Coal thumper and coal production

[GaviJa]

I have a question about coal thumper and how their production is calculated.
I just finished the refugee scenario in hard and I tried to build 2 coal thumper with 8 gathering posts next to them.
I also had 2 level 3 coal mines. My production was marked as 3500(consumed)/5500(produced)
Even with that big gap between coal production and consumption, my generator was stopping everyday and my coal reaching 0.
I had 3 coal storages to gather the extra 2k of coal I had everyday.
Can someone explain that to me, I feel like I don't miss anything and that coal thumper production is actually badly calculated.

[snuggleform]

It's because coal thumpers have a limit to how much coal they can produce. You have too many gathering posts.

The issue is that gathering posts list the amount of coal they can gather solely based on how many workers there are, and they do not care if there is actually enough coal being put into the coal pile from the thumper.

Let me give you an example. Let's say a coal thumper makes 450 coal a day, and let's say that a gathering post gathers 200 coal a day.

Let's say you make 10 gathering posts around one thumper.

Your screen wlil say that you're "making" two thousand coal per day because again it doesn't try to take into account how much coal is actually in the pile, it just sees there's a coal pile around, you have a bunch of workers, workers gather at a certain rate, so based on that gathering rate you "generate" 2000 coal per day. But in reality you are limited to a maximum of 450 a day from the thumper, so if you are burning more than 450 coal per day, your generator is going to turn off even though it says you are in the green in coal production.

So keep in mind this rule of thumb:

1 coal thumper can support 2 gathering posts
1 steam coal thumper can support 4 gathering posts

If you keep in mind this rule of thumb then the coal production tab will be much more accurate in assessing whether or not you are meeting your daily coal needs.

If you want to be certain of your coal production, look at how much coal is being generated per hour from your thumper (click on it, hover over the coal icon) and do a little calculatoin like multpily it by 10 if you have regular shifts, 14 if you have extended shifts. You can also see the hourly rate of gathering on gathering posts and do your own calcluation to see if you have enough or too many gathering posts.

[c452h82]

How many piles will appear after i built a thumper? I built one and after several days there is still only one pile?

[Jakarta's Stray Dog]

Originally posted by c452h82:

How many piles will appear after i built a thumper? I built one and after several days there is still only one pile?

the pile is not that important really, what is important is if your coal production is affected by it. keep a tab on the economy chart before and after you build the thumper. i think one default coal thumper and 3 gathering post with 5 people can gather around 800-1200 coal a day

[Slye_Fox]

Originally posted by c452h82:

How many piles will appear after i built a thumper? I built one and after several days there is still only one pile?

It only dumps the coal into the output area right next to the thumper.
There will only be 1 pile.