Weird CLS behaviour resupplying PHQ

[ZacUK]

So,

I've got my PHQ (not Corp HQ) setup in Avarice. Reading around online for best practises with regarding to supplying the thing for ship building, I believe the best course of action is to have a Trading Port in the same sector, and a CLS2 freighter ferrying stuff to the PHQ. I'm trying to setup the CLS2 to deliver up to a certain amount of wares, based on the Ego wiki page here that advises on total stocks required to build the biggest ships. I also have the Dockware manager setup to limit amounts.

So the Dockware PHQ limits look like this:




And the CLS2 (External mode) setup like this:





For some strange reason that I can't work out, the "Unload up to..." - Even though I specify Ore to 70,000 and Silicon Wafers up to 115,000, well it won't accept those amounts and just puts in the amounts highlighted in yellow above.

Am I missing something? Is there a hard limit on these products into the PHQ?

I'm running totally vanilla, with nothing added accept for the official Bonus Pack.

Any suggestions?

Cheers.

[jlehtone]

CLS2 does not look at DockwareManager's limits.

CLS1 does. CAG that servers the PHQ (homed there) does.

CAG of other stations does not look at the DWM limits.

If the CLS2 has an order to unload up to N units, then after an unload there are at most N units in PHQ.

If the CLS has an order to unload N units, then it can fill the PHQ.


Your waypoints make it load N from complex. It will fill itself with that ware, if it cannot unload at PHQ.

[Red-Spot]

Your stuff generally does not respect station settings, in general. UTs will take intermediate products when you set the complex to only buy them and not trade with others, etc etc.

CLS2 is one of those scripts that can be so fine-tuned it does not (have to) suffer from disrespecting your wishes, probably even the only one. In this case you really set up your CLS guy incorrectly though.

First of all what you make the guy load can already confuse him, that must be several times over a full cargo-bay of wares. I have a similar setup for my 'defense hub' cls-guy who loads ecells, drones, adv sats, mosquitos and lazortowerz, exactly the amount he can drop at one dock/tradingstation that I have littered around. This way he can always load what I want him to deliver, he can always supply a dock in 1 trip and he never fails.

The setup is basicly:
goto station
load jumpfuel
load "up to" x amount ecells
load up to x mosquitos
load etc etc
-------
unload up to x amount ecells (same as he can load in this case, but it is trivial, just my '1 trip delivery' style setup)
unload up to x ....
-----
next unload dock
-----
next unload ... etc etc


One thing you may also want to keep tabs on. Is your PHQ really only supplied by that CLS2-guy? Like I mentioned, UTs do not respect much in regard to station settings, it bugs me every time when I build a cahoona bakkery several UTs jump in to sell me Argnu Beed eventhough the stations have no money, the script should have at least checked that

[Timsup2nothin]

Am I missing something? Is there a hard limit on these products into the PHQ?

I'm running totally vanilla, with nothing added accept for the official Bonus Pack.

Any suggestions?

Cheers.

This is not something I've ever encountered, because I've just never trod this path. But it seems there may be some sort of hard limit in play; a hard limit on what the PHQ is telling CLS is the maximum absolute size. CLS will do the same thing if you try to tell it, for example, to unload up to 50,000 ecells at a medium wheat farm; it will cap you back to 10,000 since that's the capacity.

So, an experiment if you are willing...

Try setting your CLS to unload upto 500,000 e-cells and see what happens. I predict it will cap that also, at something like 410,000.

If I am right you just need to accept that the PHQ has a capacity limit that for some reason the guide you read didn't take into account.

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Meanwhile, the setup as shown isn't going to work. There's no way whatever ship you are using can hold all that stuff. So when it does the pickup it will load until it is full, then go unload if the PHQ can take it. Then it will go back and reload, starting from the top; which means it will load all the same things. Eventually the PHQ is going to reach your 'unload upto' limit on cloth rimes so the ship can't unload them, which means the ship will be stuffed with 2000 cloth rimes and unable to reload. Since the PHQ will be lacking the resources that are down the list further it will never use the rimes it has, the ship will never unload, and you're locked.

This requires either multiple ships, each carrying one resource, or a sequencing approach. Like this:

Trading station
................unload resource N, max cargo
................load resource 1, max cargo

PHQ
...............unload resource 1 upto limit for resource 1

Trading station
................unload resource 1, max cargo
................load resource 2, max cargo

PHQ
...............unload resource 2, upto limit for resource 2


Keep going as far as you want, ending with the PHQ unload of resource N. That will set up the CLS for the unloading of resource N back at the trading station.

WARNING: This CAN get jammed if it loads some resource at the trading station, can't unload it to the PHQ, and before it can shuck it back off at the trading station some other ship fills up the trading station so that it can't unload there either. If you want to go this route, and think that might become a problem, let me know and I'll supply you with some solutions.

[ZacUK]

Thanks for all the advice jlehtone, Red & Tim. Appreciated.

You know, when I setup that first CLS with those waypoints, the thought crossed my mind that it's going to just fill up with a ware and stop if the HQ can't take anymore of ware (N.)

At the moment, the PHQ is at max capacity, so I'm going to kick off a Brigantine build when I get home to clear it down some.

I'm guessing I'll need to recreate my waypoints, and share the load across say 5 TMs. 2 wares per ship, for a total of 10 wares.

So something like:

1) - Trading station
a) unload Cloth Rimes, max cargo
b) load Cloth Rimes, max cargo

2) - PHQ
a) unload Cloth Rimes, upto (Dockware limit)

3) - Trading station
a) unload Computer Components, max cargo
b) load Computer Components, max cargo

4) - PHQ
a) unload Computer Components, upto (Dockware limit)

5) - Trading station
a) unload Computer Components, max cargo



Then repeat the steps for the other 4 TMs.


@Tim, if you have a solution so that I don't get stuck with not being able to unload, do share.

..although I'm running unmodified, as i'm going for the achievements.


@Red, yeah, i'm noticing more and more that my STs are steaming in and taking or delivering stuff without a care in the universe... I wish they'd pay more attention to keeping out of the war zones than screwing up my internal supply logistics!


EDIT - missed the last unload in the loop.

[jlehtone]

CLS1 is for "from player station to player station, as needed". No "fill up" as with CLS2, and obeys the DWM limits. Ought to do this one thing "right" without too much effort.


PHQ "Trade with others" set to NO should stop Trade Mk3 from one transaction (cannot remember if it was buy or sell).
Setting prices to the "wrong side" of Average prevents Trade Mk3 from doing the other transaction.

(CLS1 can operate on arbitrary price (even 0 or negative) and thus ignore PHQ's prices.)


Plug Hammerhead Torpedos into the tailpipes of Trade Mk3 Freighters. If that does not stop pillage ...

[Timsup2nothin]

@Tim, if you have a solution so that I don't get stuck with not being able to unload, do share.

..although I'm running unmodified, as i'm going for the achievements.

Any time I provide solutions they are based on running unmodified, so no worries.

Did you run that experiment? I'm curious about the results and don't have a handy game save with a PHQ I can investigate with.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Simple solution if you are going with two resources per freighter is just split loading them.

Trading station
.................Load cloth rimes upto half cargo space
.................Load computer components upto half cargo space

PHQ
.................Unload cloth rimes upto 10000
.................Unload computer components upto 8000

That really can't go wrong.

Running more than two resources per freighter can actually be done the same way, you just need to do the math to manually split up the cargo bay.

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Another option is the widely applicable "overflow tank method." For that for each resource you set up a loop; loading at the trading station, unloading at the PHQ (which will only happen if it needs the resource), unloading back to the trading station (where we are concerned that the trading station may have filled up in the interim), then an unload at some place where you know it won't fill up to capacity; an overflow tank. I like TLs for this, since they are cheap and big. Just make sure you have some freighters dedicated to taking the overflow out of the tank and selling it off.

You can string together as many loops as you want on a single freighter this way. Just make sure that the freighter will have plenty of time to make all the runs back and forth that will be needed to keep the PHQ stocked.

[ZacUK]

So my PHQ is full at the moment, 499,998/500,000 cargo

This is what I get when I set the unload > manual input > 400,000

..as you can see it caps out at 22,260.





I also think that the numbers on the official wiki for wares are way off the mark. If the PHQ has a limit of 500,000 units of cargo, how can you possibly store all of this stuff:

https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence ... adquarters

(Scroll down to the "The Logistics of Owning a Player Headquarters" section.)


For Commonwealth & Terran PHQs:

(I did this in Excel as it's quicker...)







Those totals don't make sense, and the data is wrong. it's impossible to store that amount of ware in your PHQ. The wiki page makes it seem as if you can store that amount of stuff. Perhaps that whole section needs re-writing.

[ZacUK]

I couldn't let this go...

So the total number of resources required to build the biggest ship as per the wiki (If that data is correct, I don't know how to check that, probably in a config file somewhere.)

The total ware volume (NOT the total amount of units of ware:)

Terran 4,025,352
Commonwealth 3,236,977

If you divide those down by 700,000 and 500,000 respectively, works out to:

Terran 4,025,352 divide by 700k = 5.750502857
Commonwealth 3,236,977 divide by 500k = 6.473954


So, then I divide the total amount of the wares down by the same fraction amounts, and came up with the amount in green below. Providing the resources totals are correct as per the wiki, I think this is what the dockware manager should be set to.

[Timsup2nothin]

I couldn't let this go...

Good. This is where most advancements in knowledge come from. If I ever get into an issue with cargo capacities of PHQs I will be coming to you for expertise.

This is unexplored territory for me because I've always come at this question from the opposite end. I look at what it takes to build the ship I want, and I set out to transport that much and no more of each ware required fast enough that when it is done with one it can immediately build another one. So my PHQ operates between dead empty and just enough to build what I want and never approaches capacity. That allows me to load it up with shields and weapons and such so that I can equip my new ships (newly constructed or otherwise acquired) whenever I get them.

[ZacUK]

I had a quick look at the wiki, I believe that the last editor of that page made a mistake and actually listed out the VOLUME totals, and not the WARE totals.

[ZacUK]

Good. This is where most advancements in knowledge come from. If I ever get into an issue with cargo capacities of PHQs I will be coming to you for expertise.

This is unexplored territory for me because I've always come at this question from the opposite end. I look at what it takes to build the ship I want, and I set out to transport that much and no more of each ware required fast enough that when it is done with one it can immediately build another one. So my PHQ operates between dead empty and just enough to build what I want and never approaches capacity. That allows me to load it up with shields and weapons and such so that I can equip my new ships (newly constructed or otherwise acquired) whenever I get them.

I actually have 3 Boron EQDs in the same sector, with up to 6 TL "tanks" docked for overflow, and CAGs running on all of them to fill up all the shields / weapons etc. The PHQ I want to limit solely to building.

[ZacUK]

In fact, while I was editing my DWM to my limits, I noticed there's a total towards the top of the window...

When I noticed it, it was reading something like 2,975,000 / 500,000 - Way over the limit..

So there is some semblance of method in my craziness.

[ZacUK]

After several days looking at this. Ignore my details above for the ware limits. They're close of course, but here's a very informative and detailed post about PHQ stocks for building, thanks to user Reven. Seems that he/she already did the maths.

viewtopic.php?t=397643

I've got everything all set and running like clockwork. I'm actually using fleets of CLS1 traders to do the supplies from various complexes around my 'verse.

[Red-Spot]

Not noticed before the PHQ has an 'overwiew'...