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Component-specific Resource Storage Containers

Tharatan

Active Member
City Planner (S3)
Banned
Messages
176
As the title says, I would suggest that component-specific resource storage containers be added. When playing through with either Categories or (especially) with Components as the level of difficulty, it is possible to run into a situation where the settlement network is full on components of types A, B, and C, but no components of type D are available. With the storage full, the plots have nowhere to put newly-produced type D items, so the production appears to be lost.

To put it a different way, you run into a situation that looks something like this:

Settlement Storage: 5,000 / 5,000
Building Materials: 3500
Organic Materials: 1250
Machine Parts: 0
Rare Materials: 250

Adding more overall storage is only a short-term solution, because in the example above your production of Building Materials, Organics and Rares will overwhelm anything you add over time while leaving your Machine Parts blocked out again.

Adding Resource Storage Containers specific to components and/or categories would allow the player to ensure that a particular amount is reserved just for that item, insulated from any storage bottlenecks caused by buildup of other things in the network.

In the example above, the player could add a container dedicated to Machine Parts, so that these would continue to be produced/used while the other three categories remained full.

This would be a particular boon in component-level games, where production from plots is extremely hard to balance with consumption - in the attached image, the building materials category has become bloated with excess supplies of everything except Steel, which now seems to be blocked from producing due to lack of storage space. This leads to cascade failures of the settlement economies.
 

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Excess production is discarded when the update cycle of the settlement occurs. I'm thinking maybe the situation you describe can be remedied by prioritising the storage of the least plenty component over the more plenty components. This way in your example, when storage capacity becomes available steel would be stored first and glass(?) last making sure resources at 0 are replenished first and only plentyful resources are discarded. No need changing game mechanics to different storage containers.
What do you think?
 
Excess production is discarded when the update cycle of the settlement occurs. I'm thinking maybe the situation you describe can be remedied by prioritising the storage of the least plenty component over the more plenty components. This way in your example, when storage capacity becomes available steel would be stored first and glass(?) last making sure resources at 0 are replenished first and only plentyful resources are discarded. No need changing game mechanics to different storage containers.
What do you think?
That could be another way to handle it, yes - though that puts the onus of balance onto the scripts, rather than giving the player at least the illusion of being in control of what is happening. I suppose the question becomes which is easier to implement with the resources available to the SS2 team: buildable objects that only store one type of virtual component, or alterations to the industrial production/storage script.

I have no idea whether or not these containers would be something that could be introduced by a separate mod or not, but if so it could be another avenue to get it done.
 
@yaugieLC does it make sense to file this as a (minor) bug as potentially this can lead to failing resource system when storage space is full?
 
@yaugieLC does it make sense to file this as a (minor) bug as potentially this can lead to failing resource system when storage space is full?
I don't know that I'd call it a "bug" at all, just an unintended side effect of how the system works. There's at least a couple of OTHER bugs going on to do with the Virtual Resources and/or Maintenance Costs though; once those get sorted out, and the confirmed-to-be-coming "balance pass" of the numbers gets done too, it might be worth another look.
 
I'd prefer a way to partially purge (in a "purge anything over amount X" way) overflowing categories/components rather than continue adding storage capacity, be it overall storage of individual categories/components. Or maybe a way to halt production of certain components so, for example, you don't drown in glass and concrete when all you really need is aluminum and adhesive.
 
I'd prefer a way to partially purge (in a "purge anything over amount X" way) overflowing categories/components rather than continue adding storage capacity, be it overall storage of individual categories/components.
Along those lines, my own thought was that there could perhaps be some kind of "resource sink" function, like, say... an NPC that you can "donate" Virtual Resources to in a "here, take 500 Wood" way and get some benefit from it (converted into Shipments? Building a new town that technically ISN'T part of your Settlement Network? I don't know, but "converting to Shipments" would also deal with the "The Player isnt allowed to use those resources" complaints.) That way, it'd still fit into the "try to do as much as possible in a way that makes in-universe sense" ethos the SS2 team is trying to mostly stick to.
 
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From IDEK page:
My understanding was that IDEK's stops junk item production getting lost due to the 100-item-per-settlement limit, but I wasn't aware that it did anything to the virtual resource system and its overflows.

- Auto Collection
This feature is not enabled by default, and depends on Logistics Storage.

This feature automatically collects surplus from settlements in your Logistics Network, which are the excess resources that settlements produce daily, such as food, water, and scrap items. When configured, auto-collection will automatically whisk these resources away to Logistics Storage, once per game day, synchronized with the standard workshop daily update cycle, to allow for easier item management.

You may configure which categories of items—food, water, scavenge, chems, etc—are collected by this feature in any Logistics Terminal.

This feature also allows you to "soft-bypass" the standard vanilla surplus production limit. See spoiler for details.
Spoiler:
Show
In vanilla, settlers will stop producing surplus after a certain amount of each resource has already collected in the local workbench. The mechanics of this are described in more detail in the mod description for Uncapped Settlement Surplus. Because auto-collection physically moves resources between workbenches, this means that your "satellite" settlements will never hit their limits, and so surplus will continue to be produced perpetually in all settlements except the settlement with the designated workbench.

Currently available categories include food, water, scrap or scavenge, caps, ammunition, loose mods, and drugs or chems.

Collection is configurable on a categorical basis both globally (all settlements), or locally (per-settlement, by accessing a terminal local to the settlement to be configured). In order for collection to run for a particular category, it must be enabled globally: disabling a category globally will override local settings. This is because all settings other than the "master" global switch are enabled by default, so otherwise the global toggle wouldn't actually do anything.
 
From IDEK page:


- Auto Collection
This feature is not enabled by default, and depends on Logistics Storage.

This feature automatically collects surplus from settlements in your Logistics Network, which are the excess resources that settlements produce daily, such as food, water, and scrap items. When configured, auto-collection will automatically whisk these resources away to Logistics Storage, once per game day, synchronized with the standard workshop daily update cycle, to allow for easier item management.

You may configure which categories of items—food, water, scavenge, chems, etc—are collected by this feature in any Logistics Terminal.

This feature also allows you to "soft-bypass" the standard vanilla surplus production limit. See spoiler for details.
Spoiler:
Show
In vanilla, settlers will stop producing surplus after a certain amount of each resource has already collected in the local workbench. The mechanics of this are described in more detail in the mod description for Uncapped Settlement Surplus. Because auto-collection physically moves resources between workbenches, this means that your "satellite" settlements will never hit their limits, and so surplus will continue to be produced perpetually in all settlements except the settlement with the designated workbench.

Currently available categories include food, water, scrap or scavenge, caps, ammunition, loose mods, and drugs or chems.

Collection is configurable on a categorical basis both globally (all settlements), or locally (per-settlement, by accessing a terminal local to the settlement to be configured). In order for collection to run for a particular category, it must be enabled globally: disabling a category globally will override local settings. This is because all settings other than the "master" global switch are enabled by default, so otherwise the global toggle wouldn't actually do anything.
Yup, so that's all the "physical" items produced by scavenging stations, junk industry plots, etc - not the SS2 virtual resources.
 
Looks like this is still an issue after the rebalance and updates, @yaugieLC. As @Robertas007 pointed out in https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/containers-for-different-virtual-resources.19557/, the daily overflow change allows for upkeep to work, but this is still a problem that prevents stockpiling enough to support upgrades.
I'm keeping an eye on it. There's definitely a non-trivial amount of people still thinking "Maintenance Costs" and "Operating Costs: Plot" are overly punishing. (myself included; there's actually still a HUD bug with the latter of those two as well)

I have clearly marked that this block is my own personal opinions, to make sure people don't think I'm speaking "officially" or anything; this is mostly just me rambling.

It seems like the whole resource system is tuned such that you NEED at least 10+ STR worth of workers total on every Gathering subtype, with the plots at level 3, to even try to keep up with demand if you have any plots whatsoever still in need of upgrading. For early game, that's obviously pretty much impossible - especially considering Training plots have their own 'Operating Costs' to pay - a level 1 END training for a single person consumes 25 Cork per day - making it a vicious cycle of only getting worse in terms of which resources you have too much of left over.
The sheer amount of resources you need to actually run things at max difficulty is beyond even what my most-progressed game could output - at least not without overbuilding settlements to beyond what my system can safely handle, and this isn't an "only barely meets the requirements to even run fallout4 at all" rig.
And that's without touching on the issue of certain resources being far more 'in demand' than others - looking at my own game right now, I've got over a thousand Glass and Fertilizer in the storage that's barely being touched, but I'm constantly out of at least Wood. I mean, look at it.
ScreenShot82.png
 
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I mean, look at it.
That looks a lot like what I normally have. I'm glad @cbrgamer2's mod is out there to help solve at least part of the problem (resources overflow, lack of balance) so that you can have a massive industry and throw away everything that isn't needed.
"Maintenance Costs" and "Operating Costs: Plot" are overly punishing
Gotta agree with that, advanced martials are straight up broken with their lead req and the amount of cork needed for everything is pretty crazy. Idk if it's intended to never upgrade some plots and use them very sparingly (like rec training) on components. And building stuff for the looks definately goes out the window (like a lot of martial plots at the Castle since it never even gets attacked, or most of the commercial plots that aren't vital) which is understandable but kinda spoils the fun.
 
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