AI Yards/Wharf Lack of Materials-New Take

[BellatorMonk]

Not sure if this has been postulated before, however since the game began everyone had always noticed how all the Wharfs/Shipyards never seem to have enough materials to sustain say more than 5-15 ships build requests not even including AI builds themselves, ie Smart Chips, etc.

After having built my own Wharf/Yard I noticed that my Container Storage was always nearly full and I would stock it manually from my own Stations or the Station Manager would place orders with the AI for w/e materials. So I added Container Storage thinking, well crap I won't have enough materials to build ship if the Storage keeps getting full. So after having 9 million units of Container storage I noticed the Manager simply wants to keep the Station "full" of materials. No idea what the formula is for it to figure out how much of each material needed (Yards vis Logical view "need" a lot of different materials) yet it just keep on ordering stuff until I was always at about 8.6 million units "full" out of the 9 million.

For example I had 400k Energy, 150k Smart Chips, etc. In that time I have build numerous ships, the AI order entire Fleets from my yard, so much so that in one night of regular real time, my Yard/Wharf combo made $700 million in profits alone from AI ship orders.

The point being, my Yard had enough materials on hand to handle all these orders in that time period without waiting for materials to be delivered because I had 9 million units of materials stored. So....how many units of Storage does the average AI Yard/Wharf have to store all these materials? In other words the AI does not build their Yards/Wharfs with large sustained order in mind..they simply store enough materials for 20 or less ship orders and then it takes hours to restock because they probably only have 3 million or less Container storage.

Food for though unless anyone has already thought of this or figured out how much Container Storage an AI Yard/Wharf has?

[Ravayen]

So to shorten this post somewhat, you're saying that you don't feel AI shipyards have enough storage space to keep production going.
I agree.

[BellatorMonk]

Alas..if you had simply stated this shortened version, then people would have argued or demanded proof of your theory. Thankfully there are people out here still, who can read and write in more than a few sentences on subjects.

However, if I could have written one sentence with the confidence that 90% of the people would have gotten what I was saying and why..then I would have.

[Ravayen]

I think you underestimate the average steam user, they will ALWAYS find a way to argue no matter what you write lol.
I do agree that larger storage spaces would allow them to produce longer but the game is also designed with deliberate gaps in the economy so the player can fill them so it would eventually stop regardless.

[TwinShadow]

I've actually been noticing this in my own game. I don't quite have the same in storage capacity, but my Wharf has about half that what you got there. And my god is the AI pumping builds into my Wharf that right now, I can't even keep resources. (I'm still waiting for my two production facilities to come online fully to alleviate this.)

I've debated on restricting builds for a while because at some point, both of the Paranid (PAR and HOP) factions decided it would be fine to start a war with the TEL and MIN and I was getting sick of hearing "WE NEED BACKUP!" every two seconds. Finally I said enough was enough and basically decided to ruin the Paranid by "cheating" their ships gone. It was quite literally right next to my Wharf too and I didn't want cross-fire to happen; otherwise I'd end up going to war somewhere..

[Kanaro Min]

Originally posted by Ravayen:

I think you underestimate the average steam user, they will ALWAYS find a way to argue no matter what you write lol.

Not to sidetrack the topic, but this is an unfortunate truth. People read with the intent to reply, not to understand.

[dontBLINK94]

Originally posted by Ravayen:

I think you underestimate the average steam user, they will ALWAYS find a way to argue no matter what you write lol.
I do agree that larger storage spaces would allow them to produce longer but the game is also designed with deliberate gaps in the economy so the player can fill them so it would eventually stop regardless.

Whilst this is true, I haven't earned the income to buy the blueprints to "fill" said gaps. I also can not build any ships at the moment because the AI ship yards/wharfs are literally 100% full and too short on specific materials to build even a single ship hull. Literally grid locked. Watching the Argon/Tel get their face kicked in by XEN because they literally can't make ships to defend themselves. It's what they get for storing literally nothing on their damn stations. I build my stations with tons of large storage (I know people dont like to do that because of budgets and supply flow) But its a shipyard... Having worked at one in real life, I assure you they do everything in their power to have materials stocked for literal years in advance. Specially steel. At least Aker Shipyards does. IDK ANYONE who runs a manufacturing business or has worked in manufacturing at scale knows i mean KNOWS how important and critical supply chain is.

I get the idea that the player is supposed to fill gaps but it should be more like the AI can support itself in the most basic of ways (can build 1-10 ships and keep it stocked to do so) not enough to print navy after navy for war but enough for myself the player to build some ships and earn money to "Fill those gaps". IT should've been designed in a way where as the need for assets of war increased their production chain would show gaps/shortages. You THEN fill those gaps to better "arm" said faction in its war. But it shouldn't be depending on you to fill gaps when everything is peace and buffer flies. The container storage for ship building stations needs to be tripled at least and not only that the automatic storage allocation systems is TERRIBLE. Clearly whoever programmed it never worked in supply chain management like ever not even for a damn moment. It's extremely cringe.

Ultimately I know I can take several actions to "correct" or "adjust" these issues but that is sorta my MAIN point. Why should I a single person have to literally carry the entire galaxy at anything and everything they do. It gives me the skyrim do all quest vibes which breaks emersion soooo hard. It just feels weird and like a burden trying to "fix" all these nations so the game doesn't fall apart anymore than it already has.

Side note: A great example of how this should've been done is the Star Wars mod for the game. Their default station designs are SPOT on. I've never once had any production shortage issues early game playing it nor felt that I had to "Carry" anyone else to keep them around. I could take actions like boosting their current production flow to pump even more ships out and if I stopped they still had the means to make ships at a reasonable rate. IF it was vanilla every damn ship built would have to have my help in some way xD Sure not literally BUT its becoming EXTREMELY noticeable how impactful some of my actions are becoming. Doesn't feel balanced. I'm a player in the galaxy experiencing the galaxy. Not god running my creation...

Update: Been sitting here watching 2 drill M class drill ships being built for idk coming up on about 6 hours now. Stripped everything from it. Literally the only things on it is the min. Missing hull parts so you would think "I'll just deliver some myself"... nope storage is 100% full. Seriously how the hell do I fix this or do I personally have to intervene AGAIN and blow up all their stations so they make new ones and those ones will have free storage... well for a time.

[=)]

ai has a target number of ships it wants and is eternally short of that if left to its own devices. This means shipyards and wharfs are constantly short on resources as they use it all immediately to fulfil these ai orders.
Actually found this makes certain missions impossible because it wants you to keep a shipyard well stocked, which is impossible because the second it has enough material to build a ship it will deplete itself again.
Later game I found once xenon stop being a threat (once economies sort themselves out and races actually have enough ships to defend themselves) the yards start filling up. Double edged sword that though. Hull parts are essentially worthless in my playthrough when once were easy money.

[Azrelus]

Holy necro