Industry Max Units Per Month

[nuhgl]

This hardware shop shows 2 units per month max.
But the business is consuming way more than 2 units of product.

Well it is giving more profit thats alright, but I can make schedule for a line when there is difference in actually informations.

I use config files from nightly build packages, but I am wondering if it is something I need to do with setting to do with time?

[Jando]

Hello Nughl!

It's a known fact, the pakset is not yet balanced, all industries demand and consume about 6-8 times the amount stated in the industry's information window.

[DrSuperGood]

Production/consumption is limited to 1 fractional unit (based on the fixed point precision used) per tick. It is possible that with extended's long months and the low factory production amount that the required production rate is less than the minimum production rate, and hence why it is larger.

If this is the case, then one either needs to change the maths involved to deal with smaller fractional units, or to limit the minimum production/consumption of buildings to appropriately match the maths.

[laos]

is this a known problem for consumption/production of other stuff, such as coal and mail?

[Jando]

is this a known problem for consumption/production of other stuff, such as coal and mail?

I know that all types of freight at all industries are affected, can't comment on mail though. And yes, both consumption and production of freight shows the effect. I have observed factors of 8, meaning industries can consume up to 8 times the amount stated and industries can produce up to 8 times as well.

[laos]

I know that all types of freight at all industries are affected, can't comment on mail though. And yes, both consumption and production of freight shows the effect. I have observed factors of 8, meaning industries can consume up to 8 times the amount stated and industries can produce up to 8 times as well.

Thanks for sharing. I have a pretty bustling extended map with passenger traffic - trying to get city growth going with some more diverse deliveries but I see a city of 20,000 only producing 60 pieces of mail a month despite having a train route with post offices passing mail along a large route - I can't figure out why it isn't working or what I'm doing wrong, and I don't get the impression it's supposed to be any different from simutrans standard

[Jando]

Thanks for sharing. I have a pretty bustling extended map with passenger traffic - trying to get city growth going with some more diverse deliveries but I see a city of 20,000 only producing 60 pieces of mail a month despite having a train route with post offices passing mail along a large route - I can't figure out why it isn't working or what I'm doing wrong, and I don't get the impression it's supposed to be any different from simutrans standard

Passenger and mail services are bound to get some big changes in the near future, read about James' plans here: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=16979.0

As for now I would not really bother with mail, the current mail output is not balanced and it would be wasted development time to balance it now while a new mechanic is in development. That said, I think Extended is already very playable in it's current state, even though some planned mechanics aren't yet in place. And mail is one of the items that are not yet in place, sorry.

[Junna]

Thanks for sharing. I have a pretty bustling extended map with passenger traffic - trying to get city growth going with some more diverse deliveries but I see a city of 20,000 only producing 60 pieces of mail a month despite having a train route with post offices passing mail along a large route - I can't figure out why it isn't working or what I'm doing wrong, and I don't get the impression it's supposed to be any different from simutrans standard

The city chart stats may not necessarily reflect the actual amount of mail. I'm having a steady and fairly high amount of mail on my large map, the company that transports mail exclusively (but a lot of mail is carried on passenger trains too) handles a steady 1 million units of mail a game-year (passenger numbers for map is roughly 19.5 million a year, but some places do not have mail coverage). A city with 18k population has 4,095 mail.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your report. There is a known bug relating to industry in the display of certain information in the charts not being correct. When I tested this last, it appeared to be limited to display, and did not affect actual game mechanics, so I gave the bug a lower priority than it would have been given had it actually affected the game mechanics. I do plan to fix this in due course, however, although there are quite a few other things that also need doing.

One or two other incidental comments: firstly, pakset balancing is a separate issue to the industry chart display bug. There is much pakset balancing work to do, and prices, in particular, are not balanced at all, although industry production/consumption of raw materials and goods is at least approximately balanced, although this may need considerable refinement. The quantity of production of passengers and mail should also be approximately balanced, and, once the work that is described in the thread to which Jando linked is integrated (much of this work has already been completed, but the UI for it is not complete, and there is work to do to add the relevant data to the pakset to implement it there), revenue should be approximately balanced, although this will not be particularly meaningful without costs also being balanced, which requires more features, and also the addition of inflation, a yet to be added feature.

As to mail, as noted, the production and demand for this should be approximately balanced, but the revenue/cost of this is not currently balanced. The revenue should be approximately balanced with the passenger and mail classes work that is currently ongoing, but this will not be very meaningful without cost balancing/inflation. Laos - you write about a town of 20,000 only producing 60 bundles of mail per month. Note that (1) each bundle of mail in the game represents (if I recall correctly) 10 individual postal packets (letters, parcels, etc.); and that (2) the correct time-frame for measuring passenger and mail generation is the short time frame, in which one game month is equal to 6.4 hours. Given that a day is assumed to have 16 active hours and nights are not simulated, each "month" is 0.4 days. 60 bundles of mail per "month" therefore equates to 600 postal packets every 0.4 days, or 1,500 postal packets per day, which would equate to every person (in your town of 20,000) posting a letter every 0.075 days, or posting 27.375 letters every year.

The amount of mail generation can be customised using the mail_packets_per_month_hundredths setting, which can be changed in simuconf.tab or in the advanced settings window (press the "i" key to access this). Pak128.Britain-Ex has the default setting of 5 for this. The explanatory text for this is, taken from simuconf.tab,

# These settings determine the number of passenger trips that each person makes per game month
# and the number of items of mail that each unit of mail demand produces per month, in 1/100ths.
# This does *not* include onward and return trips, however, and is *before* adjustment for the
# meters per tile and bits per month scales.

However, I should note that I am seeing rather different figures, with 135 bundles of mail for half a month in a town of a little over 17,000 in the year 1905. Are you reporting the amount of mail generated (shown by the yellow graph in the city information window), or the amount of mail that you are actually transporting? (Junna: I am not aware of any bug with the city statistics chart and mail generation numbers; if you believe that this is an error, perhaps you can submit a full report in a separate thread?)

One thing that is currently not well balanced at present is the differential demand for passengers/mail at different buildings, so, while the demand/generation of passengers/mail is approximately balanced at the macro level, it remains often not well balanced at the micro level, with some buildings providing insufficient jobs and others demanding far too many visitors (e.g., at present, hundreds of times more passengers will go to a cathedral in any given period than a market in the 1750s). This requires setting the visitor demand and jobs for all the individual buildings rather than using the default values as is currently the case. This may also affect mail demand and generation.

One note about town balancing: when generating a map, you should generally have the number of industries be some multiple of the number of towns, or else there will be too few industries and passengers will not have enough places to go, especially to work. This is the intended behaviour and I will need to find a way of encouraging players to do this in the map creation menu in the future.

Finally, I should note that the system of passenger and mail generation is actually entirely different from that in Standard, and is quite complex under the surface, although the complexity is designed to be transparent to the user.

[laos]

interesting. My industries are actually a *fraction* of cities - perhaps I need to start a new game and fix this!

The save I posted for the related colliery bug is the same map where I am seeing the mail generation on the chart - but have a mail train that picks up absolutely no mail despite post offices at every city - i could just be doing this incorrectly based on others discussions of having major passenger/mail routes!

EDIT - is it possible to update the game to support more than 1000 industries and public buildings when someone is working with such a large number of towns (such as this map)?

[Jando]

The city chart stats may not necessarily reflect the actual amount of mail. I'm having a steady and fairly high amount of mail on my large map, the company that transports mail exclusively (but a lot of mail is carried on passenger trains too) handles a steady 1 million units of mail a game-year (passenger numbers for map is roughly 19.5 million a year, but some places do not have mail coverage). A city with 18k population has 4,095 mail.

That's a lot of mail, I didn't think that's possible with the current game. On my maps I hardly got any mail thus I stopped transporting it. Okay. much smaller maps and much smaller towns. The amount of mail a small village generates doesn't even cover the maintenance fee for the mailbox, not to speak about the post boy on his bicycle, hehe.

[Jando]

interesting. My industries are actually a *fraction* of cities - perhaps I need to start a new game and fix this! ...

I usually make maps with the number of industries set at 3 times the number of towns. Sounds reasonable to me, after all the people need to work somewhere!

[laos]

I usually make maps with the number of industries set at 3 times the number of towns. Sounds reasonable to me, after all the people need to work somewhere!

yes but a map like mine with 1000 towns looks pretty empty with any fewer, and that's the industry/public building limit! so at best I can only get a  1:1  ratio

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your feedback. I have now increased the number of industries that can be generated when the map starts to 16,384, which should be a long way beyond what anyone is likely to need for the foreseeable future. I hope that this helps.

[laos]

Thank you for your feedback. I have now increased the number of industries that can be generated when the map starts to 16,384, which should be a long way beyond what anyone is likely to need for the foreseeable future. I hope that this helps.

excellent, thank you! will test and hopefully a map generates for me

edit - successful on 1200 town - 3000 industry map Thanks again James!