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Commodity Production Ideas!
I wanted to make this thread after the discussions in the Pet peeve thread, so that we can discuss ideas and sollutions for the lengthy times production take! Feel free to discuss! Here's my 2 cents!
From what I can understand, many farmers think it's frustrating to wait for the commodities to return from processing. While I understand that things like this need to take some time, it shouldn't take as long as it does in Axius' post. Having people wait for 750 hours for their things to be handled is a bit hefty and doesn't sound like something that would encourage people to start farming.
As I see it, the reason is because all farmers ship their things when it's possible to ship, which seems to be once every season. At the end of the fall season with nothing else to produce, people ship whatever is left leading to big queues. Someone mentioned putting a cap on how much could be sent, but since the produce has a decay time on them, that would be rather counter productive. If you have more than one far, you risk having some of the hard work go to waste because you're not able to ship it.
My suggestion on how to fix this would be that whatever is sent through the processing process goes into an individual queue. When your produce is in the queue, you need to finish several steps for it to be finished. For example:
Martinaux sends 10 bundes of cotton to be processed at the clothier. When she arrives at the clothier, she needs to CLEAN COTTON, which would set a timer for Xminutes/bundle. By looking at CITY PRODUCTION INFO will show you how long you have to wait until the cotton is cleaned. Once that timer runs out, you instead issue the order to WEAVE COTTON for the next step, which takes Xminutes/bundle. Finally, once the timer runs out, you PACKAGE COTTON for the last step made before you can pick up your cloth.
With this system, you only have your own produce to worry about and you can add as much or as little as you want to your queue. Let's say Martinaux were to add 30 bundles instead. It would obviously take longer to clean, weave and pack. You just keep a standard amount for one bundle and multiply it depending on how many are sent in. Say, for example, that you need cloth for your shop fast! You just add a smaller amount, wait for the process to be over and then add the rest and let them take the time they need.
If they want to have their things processed the normal way and have the commodities sold directly to the city, they can choose to use a syntax to let them do this and not worry about the prompted steps and it will run the natural course through a queue like it does now. That way, it could be more of an option. Be more active and do the steps and you can have things done and use/sell your commodities faster, or leave them to the normal process to sell to the city and let it take a bit more time.
As a final note.. I don't know much about farming, so not sure if this would actually work, but it's an idea from a Minister of Development! I would love to hear from the other Ministers of Development to see if they have any ideas about it too. @Gyana @Tenshyo @Valeria
From what I can understand, many farmers think it's frustrating to wait for the commodities to return from processing. While I understand that things like this need to take some time, it shouldn't take as long as it does in Axius' post. Having people wait for 750 hours for their things to be handled is a bit hefty and doesn't sound like something that would encourage people to start farming.
As I see it, the reason is because all farmers ship their things when it's possible to ship, which seems to be once every season. At the end of the fall season with nothing else to produce, people ship whatever is left leading to big queues. Someone mentioned putting a cap on how much could be sent, but since the produce has a decay time on them, that would be rather counter productive. If you have more than one far, you risk having some of the hard work go to waste because you're not able to ship it.
My suggestion on how to fix this would be that whatever is sent through the processing process goes into an individual queue. When your produce is in the queue, you need to finish several steps for it to be finished. For example:
Martinaux sends 10 bundes of cotton to be processed at the clothier. When she arrives at the clothier, she needs to CLEAN COTTON, which would set a timer for Xminutes/bundle. By looking at CITY PRODUCTION INFO will show you how long you have to wait until the cotton is cleaned. Once that timer runs out, you instead issue the order to WEAVE COTTON for the next step, which takes Xminutes/bundle. Finally, once the timer runs out, you PACKAGE COTTON for the last step made before you can pick up your cloth.
With this system, you only have your own produce to worry about and you can add as much or as little as you want to your queue. Let's say Martinaux were to add 30 bundles instead. It would obviously take longer to clean, weave and pack. You just keep a standard amount for one bundle and multiply it depending on how many are sent in. Say, for example, that you need cloth for your shop fast! You just add a smaller amount, wait for the process to be over and then add the rest and let them take the time they need.
If they want to have their things processed the normal way and have the commodities sold directly to the city, they can choose to use a syntax to let them do this and not worry about the prompted steps and it will run the natural course through a queue like it does now. That way, it could be more of an option. Be more active and do the steps and you can have things done and use/sell your commodities faster, or leave them to the normal process to sell to the city and let it take a bit more time.
As a final note.. I don't know much about farming, so not sure if this would actually work, but it's an idea from a Minister of Development! I would love to hear from the other Ministers of Development to see if they have any ideas about it too. @Gyana @Tenshyo @Valeria
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- You add your lot of X material to be processed.
- 250 of that material gets processed, then the rest gets pushed to the back of the queue.
- The rest gets processed after everyone else gets their next 250 processed.
You spend less time waiting for a payout but the overall output doesn't change.Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245
My attempt at simplified breakdown of the process:
- Grow Plants/Calves and produce Raw Goods.
- Put Raw Goods into your Shed for shipping.
- Roughly once a season, a Caravan will arrive at your city's farmland. This caravan will transport all Raw Goods that all farmers in your city's farmland have put into their sheds since the last caravan arrived and bring them to your city's Warehouse.
- All Raw Good from that caravan arrive at the warehouse simultaneously
- Raw Goods sit in the warehouse and you are charged a fee every IC day (every four hours) for every Raw Good that you have not queue to be processed.
- Go to the warehouse and queue your Raw Goods to be processed.
- Wait for your Raw Goods to be processed into Commodities.
- When Processing is complete, Commodities will be sent to the Warehouse where you can withdraw them.
---------------------------------------------Also of note is that the admin-rebuttal to player-objections about these delays is that they are trying to limit the number of commodities that players have the capacity to create. So, basically they are concerned about the impact of allowing more commodities to be produced because they don't want to flood the game with commodities and drive down the value of commodities.
My suggested solution:
1 - Have individual processing queues for each player. This will keep some cap on the flow while also greatly reducing player frustration at having to wait for everyone ELSE.
2 - Remove the necessity to upgrade the production facilities in order to hire apprentices that increase production speed. Improving the facilities already has the benefit of giving you more commodities for your effort and gold input by improving Raw Material to Commodity output. Apprentices cost gold for the city to employ to this function, so it's a trade off: you pay more for your goods, but they're done faster.
2 - To mitigate the potential overflow of unneeded commodities and decrease in value, create an NPC that will buys and subsequently consumes Agriculturally-producible commodities from players. Make this NPC buy the commodities at a rate that is slightly higher than the average Cost to Produce them (I have a spreadsheet with which to calculate the cost to produce commodities from farming - it will vary depending on your artis/processing taxes/etc. but you can still get a decent baseline for what would be a small profit for most players). This NPC would basically create a baseline "minimum value" for the commodities and give cities the ability to still increase/decrease their purchase prices depending on the city's need for the commodities and how much they are charging in taxes for processing.
Let's say silver took players some gold/effort/time to produce, but is not capped in any way like our current farms and production facilities are. If more players are playing the game and using up silver to make their enchantments, the price of silver will go up. This would attract more people to produce silver, causing the price to drop. The fluctuations in demand and supply will reach some equilibrium over time.
There is absolutely no reason to be worried about commodities flooding the market as long as there is some "gold sink" aspect of it. The problem with commodity generation is when it is entirely passive with no input required, making them effectively "free". Let's say silver will always cost 200 gold to produce. This means that the lowest viable price for players to sell their silver at is 200 gold, but maybe generally people only find it worth producing when they can get a profit of 200 gold, so they only bother when the price generally reaches 400 gold. If someone else decides it's worth going in with 150 gold profit, they'll start producing at 350 gold instead. That is the competition aspect of it, and there was no need to create artificial scarcity by hard capping how much is produced.
This would be a real "economy" at work, and not this strictly capped system we have where not only do we need to sink a lot of gold into it, but also there being hard caps on how much we can actually produce.
I don't think @Martinaux misunderstood the current process, but tried to offer an alternative solution where the player is in charge of how quickly their stuff gets processed. Essentially, her suggestion seems to match the "create a separate queue per person" solution that you offered, but with the twist of being involved in the production steps.
I like the idea of separate queues. The output will be the same, but people don't have to wait on others with more farms. I also like the idea of being involved in the production in a small way, but keeping that optional for those who want to control the flow.
I like @Seurimas idea, too.
Pit, it's 95% of the reason I don't get a Farm/have someone else tend it, because it's just that much more work, for that much more waiting.
If I look at Enorian's Tannery as of this post, it has 235 hours, and 36 minutes to clear. 172 of those hours are one bundle. So 10 days, or so, of waiting. After an amount of time waiting for crops/cows to mature. Then to harvest/slaughter. Then to caravan. Then to Production. Seems an awful lot of wait for very little payout.
The above times are Level 3 Tannery with all Apprentices.
I also, frankly, agree with @Czcibor. Where artificially enforced scarcity is inflating prices of commdoties to the point where only certain play styles ultimately can afford them. - That's not how I personally enjoy playing. I work enough in my real job, I don't want to work after getting home, just to barely get what I need to even craft (I'm looking at you, ludicrous wood prices)
As for the suggestions?
They all seem fine to me. I'd be more interested in anything cutting these wait times down.
My issue with having another set of syntaxes to follow/input is there folks who will put these things in at the end of their play time and will log in sometime the next day- which is a whole nother set of wait times!
But! Overall? Every suggestion above seems like they would be fine. Outside of just speeding things up. Or actually having a completely significant speed-to-level ratio for Facilities
Background:
My farming efforts of Hemp at this point is entirely donated to Bloodloch, in order to replenish the commodity-cost for upgrading the clothier to level 2. As such, Zaila has a TON of stuff in production because a lot of other citizens let her farm their plots for this purpose. And in order for cities to really be able to upgrade their facilities, there isn't really any other effective way to afford them without mass production efforts on that behalf.
Now, those facts are all relatively beside the point of the biggest flaw I want to point out.
That flaw is that Player capacity to grow and Harvest VASTLY out-paces the facility's capacity to process.
Right now, all these commodities are coming from me, sure. But Bloodloch's farmland is not being farmed anywhere near maximum capacity. This is a below-farming-capacity level of raw material production on display. And at this below-capacity farming effort, there is presently 187 DAYS of hemp in queue and 140 DAYS of Cotton.
And I know there are many levels of what causes this imbalance. But I feel like there clearly IS a problem if the system is set up in a way that a below-capacity level of engagement with an activity creates a minimum 5-6 month delay in return on their efforts.
And the average player isn't even going to be seeing a ton of return on their time investment. Lets say a Bloodloch player wants to farm to produce cloth so they can really get into tailoring at an affordable-to-them cost. I'll even go bare-bones-cheap with it and assume they're putting in extra effort for minimal upfront cost & maximum return (one seed sack, no watersprites, yes fertilizer, no arti stuff, etc.) Here's what they have to look forward to:
One Farmplot:
10,000 Gold for the skill
3,400 Gold for necessary Supplies (seeds/sack/fertilizer/shed/scarecrow/hoe/scythe)
24 days of daily effort
One plot will yield ~ 660 cotton (this will vary depending on how fastidious you are about getting things harvested & watered IMMEDIATELY and fertilizer chance)
~ 2640 Gold for 22 rope (every 30 cotton requires 1 rope to "bundle" in order to ship it to your city)
Wait Six MORE Months.
Pay your city's taxes for production (at Bloodloch as a citizen this would be anther 3300 gold)
Get 220 Cloth
Total Investment:
Gold: 19,340
Effort: 24 Days of 5-25 minutes of watering/harvesting
Time: 7+ Months
Total Return:
220 Cloth.
Here's the five plot breakdown of Minimal-Cost return on your investment.
Total Investment:
Credits: 100
Gold: 37,400
Effort: 24 Days of 25-60 minutes of watering/harvesting
Time: 8+ Months (this will take more processing time to see a return on)
Total Return:
1100 Cloth.
It's just very frustrating when you try to explain what is going on and get met with the same default response of "just wait for mining", especially when it's a system that is fundamentally tied into so many other aspects of the game whether that be pk or crafting.
The fewer value words you can use and the more numbers you include in an argument about game mechanics the better. You end up providing a clear description of the facts in a way that's useful, testable, and reproducible. Tiur can test how long a process takes. He can't really test for something being tedious.