Potential Calculation

[mjrudolphi]

Some discussions on this but havent found a really good answer. Does anyone really know how this number is calulated. I thought it represented the total demand from your connected cities (say in the case of Food and a food factory).
I have observed this number on my food factory for many game years and it bounces all around. So it must take into consideration some other factors. But what is odd to me is the potential was some times much greater than the cities demand. I dont understand why potential would run higher than demand. Unless its taking Demand + capacity to deliver. So as an example, if you have a truck deliverying food to commercial that can carry 9 units, if the truck is empty it adds 9 to demand. If truck if full, it subtracts 9 from demand. Just my guess. Anyone have the real answer?

[Agent B]

IMHO, it's not directly related to the connected cities, but to the connected cargo station.

When you have many trucks (or a long train) in a short time that request good, the potential will go up, but when you have low trucks (or low trains) within a month, the request for good will go down and so also the potential.

try to keep a steady flow of goods at the connected station, it's therefore better to have smaller trucks but many of them, or smaller trains but more of them, to keep good frequency high, than big trucks or trains that only come once a year or so ...

[mjrudolphi]

Originally posted by brian13:

IMHO, it's not directly related to the connected cities, but to the connected cargo station.

When you have many trucks (or a long train) in a short time that request good, the potential will go up, but when you have low trucks (or low trains) within a month, the request for good will go down and so also the potential.

try to keep a steady flow of goods at the connected station, it's therefore better to have smaller trucks but many of them, or smaller trains but more of them, to keep good frequency high, than big trucks or trains that only come once a year or so ...

Interesting and sounds about right. I have always set it up with large capacity that is infrequent. It seems like it would be more costly to operate many smaller trains. Perhaps game design was to make it difficult to balance everything (costs and factory potential).
I did notice that factories are more stable when their product storage is full. To me they appear to ramp up production to a rate higher than needed in order to build product storage. Once full the production rate stabilizes somewhat. But I have never gotten potential to stabilize. And potential seems to be the driver of production rate but not sure.