Steel Mill orders huge amounts of coal

[Jando]

Sorry, another thing I noticed on my current map. No idea whether bug or strange feature - and please tell me if I should stop to report these little things. I don't want to annoy you guys with strange features you probably know much better than I do.

Anyway, the steel mill has now ordered enough coal to cover it's demand for the next 4 years or so, clogging up the harbour to constant overcrowded status. Monthly demand: 160 tons, amount of coal shipped to the harbour: 7082 tons. Screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/kJ1b97b.jpg

I have no idea whether the clerks at that steel mill ever stop, but I've noticed other industries stopping to accept deliveries much earlier.

[jamespetts]

May I ask - which version are you using? A new version has just been released: you might want to try that to see whether the problem occurs there.

[Jando]

May I ask - which version are you using? A new version has just been released: you might want to try that to see whether the problem occurs there.

That was the release candidate, I will start a new map with the new release tomorrow. Sorry for bothering you, you guys are doing a great job!

[neroden]

There are two possible causes of this.
#1.  A bug.  There is a nasty bug which I fixed quite recently where freight which gets "thrown away" for whatever reason was still registered as "in transit".  Furthermore, the "in transit" number never reset.  This is fixed with commit 0a06b949422601.

#2.  This much is actually in transit, and this is correct and appropriate.

There is a very hard problem involved here.  I do not think the game should try to solve it.  The player should solve it.

The game has settings which will stop a factory from ordering more coal if a certain percentage of the factory's capacity was already "in transit".  Unfortunately, this breaks badly for long, slow routes, such as one has to use in the 1750s.  In order to have a steady supply along a long, slow route, you need to have a large amount in transit at any given time.  7052 might be entirely reasonable if the freight route takes four years to make its trip, and on some of the maps I've constructed, the freight route DOES take over a year to make a trip.

But of course, if you then have a short, fast route, this allows the factory to get overcrowded quite quickly.

In order to implement a sensible policy, the factory would need to know when each "in transit" load was expected to arrive in order to know whether to order more.  This is too complicated to be worth computing.  The player should do the computations and arrange their supply line to provide roughly "steady state" supply.

[greenling]

Hello
I have find a new bug In the photo from Jando.
The Steelmill need Electric power in a year there has gives no powerplant.

[jamespetts]

Hello
I have find a new bug In the photo from Jando.
The Steelmill need Electric power in a year there has gives no powerplant.

I assume that that was from pakset version 0.8.4 - this issue is fixed in 0.9.0.

As to Nathaneal's post - the fix to which reference is made in relation to no. 1 was incorporated in 11.0.