possible bug(s) in Recon Drone Construction Facility

[glenmcd]

here's my DxDiag

Install is Albion Prelude V2.1 English. Start is DiD.

If my install wasn't modified then I probably wouldn't have noticed this one. But if you know what to look for you can see it in vanilla also. I tested with as unmodified an install I could manage and still be able to get info on the issue - a single script in addon/scripts run manually.

The recon drone construction facility (factory) in Queens Harbour can store up to 20 products. If you query this station it reports that it can make 12 products per cycle. With a bin size of only 20 for products, I'd expect only a single product per cycle. As I understand it, factories don't start a production cycle unless it has sufficient primary resources to do so, plus sufficient space in the product bin for whatever number of products are to be made. I used a DiD start a few times until I got the RDCF with insufficient resources for a production cycle, and ten products in the product bin. When queried it reported not producing. I then filled all of its resource bins. Some seconds later, it reported that it was now producing. But the "seconds until production cycle complete" didn't change from the full cycle time (12000 seconds). After around ten minutes of game time, I bought two recon drones, so that if the full 12 products were going to be created, it would have room in the output bin for them. At that instant, the production cycle remaining time counter reported values as expected, IF the production cycle commenced around the time that I fed it resources, and not the time that I freed up the product bin.

I found this issue only when writing a script to assist trade missions. It makes the assumption that if a factory can't start a production cycle because the product bin is too full (using products per cycle here), then it's a good time to buy, even if the product price isn't maximum. So this eventually led to it reporting that I should buy Recon Drones, at a time that there was only nine products available, with a price of above average (ten products remaining sets price to average). In a vanilla setup, a player may be waiting for recon drones to drop in price as more are produced. But if there's currently nine or more products available, this will never happen. Perhaps NPCs wait for the price drop that never happens also.

[Alan Phipps]

Hi. Have you established whether that is just recon drones or whether this is a more basic general factory scripting issue that would apply to all stations where production quantity exceeds or is imbalanced with available storage?

I ask because I think I recall reported issues (in X3TC?) where certain numbers of other high-tech ware factories when complexed could appear to stand indefinitely with non-production while plenty of resources, intermediates and a dynamic allocated storage space were available within the complex as a whole.

[glenmcd]

Short answer is that I don't know yet but if I continue to build this script then I can't help but to find out. Meanwhile I'm kludging something for the recon drone facility just so that my script doesn't get stuck on its belief that buying recon drones is the best deal in the currently known universe and meanwhile player refusing to buy coz he's paying above average and can only make a loss. I'm looking at general health of factories across the universe and at 00-00:00:00 it's 100%, and declines to 60% within hours. That's as far as I've gone so far. I suspect that EC resource bins are too small for the time that it takes NPCs to react and get a delivery of ECs to stations without. Shortages ripple through the various ware levels. But if the original issue is more widespread, then as product numbers get juggled up and down in effected factories, eventually all will achieve stagnation unless the player intervenes and purchases at above average prices. But then it's only a matter of time before it repeats. Ultimately the player will see shortages of certain things in EQds, but then there's already a kludge built in where you can clone weapons in sectors where you've got both shipyard and EQd. Looking at the trade script side though, this doesn't help the development of smarter logic for trading whether that be employed on player or NPC ships. If the original issue and any others that shut down factories permanently are not straightened out at the Egosoft level, no amount of GoD intervention (removing stagnated factories) and factory building during play will achieve universal trade stability.

[glenmcd]

I ran a script to find the answer to above. It's pretty simple, recon drone construction facility is the only factory type (three are spawned at universe creation) with this issue. I ran a similar check for primary resources and this showed no problems, with roughly 2.5 to 3 times the resource bin size as compared to resource units consumed per production cycle *for weapons*. Factories producing anything other than weapons (bio / food / tech) were assigned far more liberal resource bin sizes, and this should lead to a general preference by NPC freighters to prefer not to trade with factories producing weapons unless others were already satisfied. Thus, if the player can focus on energy/bio/food production (be that trading or building), this will motivate NPC ships to attend to weapon production needs. Secondary resources are completely different. A shortage of secondary resources won't directly cause trade stagnation, but because secondary resource actively promote trade balance, a breakdown in their function reduces their ability to provide the balancing effect. Examples:

Plasma Burst Generator Forge alpha(Danna's Chance): Space Weed, resource units per cycle = 199, resource bin size = 40
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Hila's Joy): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Acquisition Repository): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Legend's Home): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Duke's Citadel): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Plasma Burst Generator Forge alpha(Void of Opportunity): Space Weed, resource units per cycle = 199, resource bin size = 40
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Menelaus' Oasis): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Rehabilitation Facility M alpha(Vestibule of Creation): Disintegrator Rifles , resource units per cycle = 102, resource bin size = 20
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Rhonkar's Fire): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Medium shield Production Complex beta(Rhonkar's Fire): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(Rolk's Fate): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Plasma Burst Generator Forge alpha(LooManckStrat's Legacy): Space Weed, resource units per cycle = 199, resource bin size = 40
Medium shield Production Complex alpha(The Vault): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Plasma Burst Generator Forge alpha(Maelstrom): Space Weed, resource units per cycle = 199, resource bin size = 40
Jonferco Medium Shield Complex(Albion Alpha): Quantum Tubes, resource units per cycle = 121, resource bin size = 82
Satellite Factory alpha(Interworlds): Microchips, resource units per cycle = 25, resource bin size = 20

As you can see, these factories report that they consume more of this resource type than can actually be stored in the resource bin. Many others have a ratio between 1.0 and 2.0, meaning that if the resource was actually needed for production then stagnation would be inevitable. As it is, I'm confused as to whether these factories actually use these secondary resources or not, considering that they can never actually accept/store sufficient quantity to use the reported units per production cycle.

[Carlo the Curious]

Secondary resources play no part in production whatsoever. They're just consumed at a rate dependant on the RelVal.

Unless they've changed for AP, the SE 'as secondary' commands give rubbish results - they don't give the actual rate of consumption (and aren't consistent over all factories either, iirc).

[Alan Phipps]

Good research as always glenmcd. Just one request from a chap with less than perfect vision though: - Please use shorter paragraphs to break up the walls of text so the reader does not keep losing his place on-screen.