Architect Archive
Thread: Making Heavy Minerals in Factory: Project Results
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Betatoxin
Tue Aug 05, 2003 4:54 pm
#1
I wanted to followup on my previous post regarding making heavy mineral
extractors in a factory.
The short of it is I ended up loosing 6 walls and all the metal in the attempt
to make a single heavy in the factory. I contacted a CSR and got the typical run
around "sorry for the inconvenience". Aparently that CSR does not play
architect.
Now I am not complaining, I knew there would be risks and I wanted to give this
a try. I also wanted to post regarding my experiment.
The good news is I think I know exactly what went wrong.
I fed the following schematic in to the factory
1 Wall Schematic A
6 Walls Schematic B
6 Small Structure Storage Modules
2 Turbines
2 Ore Processors
Steel
Copper
Chemical
I think there are two bugs here, both of which need to be addressed.
1) Factories are not like structure crafting tools, they consume resources even
if the end product is not possible with the provided components.
Basically what I think happens is that the factory starts to make the item
specified in the schematic filling the slots and consuming as it goes. This is
unlike a crafting tool which will pop up a big warning message if you try to
create an item with an incomplete schematic. What needs to be changed is to have
a factory do a check on the schematic and the resources in the ingredient hopper
to ensure that it is legal to try to make the item in the schematic with the
provided resources. This should prevent the kind of partial resource consumption
in the event the factory crashes mid combine for some reason.
2) Factories do not honor the serial #'s on the sub-components. This was
mentioned in the thread I originally posted regarding my project. Aparently
contrary to what is intended you can use different sub components in a factory
than were originally used in the schematic. An example of this bug would be if
instead of 6 Walls from Wall Schematic B and 1 Wall from Wall Schematic A I used
7 walls from Schematic C with this bug in place I should still get a success
even though I am not using the identical components as in my schematic.
Of course this bug has the side effect of significantly increasing the value
of a schematic while at the same time making complex items like Heavy Minerals
notbuild as would be expected if the serial numbers were honored.
In my case what I think happened is that the factory ignored the serial #'s and
just started grabbing walls from schematic B placing one in the single slot and
5 in the final slot. Not finding any more Schematic B's (only 1 schematic A) it
failed and as a result of bug 1 it ate the resources and components.
There is a good possibility that if I put 7 identical walls in the factory as
long as I have the same metals and chemicals as the original schematic I should
be able to pump out heavies until my supply of those resources is exhausted. So
the schematic mightnot be a write off after all and based on the responses I
got I actually used currently available metal not older stuff.
Also good news is that I had 100% success in hand crafting all the heavies I
wanted to make in the factory anyway. So in the end I was no worse off than I
had accounted for.
I will also add if the Developers make any changes with regards to the factories
to address these bugs they should give us fair warning. These problems are such
that work arounds are required in planning large operations. We should be given
suficient lead time to any fixes to be able to absorb any losses we may incur as
a result of the work arounds we have to use to make complex items in factories.
extractors in a factory.
The short of it is I ended up loosing 6 walls and all the metal in the attempt
to make a single heavy in the factory. I contacted a CSR and got the typical run
around "sorry for the inconvenience". Aparently that CSR does not play
architect.
Now I am not complaining, I knew there would be risks and I wanted to give this
a try. I also wanted to post regarding my experiment.
The good news is I think I know exactly what went wrong.
I fed the following schematic in to the factory
1 Wall Schematic A
6 Walls Schematic B
6 Small Structure Storage Modules
2 Turbines
2 Ore Processors
Steel
Copper
Chemical
I think there are two bugs here, both of which need to be addressed.
1) Factories are not like structure crafting tools, they consume resources even
if the end product is not possible with the provided components.
Basically what I think happens is that the factory starts to make the item
specified in the schematic filling the slots and consuming as it goes. This is
unlike a crafting tool which will pop up a big warning message if you try to
create an item with an incomplete schematic. What needs to be changed is to have
a factory do a check on the schematic and the resources in the ingredient hopper
to ensure that it is legal to try to make the item in the schematic with the
provided resources. This should prevent the kind of partial resource consumption
in the event the factory crashes mid combine for some reason.
2) Factories do not honor the serial #'s on the sub-components. This was
mentioned in the thread I originally posted regarding my project. Aparently
contrary to what is intended you can use different sub components in a factory
than were originally used in the schematic. An example of this bug would be if
instead of 6 Walls from Wall Schematic B and 1 Wall from Wall Schematic A I used
7 walls from Schematic C with this bug in place I should still get a success
even though I am not using the identical components as in my schematic.
Of course this bug has the side effect of significantly increasing the value
of a schematic while at the same time making complex items like Heavy Minerals
notbuild as would be expected if the serial numbers were honored.
In my case what I think happened is that the factory ignored the serial #'s and
just started grabbing walls from schematic B placing one in the single slot and
5 in the final slot. Not finding any more Schematic B's (only 1 schematic A) it
failed and as a result of bug 1 it ate the resources and components.
There is a good possibility that if I put 7 identical walls in the factory as
long as I have the same metals and chemicals as the original schematic I should
be able to pump out heavies until my supply of those resources is exhausted. So
the schematic mightnot be a write off after all and based on the responses I
got I actually used currently available metal not older stuff.
Also good news is that I had 100% success in hand crafting all the heavies I
wanted to make in the factory anyway. So in the end I was no worse off than I
had accounted for.
I will also add if the Developers make any changes with regards to the factories
to address these bugs they should give us fair warning. These problems are such
that work arounds are required in planning large operations. We should be given
suficient lead time to any fixes to be able to absorb any losses we may incur as
a result of the work arounds we have to use to make complex items in factories.
Deoka
Tue Aug 05, 2003 5:35 pm
#2
1 is definitely a bug. The factory takes resources in the order that it lists them. If it chokes for some reason halfway down the list you lose everything up to that point.
2, I dunno. I know for a fact that putting the wrong serial numbered turbines in a manufacturing mech. factory run does not work. I do think that you are correct in thinking that if you had used 7 identical walls the schematic would have worked, because from the results, it looks like that's where the factory choked. It looks like the factory got confused somehowbetween the 1 wall slot and the 6 wall slot. But I think you would have had to make the schematic using 7 identical walls as well.
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