Eighteen Bill, wharf, issues.

[Skeeter]

Hi there.

No mods, never use em tho wouldnt mind that orange cursor mod as blue is hard to see and all the blue text on map from ships, anyhow..

So ive noticed some odd things.

Ive started a new game with 2.20 patch non beta. Mined some crystals got about 1.6 mill then went to buy a fighter at said locations wharf. Said no 1 in queue and 2.25.. something i guess mins and secs but nope. Anyhow. I just noticed that it had a small amount of eng parts i cant recall but im thinking it was few hundread but not the 600 it said i needed for full kitted out ship i bought so its not building mine. Now when i go to the map and click on ships in construction it said mine is 1, unkown 2 and 3 and 4 with very short times like 13. Anyhow i discovered something. If i leave the station and just outside of the blue forcefield and look back, i notice some ships been built. Not mine, not the 3 unknown ones but 2 new ones. A big vulture i think it was and a boxy looking small ship kinda like a mini version of the station building ship.

So im confused.

Is it building ships it shouldnt be able to, is it ignoring my ship and just using up eng parts for other npcs ship orders instead of saving up enough parts to get my ship built. Is ship building for player bugged as in a falcon sentinal i think it is shouldnt really need 600-700 parts? I mean if they can build a vulture which for min loadout says 400 odd parts is needed how come that gets built at that wharf when A. Im first in queue, B, why isnt it saving up eng parts for my ship, C i dont think it even had 400 eng parts in the station in the first place. Currently theres 54 ish eng parts.

Its very confusing.

[Imperial Good]

It cannot build your ship due to a lack of wares. However it can still build other ships which do not require the wares that it is lacking. For example if it is lacking Weapon Components then it cannot build any ship with guns but can still build freighters which use turrets.

The tricky part comes when the required wares arrive at the station. They get allocated out from cheapest to most expensive prioritizing their own faction ships. As such it Is completely possible for some expensive ships to never be built as long as there is a ware shortage since new cheaper orders will use any wares arriving before enough build up to complete the more expensive ship order.

I notice this at my own Shipyard a lot. PAR and HOP love to order Odysseus destroyers which require a lot of hull parts and engine parts. However the Shipyard is always short on them due to logistical issues. As such they never get build because any engine parts and hull parts are spent building S and M ships and never allowed to accumulate enough.

I would suggest that the order logic is changed such that wares that are lacking for a build can only be spent on ships next in line for the queue even if they could be used to build ships immediately that are later down the queue. This would mean that the HOP and PAR Odysseus would get built before more S and M ships that also need the Hull Parts and Engine Parts. Of course ships that are not using the awaited wares of higher up position ships can queue jump like currently. This behaviour should be the most efficient at keeping the queue times down on any individual ship and makes the queue position number meaningful. I would certainly recommend it for NPC Warfs and Shipyards. For player owned ones having the option to choose the queue logic would be a nice feature.