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Question about industry demand

Started by nathansamson, June 02, 2014, 05:40:50 PM

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nathansamson

Hi,

I guess this question MIGHT be related to my previous topic (industreis not delivering).

I stil lhave a quetion about the demand / transit methods of Simutrans (Experimental).

As you can see in this "attachment" have an "industry" which has a max production of 4000 (although it fluctuates a bit, from the graphs its around 2500).
22% of it is steel, so that should be around 500 a month.

As you can see the consumption is always (more or less) equal to the arrival. I also see that the storage is empty quite often (which makes sense since it can consume twice as it receives).
The problem is that the in transit figure doesn't go up, and I actually see my trucks waiting often for steel at the steel mille.
Adding more trucks doesn't really seem to help...

I have this in more industries where actual demand undercuts my calculation, which seems to be having an  obvious influence on my profit. Anything I am doing wrong?


(PS: I can't seem to add attachments larger than 64KB which is really small for a screenshot)

jamespetts

I am having some difficulty in understanding your question, I am afraid; do you think that the actual in-transit number or the maximum in-transit number are too low?
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nathansamson

Where can I see the maximum in transit number?

The actual in transit is always around 200 (in this case) - in this screenshot it is 194 as you can see.

With this amount of in transit I am able to actually transport around 300 a month. (I guess that an average round trip takes around 2/3rds of a month).

If the actual in transit number would be higher I would be able to transport more (as my trucks seems to be waiting now), which would obviously increase my profit numbers.

My question is now: how can I increase the in transit (which is tied to the actual demand).

Another intresting question (answering this might answer my previous question) What are the factors to calculate the demand / in transit numbers?

Aquin

How much is your steel mill producing? Is it only supplying that builders yard?

jamespetts

The actual in transit number is just the number of goods in transit (including at the origin industry's local station waiting for collection) at the time in question. The maximum in transit number is calculated as a percentage of the input storage. Assuming default simuconf.tab settings, the base percentage is 110% of the input storage. This is then multiplied by the ratio of the time that it takes to consume the input storage of stock to the lead time. So, if the industry has an input store of 100 units and consumes 50 units per month and the lead time for delivery is 2 months, the maximum number of units in transit would be 110 (110% * 50 * 2).
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DrSuperGood

The problem is it seems very tight and probably will only work well from one supplier to one consumer with regular deliveries (an ideal situation). Link in two or more suppliers that are at different distances, a couple of interchanges (some suppliers are though more than other), multiple players with different suppliers, interchanges and deliveries and it seems to not go far enough. On the server there are factories not producing goods for suppliers that are constantly under supplied.

Hardware shops are the best example as some consume very few units per month. I struggle to find hardware shops that are operating near 100% of the time. Builders yards are also problematic but there are at least a few that operate most of the time. On the other hand factories like iron works and cement works seem to have little problem with this new system and often have thousands of units in storage all the time (a vast improvement). I cannot correlate if the problems are related to the factory storage parameter or the amount consumed per month (Iron Works have pretty large both compared to a hardware shop).

My network is currently set up with approximately. This configuration.
Source -> Exchange : ships that leave with minimum 33% load. Should be pretty regular and try to keep them always in the move. Any sub sources have ships that leave at 1-10%. Any trains leave at 100% but have only 100 odd capacity (about 10% of a ship).
Exchange -> Exchange : ships that leave with minimum 66% load. Pretty regular as there are a lot of them and bottlenecks are seldom. Am considering replacing these with scheduled routes as there are now enough ships for it to work (A couple a month).
Exchange -> Outlet : ship leaves at 1%, pretty regular with some routes being continious. Outlets use so little goods that the minimum cargo is just there to stop them wasting a journey moving nothing (should not happen with continuous streams of goods).

I check often for "stuck goods" in the exchange -> exchange routes due to the higher percentage loading. This is kind of an annoying problem with Simutrans where by the convoy with the lowest internal ID number loads first even if it has arrived last and there already is another convoy from the line loading. If the line suffers a flow rate drop such that all ships are no longer permanently moving the highest internal id ship may be stuck forever trying to load while it is already holding an almost full load (these goods are stuck there until I see the problem and retire the convoy). Since I am inter linked with multiple players perhaps it is possible that this problem is resulting in goods never reaching their destination. However this problem is likely best saved for another topic (convoys should load in order they arrive not internal ID order).

nathansamson

In my case it is a very simple setup

1 Player
1 Steel mill
1 Buildyard

The steel mill has other (potential) consumers but they are not linked (economically not feasible). The stell mill has a lot of steel in stock + even a lot of coal / iron.

DrSuperGood

How regular are the shipments? I think the time used is the average shipment time. If you were to run convoys at regular intervals (not just when fully loaded) you may find it operating more. Certainly worth trying (you can fast forward and see the results and reload if it does not help).

zook2

#8
Quote from: jamespetts on June 02, 2014, 09:27:48 PM
Assuming default simuconf.tab settings, the base percentage is 110% of the input storage.
I think the default setting is actually 0, and has been 0 for many releases.

Quote# How much amount in transport is sent before further distribution stops
# This is only enabled when "just_in_time" is enabled
# The limit is given in percent of factory storage (0=off)
# It should be not too low to allow big convoys fully loaded at more than one
# factory (for medium sized maps 500 seems a reasonable number)
maximum_intransit_percentage = 0

By the way, my map is 1900x1900 and I set the parameter to 110% (manually). Is that map medium-sized? Should I increase the value?

jamespetts

The default in the absence of anything in simuconf.tab is 0, but the setting in the default simuconf.tab file is 110.

I think that you might be using an outdated simuconf.tab file, as the comments are out of date. It no longer matters what the map size is, as the new system in Experimental takes into account travel time in calculating the maximum in transit percentage. Setting it to 110 should be fine for maps of any size.
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zook2

I downloaded the current config files again last night to be sure. This is where I copied the above lines from.

jamespetts

Ahh, in which it might well be that the latest files that I have locally are more up to date than the ones on the server for download. The most recent files should be bundled with the next major release.
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