This talk of exploiting things sparked a couple of questions in my head. More precisely questions about conveyors and automation.
This shows a simple one destination conveyor, that can apparently filter what it takes in. Useful for combined stockpiles I presume, but how do they deal with overflow of one resource? Lets say a factory requires iron and wood, with no proper filtering if you run out of either of them, the other resource would fill up the input stockpile and make future production impossible. Or do supplier conveyors(as opposed to those who shuffle things between stockpiles) respond to the demands of their corresponding factories? Can you "reserve" stockpile space, making it impossible to fill it with the wrong type of resources and how do conveyors react to a filled stockpile?
And how would one deal with having a central stockpile and 2 factories that require an equal amount of resources? It would work fine(I presume) when the stockpile is filled, but when it isnt, does one of the supplying conveyors get precedence and always get incoming resources? Basically is there automatic flip-flopping of supplied conveyors? Or could you construct a flip-flop gate on a single conveyor, causing it split into two factories with both getting 50% of the supplied resources? (Sorry if the flip-flop thing isnt proper terminology, I'm just thinking in terms of Spacechem. On that note you should try out Spacechem if you havent, it deals precisely with this sort of automation.)
On another note, lets say you have 2 mayor stockpiles, one on one end of the map and one on the other. Is it possible to connect them with conveyors in such a way that they would always stay balanced, or are conveyors only useful for one-way transporting?
And lastly, can you change the amount of resources that a conveyor transports, so you could change the supply depending on how much a factory requires, and according to your whims?
First of all, I love the idea behind that linked production schematic; although I hope it is more free-form than, say, Starcraft's building modules, where you are limited to one or two things per building. I mean, what if I want to add a Boiler onto the Butcher shop?!? What do you mean I can't? Isn't the traditional cooking method to boil meat into a glue-like substance, and then eat with large quantities of booze? Sure, maybe it wouldn't produce usable food, instead rendering everything into fat or glue, but maybe I need a large quantity of that for a project. (Still, I understand how you'd have to program every possible interaction in, and thus have a limited selection of 'usable' modules with each building.)
One of the games that I love, have played a lot of, and am now starting to itch to play again is
Pharaoh. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Storage Yard, and how storage works in general. You can easily edit the building via an interaction menu (right click, I think, then checkboxes) to set it to accept, get, or reject specific goods of the type it can hold. But you can also set it to hold 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of each item. If you set it to "Accept", then it holds whatever is brought in, or your workers can actively go "Get" the required item/amounts. Perhaps that would be a decent approach?
Another benefit to the way Pharaoh handles storage & items is that you can set certain Storage Yards (close to the production area, for example) to "Accept", and then have other Storage Yards across the city that are set to "Get". This way, goods are first filled by the harvesters into the close SY's, only going to the others when they overflow; meanwhile, workers from the "Getting" SY's are actively bringing the goods closer to where you need them. (
Here is perhaps a better explanation.)
EDIT: One other thing that I loved about Pharaoh was the ability to prioritize jobs. Everything was broken down into nine main job types, and you could set the priority of each from 1-9. (With no duplicates, just a strict 1 through 9.) If you were short of workers (population), then the high-priority jobs would be fully staffed, and the lowest priority barely staffed. Some kind of mechanic like this was needed, because you could not assign laborers to a specific job or building; it was all based on population.
Which gives rise to the question, will there be any kind of unemployment rate penalties? I mean, if you have 20 extra people with nothing to do, what will they do? Perhaps (based on their job-preferences & such) they'll go out doing preferential type activities, possibly giving your colony a 'bonus discovery' or stirring up some extra trouble? Or maybe they just wander around getting drunk & causing trouble.
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Topic: Clockwork Empires - 1.0 release October 26th (Read 256062 times)