Seemingly random factory failures

[jsharpminor]

Well-supplied factories keep going red and orange on me -- that is, they're not working, and I can't seem to find any logical reason why. They have more than enough goods to do their jobs.

It seems to start in the factory, when the factory quits transferring produced goods (in this case, it's a Steel mill with only one client: a Car Assembly Plant) to the station. The train makes another round or two, then comes to the Steel Mill and waits for goods that are in the mill but the mill isn't letting go of. Then the factory goes to "Orange" status and starts producing steel much more slowly (it is well-supplied with more than enough Iron and Coal to perform the process).

What could be going on?



Edit:

Similarly, I have Coal power stations that turn themselves off and produce no power, despite having lots of coal. Again, what gives?

Mod note: please avoid double-posting. Edit your last comment instead.
~IgorEliezer

[Ters]

For the steel mill, it sounds like the car assembly plant, it's only consumer, is full of steel and hence won't accept more. That causes the steel mill to stop shipment and eventually production.

It seems that the color red is a bit confusing, because from the help text, it has nothing to do with the factory itself directly. The text says for red that the factory is "operational but part of Industry Supply Chain has excess supply". A red coal power station means that there are more coal at the coal mine than any of the coal mine's consumers can consume.

Back to the steel mill, where the car assembly plant has more than enough steel: Since the steel mill has stopped production of steel that nobody wants at the moment, it will sooner or later itself stop demanding coal or iron ore once it's stores are filled. That in turn means that the coal mine and the iron ore mine will no longer send their products to the steel mill. If there is no other factory to consume the coal and iron ore from these mines, the mines will fill up their output stores and eventually stop production as well. That causes the steel mill to become red.

As such, red doesn't appear to be a critical color. It's no worse than yellow, just at the opposite side of green. Yellow means too little supply, red means too much supply. I'm not quite sure what triggers orange, it might be multiple things. That the factory's own stores, either input, output or both, are becoming full seem to be among them.

[Combuijs]

Red is both used for "no consumption at all possible" and "all storages completely filled". This is confusing to say the least... I always check their status in the info-window, the color is not useful at all.

[jsharpminor]

That explains the coal mill, but it doesn't explain the car assembly plant -- why it
1) quits dumping cars onto the platform, storing them in the factory instead, making trains wait for cars that are ready in the factory while the platform sits reporting "No goods and passengers waiting," or
2) at about 100 of 117 cars in the factory, production slows to a crawl.

Another question that I can't seem to figure out via the help documentation, is what the three numbers mean (i.e. Car Assembly Plant: steel 2976/680/2937t).

Thanks for the helpful responses so far.

[Combuijs]

1) The car shop (or whatever the cars are transported to) has enough cars already, so while the car factory still produces cars, they have yet no destination and they are kept in the factory. When the car shop runs out of cars, car production will start again.

2) The car factory can store maximum 117 cars. When it is approaching that number, productions gets slower and slower until it stops when 117 is reached. This is standard Simutrans behaviour

3) The three numbers are recently introduced, and the help was not updated 
steel 2976/680/2937 means that 2976 tons of steel is stored in the car factory, that 680 is on their way to the factory (in vehicles and stations), and 2937 is the maximum tons of steel that the steel factory can store, e.g. it stops ordering steel from the steel mill, e.g. the steel mill stops producing for the car factory.

[jsharpminor]

Thanks, that helps.

In this game, apparently, the car dealership is so far away from the plant that I'm trying to keep a steady stream of cars flowing to the dealership...but it goes through cars so fast that they're sold out more often than not. With your explanation, now it makes sense as to why the supply chain keeps breaking down.

Thanks so much!!

[Ters]

It doesn't sound like it's breaking down. It sounds like normal behaviour.

One thing that happens if you have a consumer with small capacity (compared to consumption) far away from its supplier is that you get a overloaded/starved effect. When you first connect supplier and consumer, goods will start flowing from the supplier to the consumer. The consumer will quickly get flooded with goods and the supplier stops producing, but there is still much already in transit. So the supplier will get even more overfull before all vehicles have unloaded and either start queuing at the supplier (or just keep running empty if you've not told them to wait for a load). This waiting period can last for some time, but eventually the consumer will have gotten below its limit and start ordering. Goods, which has piled up at the supplier will start flowing again, followed by renewed production, and the cycle repeats.

This effect should have become less prominent lately, as I think the consumer now takes the amount of goods in transit into account when deciding to order more, but it's not completely gone. The only way to avoid the effect is to (slightly) undersupply factories, however that still causes overcrowding at suppliers, unless the products can be spread to a big enough number of consumers.

[sdog]

This effect should have become less prominent lately, as I think the consumer now takes the amount of goods in transit into account when deciding to order more, but it's not completely gone. The only way to avoid the effect is to (slightly) undersupply factories, however that still causes overcrowding at suppliers, unless the products can be spread to a big enough number of consumers.

It is rather a shortcomming of the new system, and perhaps it needs fixing.

For consumers with low capacity the threshold is easily reached by wares being transported. Under certain circumstances the demand stops already while not a single unit arrived at the factory. That is for very small receiving storage and long trains.

A sollution would be to allow more wares in transit for very small consumers, by introducing a lower threshold for the new system. Such that a 12 tile train could always be filled before orders cease.

The other case are long distance consumers, where a dozen long trains, or high capacity ships are required to sufficiently supply the consumer. The wares in transit can easily be ten times the amount it allows in storage, for goods where speed bonus doesn't play a role. (Example, 12 tile trains running on 60km/h tracks, going 2500+ tiles to supply a petrol station. 15 trains were needed to fully supply it.)