticed I had a ton of clay disappear for I don't know what, but I really lack info to properly provide for my people.

[Goldi_Toplitz]

Materials that can be used for repairs, like stones and planks.

[Winter's Embers]

If you click on an item in your inventory, a small information panel will show. You can read an items type, storage building requirement, cost in coins to buy/sell, and most importantly, the need it provides. For instance, the clay you mention provides a value of 5 to Maintenance Needs. A stack of 20 would provide 100 total maintenance.
Items that fulfill needs are removed from your inventory on a left-to-right then top-to-bottom system so you can control what is being used by placing it in the top few rows. Clay is the most efficient (in terms of tools needed to extract and the lack of a need to process it into a new form vs. the amount of maintenance it provides) so getting 2 or 3 rows of clay at the top of your General Storage will fill those Maintenance needs quite handily. The downside to this is that your NPC villagers cannot currently be assigned to a job to collect clay so you'll have to gather the clay each time you run low.
The best renewable resource that can be provided by NPC production is planks. These provide nice maintenance points and you can assign an NPC to cut trees at the woodcutter's hut and another to make planks at that same building's Carpentry Station in the jobs menu of your Dynasty Screen. The one drawback to this is that the game will pull maintenance needs from the General Storage first then check for planks. So you'll have to remove any maintenance-giving items from the general storage. I believe a priority system is currently being worked on to address this but have no timeline as to when it might be coming.

[Thandius]

Thanks Winter.

I figured out the part about the stone and clay, but I did miss the planks.

The most important part of the info is that it draws from the General Storage first - that one I hadn't figured out either.

To the devs though:
This system, as it currently is, doesn't make much sense.

I get why planks would be needed to maintain (and I initially thought it would take a certain percentage of all kinds of building materials (logs, sticks, planks). But stones and clay aren't really used for anything that would be required to maintain the village's buildings (unlike the buildings in Medieval Dynasty). I mean, you could make an argument about the stones on the roof of a house, but that's really stretching it.

[Thandius]

Btw, that means if "Heating" checks General Storage first, it'll burn all my fur before it ever checks on all the coal I have made.

That would be really bad, not to mention counterintuitive. Hmm, maybe there should be a dedicated fuel storage that goes first for all the heating needs.

[Ericd38790]

Hi, if you look at each resource type, you will notice in its description if it is use in village for maintenance (clay, stone, wood plank for example), heating, eating or even healing depending on the number of settlers you got...
each kind of resource give a particular amount for each of these tasks
you can ajust the amount for the next season for each task by clicking on the yellow or the green smilley... this will impact your working force and your settlers mood (and so the risk they leave)

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by Thandius:

Btw, that means if "Heating" checks General Storage first, it'll burn all my fur before it ever checks on all the coal I have made.

That would be really bad, not to mention counterintuitive. Hmm, maybe there should be a dedicated fuel storage that goes first for all the heating needs.

Heating needs are taken from Wood Storage first, then general storage only as a last resort since firewood, the primary heating source, is stored there.

[Thandius]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Heating needs are taken from Wood Storage first, then general storage only as a last resort since firewood, the primary heating source, is stored there.

I originally assumed that, but since maintenance takes from General Storage first, I wasn't so sure anymore.

[Winter's Embers]

The information is a little slim right now in-game but posts like this help the devs see where they can shore things up. Keep 'em coming!

[Makaan]

i think adding maintenance chest in General storage and heeting storage in Woodcutters hut would be a solution, actuall solution is not clear and difficult to control,

function for sorting goods in storages is a must (probably more items will be added during EA) and just view should not decide about priority of consumption (from left to right, from top to bottom) imo

in production settings - player would decide by some slider how many percentage of production planks (for example) go to heating storage / wood storage

[Solstice]

U should convert firewood to coal, its much more efficient then firewood by a large margin.

Firewood has a burn value of 4 , coal has 5 and you get 2 coal for ever firewood.

So processed to coal it has a burn value of 10 instead of 4.
Its only one workstep more, and its worth it imo.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by Makaan:

i think adding maintenance chest in General storage and heeting storage in Woodcutters hut would be a solution, actuall solution is not clear and difficult to control,

function for sorting goods in storages is a must (probably more items will be added during EA) and just view should not decide about priority of consumption (from left to right, from top to bottom) imo

in production settings - player would decide by some slider how many percentage of production planks (for example) go to heating storage / wood storage

There has been much talk of creating and implementing a priority system for needs consumption. No clue on how long that would take or how it would work but at least know it is in the pipe and being smoked properly.

[Thandius]

I just noticed something really bad and annoying.

Axes are maintenance.

Two seasons ago I apparently had no axes in my storage so my woodworkers couldn't take any out: naturally they produced no wood that season. So, obviously, next season I made sure to store plenty of axes in the General Storage. I was a little surprised when all of them got used up, but I only now recognized that they weren't taken by the worker but got used up by maintenance.

As there is currently finite iron on the map (due to the mine building not working) this is doubly annoying. But even without that, it makes planning ahead for my villagers tool needs even more tedious than it already is currently.

I am not even sure what gets taken out first: maintenance or the villagers picking new tools. If it was maintenance, then we couldn't even plan ahead and would have to manually check the villagers tools every season.

We really, really need a separate storage for maintenance I think. Or any oher solution for that matter.

[Winter's Embers]

Just FYI, there are a total of 10 iron mines currently on the map. I've only found 6. Also, iron will not be available to assign to NPC villagers with the mining post. We will have to wait for the Ore Processing Station for that.
Also, make sure your maintenance items you want used are listed first. Clay and stone. Tools stored in the General Storage and then assigned to an NPC worker are taken from the General Storage at the time of assignment and removed from its contents so they will not be consumed for maintenance needs.

[Thandius]

I am aware of these things. i did pay attention to you last time already, Winter- ;)

However, if I want to use planks for maintenance, it currently means I can't store any axes, stones or clay in the General Sorage whatsoever. That is not a good solution, due to the reasons I outlined above.

[Winter's Embers]

There is a kind-of workaround for the problem: the Tawara Bag. You can stick several of these on a shed (or in your house) and store maintenance items there instead of the general storage. It's not really ideal and a pain in the butt sometimes but until that priority system gets implemented, it's the best we've got.
Your points are valid and I concede them easily. Perhaps a nice, feature-length posting in the Suggestions forum from you and many others can light a fire under the implementation of the priority system.