Seeds (and other items) stock management

[Nexcentric Games]

Hi all, I started this thread based on a post coming from another thread.

Originally posted by squall1903:

And yes the seed's gestion is sometimes hmm,i'll not say hard because it's not,but boring yes,i think it's the only thing i do manually to not get to much of them but also to not let them go to 0 and then i should have to use another green core document.
Maybe if i grow my colony a lot more i could let them work without looking at them but for now it's the only way i can manage the seeds production.

The inventory could provide a way to set your minimum stocks per item.

Another option could be to add a new building (warehouse) to store -and preserve- a certain amount of seeds and a more generic warehouse could be available for the rest of items.

[The Toob]

Minimum/maximum stock per item would be a useful function for many items that you need but dont want to overproduce or lose the entire stock of.

[squall1903]

Hello,it could be good to have the possibility to stock a certain amount or set a minimum value yes.
Maybe you were already thinking on this with the arsenal seed production,at least for the seeds,in green technology tree.Or maybe this structure will work in a total different way.
And thanks to take my commentary into count,it's always a pleasure to see that you take them(our commentaries) to upgrade the gameplay of your game^^

[Shyopsik]

hello, some form of deep cold storage for seeds would be nice, some form of real Svalbard Global Seed Vault , but not global, only in game... else another mine idea would be change damaged seeds repair from seed recovery to green corp building (for now you'll still need green corp for green docu).... this would be usefull it wouldnt produce too much chars, to be onest for mine only problem is too much long char for searching between seed repair and seed recovery..

[tabla_redonda]

Maybe it all could be solved with a building being your intermediary with markets?
You place in there several items, set your min/max stock and order sell/purchase prices.

To save your seeds, you could add extra room in the larder (earned via tech).

[Shyopsik]

thats a nice idea tabla..
another mine idea: if you pqg plannig disasters like disconnecting platforms, would it be possible to feed disconnected platform? if not, how about add into unbildable place on platform small storage where you can hold up needed materials in case of disconnection? of course this would be pricey and energeticaly demanding....

[vindicar]

Might as well write down my vision of such a mechanic.

The game should have a new entity: storage space.
Each storage space has three primary characteristics: a list of items it will accept, a storage limit for each accepted item, and an overflow target - another storage that any excess items or items not in the list should be sent to. In detail:
1. Item whitelist. To add an item, add it manually to the storage by dragging from inventory OR crafting help window. Storage should allow zero-sized stacks of items to persist for that to work. Player has to remove those manually to remove an item from the whitelist.
2. Limits. Every item in the white list should have a limit assigned. Limits should only apply to items added automatically, via production. Items not in the list are treated as having a limit of 0 (zero).
3. Overflow destination. If a production lane adds some product to a storage, it will be tested against the allowed limits. Any amount above the limit will be sent to overflow destination instead (same with non-allowed items). Overflow destination will then repeat the same process. Care must be taken to avoid circular references - preferrably by not letting the player to set one up in first place.

Storage spaces should be virtual, with no real corresponding building (they are merely designated within the core storage system). Player should be able to modify the list of designated storages readily.

There will be two special cases of storage.
1. Main inventory. It will have all items in the game whitelisted, and it will have all limits set to infinity. As such, it will never send anything to overflow, so it will not have one. If there will be a storage limit, make a dummy storage that destroys anything sent in, and make it the fixed overflow destination for the main inventory.
2. Larder. It should only accept consumable items. It's limits should be calculated via "N days worth of food" mechanic instead of being directly set by the player. And, obviously, this is the inventory from which the food will be taken to feed the colonists. Otherwise, it works the same way as the rest of the storage spaces.

Regarding production lane changes.
For each resource there should be a dropdown list of storage spaces to choose its source from, with main inventory selected by default. Same with each product, including random results. A lane should check if resources are available at respective sources, pull resources, perform production and deposit the products to their repsective destinations, triggering the overflow process described above.

Automated trading will be possible with additional building (trading post), that has two types of lanes:
1. buying resources, if target storage doesn't have it's quota filled.
2. selling products if source inventory has this type of item.
Any additional rules regarding buying/selling need not to be detailed here.

Let's see how it would work in case of seed recovery problem.

The player wants to farm tomatoes in two farms, selling any extra. They make storage named, for example, "Seed bank" and "To be sold", and set the storage up as following:
* "Seed bank" accepts up to 100 tomatoes
* "Seed bank" accepts up to 200 tomato seeds
* "Seed bank" overflows to "Larder".
* "Larder" accepts, say, a month worth of food.
* "Larder" overflows to "To be sold".
* "To be sold" overflows to "Main inventory", but it accepts lots of things and has high limits set, to it won't normally overflow.
Then they manually place 200 tomato seeds into "Seed bank".

Botanic lab is set to takes tomatoes from "Seed bank" and put seeds back into "Seed bank".
Vegetable farm is set to take seeds from "Seed bank", fertilizer and water from "Main inventory", and put the tomatoes back into "Seed bank".
Trading post is set to sell anything in "To be sold",

What happens when tomatoes are ready? Farm producation lane sends its produce to "Seed bank". However, it has produced way more than 100 tomatoes, so once teh quota is filled, "Seed bank" sends the rest of it to "Larder". "Larder" will refill it's quota, and then send the rest into "To be sold". Trading post will pick up leftover tomatoes from "To be sold" and sell them.

[Telarin]

Honestly, I would much rather see this kind of management happen at the point of production rather than all in one big mess. My thought is that for each production line you have set up, allow there to be conditions set so that that item in the queue is skipped if certain criteria are met. For instance, I may have a Collect Iron Garbage in my Hangar that can be set to not run if my current stock of Iron is over a certain amount. This should be able to be set on any job in the game. Even a simpler version where you can only control the job based on the immediate product of the job would be better than nothing, but I think allowing for more complex rules would be the better goal.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Telarin:

For instance, I may have a Collect Iron Garbage in my Hangar that can be set to not run if my current stock of Iron is over a certain amount.

This would be another way to do so, yes. Maybe even an easier one.
Frankly, my idea was partly driven by the desire to hide any resources reserved for ongoing production. For example, I really don't need to see those seeds counts, I only need to know they are being taken care of.

My suggestion allows to emulate your behaviour too - just make it possible for storage to NOT have an overflow set, which should prevent/cancel any production process attempting to deposit something into this storage.

Your suggestion is easy to implement, but it doesn't let the player prioritize one production over another. Say, I want to extract spores to farm mushrooms, then refill the larder, then send the rest to processed into medicine. In your case, all three processes will be racing for the mushroom supply, and critical one (spore extraction) might not be able to grab it's share one day.

[slyfox991]

i might as well add my thoughts to this as well and would add to the production queue
for each idem in the queue add 3 box switch also a number input and a condition

for the 3 boxes
off do not use any extra logic curently implemted
run run production if
skip skip production if

number input .. a player defined # such as 100 or 3005 with a default of 0

for condition eather a simple less or more or equal would sufice for most logic
< less then or >= more or equal

as a example at the Seaweed fattening blueprint the queue would resemble
1. Seaweed fattening [ ][ ][x] 10,000 [>=] <
2. Compost seaweed [x][ ][ ] 0 [>=] <

of cource this is a bit flawed
sence it would check vs your storage of a idem
but this logic would surfice for seed making sence you could set a min amount of produce to keep or onely run a production if you have less then x amount

or cource to improve the logic you woud have to add a extra switch to define between Production input the requirements to make a idem
and Production output the idem that is made after the production run. i defaulted to this
but doing so would also cause problems with muiti input productions.
sence the number input would have to be checked vs each of the inputs

more so i was just voiceing my thoughts on a methed that would be fairly easy to implement to the curent system well other then the reference call checks..