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Boosts in production rates.

Started by jameskuyper, November 08, 2012, 02:11:49 PM

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jameskuyper

I'm putting the specific questions I'm asking in bold, for ease of identification.
I found the descriptions of electricity_boost, passenger_boost, and mail_boost somewhat unclear, so I put together a test of those features using pak64 and the Book Empire scenario. In order to keep the fully electrified Book Shop stocked with books, I had to either connect to both Oilfields, or to electrify the closer one. I chose the latter option. I found that the Book Shop's production capacity doubled to 960 when electrified, as expected. However, it would never sell more than 952 books per month, even though it's input storage was pretty much full for the entire month. Before electrification the numbers were 480 and 471, respectively, so that's not specifically an electrical issue. Could someone explain this discrepancy between actual production and production capacity?
I found that Book Shop had an electricity demand of 30, while the Oilfield had a demand of 108. I presume that those numbers are determined, at least in part, by numbers that are stored in simuconf.tab and factories.dat - could someone show me how to calculate those demand numbers from more fundamental ones?
According to the Coal Power Plant, total electricity consumption was 232 per month, even though I didn't have any other buildings connected to Power. Where are the extra 94/month going?
The Coal Power plant had a capacity of 928, and consumed 922 tonnes of coal per month. I'd read somewhere that fuel consumption for power was set to 1::1 for convenience. These figures almost support that claim, except for the 6 tonnes/mo difference - could someone explain that difference?
Leipzig was the only city that any factory listed as it's source of passengers or mail. I bought two Ikarus Model B buses, and two SimCo Postal trucks, set up an additional station to cover those parts of Leipzig not already covered by the Book Shop's station, and set up routes connecting every factory to both Leipzig stations. I saw no increase in production. That might be because the passenger traffic never met passenger demand for any factory. Most factories had a demand of more than 100, but none generated more than 20 passenger trips per month. No train or station ever came close to being full of passengers or mail, and no station showed any unhappy passengers, so that shouldn't be the reason.  Is generation of passengers and mail supposed to match passenger and mail demand, respectively? If so, what should i do to make that happen?
I tried adding extra vehicles, but that  didn't increase passenger or mail traffic. Just in case, I started over from scratch, and built a nice grid of  Concrete Sleeper Rail track, and ran four convoys, each with a BR01 4-6-2, Standard Tender, H-Trans Passenger Car, and H-Trans Mail Car: the fastest convoy/track combination I could set up. The convoys ran on loop routes that allowed passengers to go from either Leipzig stop to each factory and back again, with a maximum of 1 transfer each way without ever interfering with each other. Net result: I lost money at astronomical rates, with no increase in passenger or mail traffic (though what traffic there was, moved much faster), and no increase in the production rate of any factory. Are passenger_boost and mail_boost actually implemented?

TurfIt

Quote from: jameskuyper on November 08, 2012, 02:11:49 PM
Could someone explain this discrepancy between actual production and production capacity?
could someone explain that difference?
Loss of precision and resultant cumulative error in the simulation calculations.


Quote from: jameskuyper on November 08, 2012, 02:11:49 PM
could someone show me how to calculate those demand numbers from more fundamental ones?
if demand specified in .dat:
= electric_demand * Actual Productivity / Productivity / 2^(bits_per_month-18)
with electric_demand and Productivity as specified in the .dat, bits_per_month from simuconf.tab

otherwise the old default demand is used:
= Actual Productivity / 2^(bits_per_month-18) / 4

e.g. for the bookshop, demand not specified
= 480 / 2^(20-18) / 4 = 30


Quote from: jameskuyper on November 08, 2012, 02:11:49 PM
Where are the extra 94/month going?
Nowhere. The power plant is displaying its possible monthly production, not actual consumption by connected factories.


Quote from: jameskuyper on November 08, 2012, 02:11:49 PM
Is generation of passengers and mail supposed to match passenger and mail demand, respectively? If so, what should i do to make that happen?
No. Generation is based on the population of the cities, demand at a factory is the amount that must be delivered monthly to achieve full production boost.


Quote from: jameskuyper on November 08, 2012, 02:11:49 PM
Are passenger_boost and mail_boost actually implemented?
Yes. However in this scenario, Leipzig can only generate ~200 passengers per month. The bookshop alone is demanding 900 and only 1/3 are traveling to all the factories combined. Hence the observed boost is likely nil. Leipzig needs to be much larger to support this number of factories.

jameskuyper

Thanks for your answers - that was very informative.
I thought Liepzig looked awfully small, but I didn't realize that what I'd have to do to get a boost was to help the city grow. It does seem to grow pretty fast once I start making deliveries to the Book Shop.

TurfIt

Forgot to mention - you seem to be using an old version of the game/pak64. The current version has only a 10% electric boost for the bookshop rather than the 100% you described. Depending on how old you're using, the passenger/mail boost might not be implemented. Version 112 was recently released if you missed it.

Iluvalar

I believe the factory production slow down the more is stock output goods. That might explain the 1% slow down.

jameskuyper

Turfit:
I'm running Version 111; I installed it about a year ago, but only recently had time to investigate it properly. I'll install Version 112 when I have time, but think 111 was supposed to already have the passenger and mail boosts - the small size of Leipzig is almost certainly the real problem.

Iluvalar:
I was only asking about the production shortfall of the Book Factory. The book factory is an end-consumer - it has no outputs, and therefore no output goods stockpile, so that can't be the reason for the shortfall. All of the other factories (except the Coal Power Plant) have their production rates capped by full storage facilities, because they all have production rates that exceed what's needed to keep the Book Shop fully stocked, and I've provided transport capacity which exceeds that needed to move the goods that fast.

TurfIt

Production discrepancy should now be fixed with r6042.