Wagon Bug

[Stabbin' Hobo]

I had wagons during the game that would not do anything. The bonus round was the worst, 25 wagons and only 5 or 6 were moving resulting in 150k spilling fine and a loss of money on the bonus round which is nuts.

[Gamious]

:( That's not good!
We haven't seen it as bad as you are describing it.

[Stabbin' Hobo]

Its happening again on a new campaign in the early rounds with the june ending. Last round I played had 4 out of 15 wagons just sitting idle next to rigs with timers going.


Just saw a new update, Ill start over now.

[benki]

I had that happen as well, but I think it is not so much a bug, but the wagons are just not very clever. I think the wagons are programmed so that either the closest or a random idle one moves to the closest rig which is above a certain filling level. This might also depend on how many wagons are already on that rig.

The main problem with this is that the wagons become idle just where they stand, which most of the time is just next to the silo. Then they can be too late to prevent a spill if they notice the oil level of the rig too late. This problem is less noticeable if you have several rigs puming at moderate rates, but of course the pro strategy is having only one rig in the middle with a network of pipes going towards it, then you quickly run into spillage thanks to these lazy wagons.

The quick and dirty fix would be to program wagon to always park next to an active rig. The more elaborate fix would be that the wagons take into account the pumping speed of the rig, when choosing where to go to.

Or do I have it all wrong and the wagons should never be idle in the first place?

[Gravity_Wolf]

I haven't paid too much attention, but it does seem like close wagons don't always get the oil first, but instead wait for the wagon that just dropped off to come back and pick up.

I've noticed what appears to be a red tint to the active wagon. Unless I'm just crazy.

Hopefully it will change to where the wagons function a little more effectively with the closest one always getting the oil, even if it has a little oil already in it, but can fit more.

I also haven't used a large number of wagons yet, so that could be why I haven't seen this.

[benki]

Did you notice a tint beyond the blue and red tint that wagons have which are assigned to Left or Right Inc. respectively?

[Gamious]

Blue and Red Wagons means that they are assigned to Left or Right.
The AI should always avoid Spillage IF you have enough Wagons to avoid it.
So Wagons sitting idly by is NOT good. AI takes into account Oil pumping speed, distance and other Wagons. There are differences in what people might think is ideal behaviour. It depends on the amount of Oil in the Rigs, Silo's and Wagons and if the Price is dropping or rising.
We will try to hit a balance that works for most people. And make sure that Wagons take action when Spillage is near.

[Gravity_Wolf]

Okay. Learned something new. I didn't know tint color was associated with the Inc. Cool. I'm sure I still have a few things to learn.

[TheLostPenguin]

Wagons need to prioritise rigs over silos MUCH more than they do(n't) at present. It's quite common for me to see several wagons drive right past a rig that's either just about to go into timer or is even already in timer, so they can take oil from a silo.
Two things it looks like might be happening:
Firstly after they unload the wagons decide where to go based on the rig level and how many wagons are already heading there, if there's a couple of wagons already going to the rig they decide a silo is a better option. Fine until you start shifting high flow rates, then by the time the wagon has driven across the screen the others have already filled up and left, and the rig is flying right back into the overflow timer again.
Second is perhaps the AI is assigning enough wagons based on a theoretical perfect distribution, but when you end up with wagons travelling in a bunch or two as is often the case it screws the timing. A whole pile of wagons arrive at once, drain the rig and 1 or 2 go off partly full, and suddenly you aren't getting the 'right' amount of oil removed from the rig for how many wagons are assigned.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, just a couple of thoughts of what looks like might be going wrong from watching how they behave.

[Gamious]

Originally posted by TheLostPenguin:

Wagons need to prioritise rigs over silos MUCH more than they do(n't) at present. It's quite common for me to see several wagons drive right past a rig that's either just about to go into timer or is even already in timer, so they can take oil from a silo.
Two things it looks like might be happening:
Firstly after they unload the wagons decide where to go based on the rig level and how many wagons are already heading there, if there's a couple of wagons already going to the rig they decide a silo is a better option. Fine until you start shifting high flow rates, then by the time the wagon has driven across the screen the others have already filled up and left, and the rig is flying right back into the overflow timer again.
Second is perhaps the AI is assigning enough wagons based on a theoretical perfect distribution, but when you end up with wagons travelling in a bunch or two as is often the case it screws the timing. A whole pile of wagons arrive at once, drain the rig and 1 or 2 go off partly full, and suddenly you aren't getting the 'right' amount of oil removed from the rig for how many wagons are assigned.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, just a couple of thoughts of what looks like might be going wrong from watching how they behave.

Thanks. We'll discuss with our programmer. He's on here sometimes as well.
What's also good for us to know is how many Wagons, Rigs and Wagon Upgrades you have when this happens. So a screenshot helps a lot!

[benki]

I just tried this at the last level (island) with 40 wagons, all large and fast, one rig in the middle with 4x lvl 3 pipes going towards it all pumping at maximum capacity. I had two super silos directly next to the rig and two small silos further away. As long as the wagons were going between the rig and the super silos, they were barely keeping the rig from spilling, but the timer was going constantly. As soon as the silos directly next to the rig were full, I got spillage because the wagons would not get to the rig fast enough.

I would say at most 10 of the 40 wagons were moving and the rest was idle.

Check out this short video for illustration (from a different game than described above, though - only large wagons, not fast and one of the four pipes is not at full capacity):
https://youtu.be/xN6JpIEgOtI

[Gravity_Wolf]

Looks cool.

[TheLostPenguin]

That video actually looks like working as intended to me, sure you have lots of idle wagons and constantly dipping into timer, but also the timer is being cleared each time a couple of them arrive together and doesn't really look like being in danger of overflowing. Where it usually gets interesting/broken is making transition to either filling the outer silos, or more typically selling, at least for me.

[Gamious]

Benki, thanks a lot for the video! As TheLostPenguin says, it looks like things are working as intended. The idea behind the AI is that you don't want all your wagons overreacting when there is a lot of oil being pumped up. This would make them unavailable to other potential tasks.

Also, this is a bit of an extreme example, with the last island having so much oil. But even without the last (and very powerful) wagon upgrade used, there is still no spillage with three pipes going at maximum capacity.

[N71]

Won the game twice and on third time had this Wagon problem. Not as big as topicstarter, but still. I had two pumps. First was barely working and second had level 3 pipes. Empty silos all around. And had 25 fully upgraded Wagons. Let's say, half of Wagons were moving, doing somethig. But the other half were standing still. And I got a spillage!

[Gamious]

That's not cool, N71. Sounds like it should not have happened. Thanks for letting us know. We're still tweaking their behaviour every now and then.