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Issues with Production Added to Vendor Lists - Ag Plots?

Captain LaserBeam

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I've been dedicating time to playing the game more lately to try to get a player perspective on things and maybe figure out where there are certain gaps in the existing lineup of building plans and I've noticed a few things that don't seem to be functioning the way they should be. For one thing, I set many of my ag plots to have "production" in the sense that they would send a certain amount of produce to the general stores. I'm not the only one who did this as it seems to me to be a pretty intuitive way of leveraging the dynamic economy that SS2 makes possible. Otherwise all the ag plots are basically just decorative, right? Doesn't matter what they have they just produce food numbers.

So far I have not seen this work. I checked and spoke with Tinuvia, because WV seems to use the same method I did to set up production as part of the building plan properties to go to the general store. I double-checked everything in the new BTK and it seems that I have everything set up as it should be. Has anyone else noticed issues with plots that have production not going where they are supposed to? I could certainly change my plots to the old method and have them send stuff to the workbench but I want to take advantage of SS2's systems and actually have the items show up in shops because that was one of the SS2 features I was most excited about. Do any other add-on authors have their ag plots set to send production to stores? If so, have they seen this work in-game? (If so, I'd be relieved to check your add-on for comparison purposes to see if you did it differently).

Have any players using Jampads or Wasteland Venturers seen produce from the ag plots show up in a general store? Anyone seen anything from production plots in general work that way? Maybe I have a misunderstanding of how SS2's systems work and what's possible, but I'm trying to get the sense of whether this is user error/confusion or if it's a bug with production.
 
I've seen Agriculture Plots put their output into the vanilla Workbench (sometimes, when it feels like it) including addon-pack designs, but never into the General Store. I didn't even know the intent was for them to be going into the General Store though - that makes Survival Mode even more of an 'early game hell' if that's the case, since it takes over an ingame week to be unlocking Commercials via the questline.
Although it putting SOME Ag output into Workbenches and SOME into Virtual Storage would explain why it's seemed like you have to massively overproduce to have any food left over for your own use, once you allow for Settlers consuming whatever's in the Workbench.
 
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For Wasteland Venturers I have set the agriculturals that don't make vanilla workshop crops to produce items for the general store and/or the bars. Like for the siltbean/coffee agricultural plots - they will count for food in the workshop menu, but in SS1 they wouldn't automatically produce silt bean to the workshop on their own since this isn't a vanilla workshop crop (I suspect it still contributed to the amount of vanilla crop food added to the workshop container, though). I had to set it up specifically to do so, but I was always a bit concerned that players who didn't like to sip coffee in the morning would come back after adventuring and find the workshop overflowing with silt beans. So having the vendors sell them seemed like a good compromise.

But after some more testing I can't see neither silt bean sold at e.g. the SS2 general store Fresh Supplies nor coffee sold at e.g. the SS2 Open Bar, the way I set it up in the building plan settings for the levels of those vendor types. So like Cpt LaserBeam, I'm also curious to know if this is confusion regarding the setup or possibly a bug with the production.
 
I have been using a donut factory that says it is supposed to produce products to the bars. I have only had the plot a few in game days so maybe it hasn't had time to put anything in the bar. I will now keep checking cause I just built Murkwater to be a Distillery/moonshiners production settlement for the bars too.
 
I have been using a donut factory that says it is supposed to produce products to the bars. I have only had the plot a few in game days so maybe it hasn't had time to put anything in the bar. I will now keep checking cause I just built Murkwater to be a Distillery/moonshiners production settlement for the bars too.
I am still trying to do an "organic" test of the donut factory by unlocking production the normal way - I set the production setting up using the SS2 brewery building plan as an example, so if that doesn't work either this could be a deeper problem.
 
@Captain LaserBeam @Tinuvia , could this be caused by something silly like the Production plot class not being unlocked? <--- not very likely...
I have plans in the works for some non-traditional production plots.

I might have to brave the bleeding eyes syndrome and read the production part of the script one more time.... From what I remember of the last time I read through it, The production properties setup on the building plan are processed and routed to the vendor LL that the production was setup for. IIRC, there are the same production entries on the BuildingPlan and LevelPlan. IIRC2, the vanilla SS2 production plots have their production on the BuildingPlan. If I find anything, I'll add to this.
 
@Captain LaserBeam @Tinuvia , could this be caused by something silly like the Production plot class not being unlocked? <--- not very likely...
I have plans in the works for some non-traditional production plots.

I might have to brave the bleeding eyes syndrome and read the production part of the script one more time.... From what I remember of the last time I read through it, The production properties setup on the building plan are processed and routed to the vendor LL that the production was setup for. IIRC, there are the same production entries on the BuildingPlan and LevelPlan. IIRC2, the vanilla SS2 production plots have their production on the BuildingPlan. If I find anything, I'll add to this.
That's pretty much how I set it up and how Tinuvia set it up looking at Wasteland Venturers. At the building plan level, with the appropriate properties for Bar or General Store set up as far as the container/LL it is supposed to enter. Looking at BTK, I can't see what our mods might have misconfigured unless there's something we're both misunderstanding from the BTK.
 
Another thought:
iCount: Similar to the Conversion class. You have two ways to approach this: enter the number of the item you would like to produce. Or if you don't want to think about balance, set this to -1, which will make it so that the number of produced items is automatically calculated based on the amount of resources you decide to have your building consume each day (for Production, this uses the Caps value of items being produced as part of the equation, so that you'll naturally see less production of higher cost goods unless you jack up the operating costs to compensate).
Is iCount set to -1 and the value of the item is more than the operating cost calculation and thus not being 'produced'?

I have not spent much time on this system... I'm still trying to understand what keywords are required on the plot markers so SS2 correctly assigns NPCs to them. I happened to read the production part of the script by chance looking for a solution to a plot idea I had. I still don't have a solid understanding of the 'behind the scenes' handling the scripts perform... I have no clue how Kinggath keeps that stuff straight... :scratchhead
 
Another thought:

Is iCount set to -1 and the value of the item is more than the operating cost calculation and thus not being 'produced'?

I have not spent much time on this system... I'm still trying to understand what keywords are required on the plot markers so SS2 correctly assigns NPCs to them. I happened to read the production part of the script by chance looking for a solution to a plot idea I had. I still don't have a solid understanding of the 'behind the scenes' handling the scripts perform... I have no clue how Kinggath keeps that stuff straight... :scratchhead
Huh, that could be it. Re-reading the BTK with this in mind I didn't really get the sense that setting an operating cost equal to the value of the items was mandatory. This also means that if you want to have ags produce, you are going to have to add extra operating costs to them for production. That's very unfortunate because it means that the plot shuts down and stops providing food if those costs aren't met? Yikes.

Also, I have to wonder how we're supposed to know the math behind this equation. Are virtual resource components worth the exact same as their non-virtual counterparts? So if I want my donut factory to produce donuts and I just say, all right, burn 100 oil per day, do I get a sense of the value of that oil simply by looking up how much a scrap component of oil is worth? I guess I will need to experiment with this a lot more.
 
I have not seen any newspapers from New Bugle in the bookstore. In fact, bookstore's inventory still contained the same 3 books even at level 3 (but maybe that's the issue with Katie as a vendor)
 
This also means that if you want to have ags produce, you are going to have to add extra operating costs to them for production. That's very unfortunate because it means that the plot shuts down and stops providing food if those costs aren't met? Yikes.
I believe if you manually set iCount to a value, it bypasses the Operating Costs:Production Costs calculation. I'm not 100% on this... I know I stumbled across the base operating costs for the plot types, but I can not remember anything useful... IIRC it was a MiscItem with 'default' in the name. I do know these costs are calculated on the caps value of each item added together. I guess we (the addon community) will have to put together a document listing the default cost by plot type by level... unless by a stroke of luck, Kinggath has this and is willing to share. ;)
Item: This wasn't skipped, but we're going to discuss how you can use FormLists and LeveledItems in this field. In both cases, you're going to also want to make use of the NameHolderForm field described below.
  • FormList: When using a formlist, items are produced at random from this list, with no specific weighting applied. It could randomly create all of one or the other, though over time, it is going to create the same amount of each on average. When using the iCount = -1 trick for calculation, this uses the average value of all items in the list, so this combination of formlist and iCount = -1 should generally only be used for items of similar value, or the production quantities could end up being quite low. (For example in our earlier example of a Minigun and 5mm ammo, the difference in value is nearly 300, which means the average would be 150, so whether it randomly chose the gun or bullet, each would be considered worth 150 for purposes of calculating quantity to create).
  • LeveledItem: When using a LeveledItem, the exact iCount of that LeveledItem will be created, you cannot use iCount = -1 with LeveledItems. LeveledItems offer a lot of flexibility and control for randomized item pools, but it's up to you to determine the value of them, so you'll need to put more care into the OperatingCosts versus the iCount value you land on for the LeveledItem.
 
Are virtual resource components worth the exact same as their non-virtual counterparts?
This is the $5mil question! I haven't found an answer to this. Digging around the scripts, this is always referred to as a 1:1 conversion. (virtual vs real) I assume the ratio value is a placeholder in case the 'economy' needs to be tweeked. I did not look into whether the virtual resource was pointing to the scrap component. There is also the question of whether perks play into this calculation as well.

I made an extravagant conversion plot. I got to this 'economy' step and have made no further progress... Economics was never my strong suit...

Maybe what would be best is to create a list of coherent questions and ask Kinggath. With luck, he may answer the pleas of us mere mortals. ;) Like:
  • Does manually setting iCount bypass the operating costs calculation?
  • Does the virtual resource value equal their scrap counterparts?
    • Do player perks (like scrapper) come into play with this calculation?
  • Is there a general OperatingCosts:ProductionValue ratio we should strive towards?
  • Under Production in the BuildingPlan Properties, the ProductionItem description says not to use a LevelList, yet many SS2 plots use one.
    • The addon wiki also says we can use one.
    • Is the description in need of an update or are we not to use LevelLists?
 
I have not seen any newspapers from New Bugle in the bookstore. In fact, bookstore's inventory still contained the same 3 books even at level 3 (but maybe that's the issue with Katie as a vendor)
This was working in v1.0.3 (I have a friend that has article injection as part of their addon) I wonder if something broke in the production system in a recent patch?
 
This is the $5mil question! I haven't found an answer to this. Digging around the scripts, this is always referred to as a 1:1 conversion. (virtual vs real) I assume the ratio value is a placeholder in case the 'economy' needs to be tweeked. I did not look into whether the virtual resource was pointing to the scrap component. There is also the question of whether perks play into this calculation as well.

I made an extravagant conversion plot. I got to this 'economy' step and have made no further progress... Economics was never my strong suit...

Maybe what would be best is to create a list of coherent questions and ask Kinggath. With luck, he may answer the pleas of us mere mortals. ;) Like:
  • Does manually setting iCount bypass the operating costs calculation?
  • Does the virtual resource value equal their scrap counterparts?
    • Do player perks (like scrapper) come into play with this calculation?
  • Is there a general OperatingCosts:ProductionValue ratio we should strive towards?
  • Under Production in the BuildingPlan Properties, the ProductionItem description says not to use a LevelList, yet many SS2 plots use one.
    • The addon wiki also says we can use one.
    • Is the description in need of an update or are we not to use LevelLists?
I had manual iCounts in, just because if you are producing say food items, they can have high values since survival bases how much hunger or thirst they take care of based on that value. Therefore for something like the donuts, I have my operating costs at oil and cloth. It takes a lot of oil and cloth just to produce one donut if it has to have the same value in terms of caps as a scrap unit of (non-virtual) oil is worth five caps and a scrap unit of (non-virtual cloth) is either three or four. So quickly you're taking the entire daily output of a level 1 organic materials in terms of cloth and oil to make like 1.5 donuts. That didn't make sense to me so I set the iCounts at variable numbers between 3 and 9 based on the level of the plot and had the plot consume 5-15 oil and cloth as it goes up in level. I did verify with @Tinuvia that she set it up the same way it is that you have above with -1 and with operating costs that should have balanced out and it still did not seem to work properly. It could be a bug, but I plan to do some more testing to see if this is either an issue with production as a whole or possibly just with the production translating into vendors. Based on what @yaugieLC said above, production has seemed to go into workbenches. If I set my plots to send the production to workbenches and that works, then we've isolated the problem to be mostly the getting them into vendor inventories part.
 
0 daily production
This is due to the limitations of the message system. (techno babble- you can't pass a string to a message) To make this work, you would have to make a message for every producible object in the game and have a huge wall-o-text code to figure out what message to display.

Translation- the only things that will show up as production would be food, water, defense, happiness and scrap components. I do not believe any other items are setup to be displayed. I could be wrong...

Edit- There is another system that could be used to do this, but I do not know if it is implemented.
 
This is due to the limitations of the message system. (techno babble- you can't pass a string to a message) To make this work, you would have to make a message for every producible object in the game and have a huge wall-o-text code to figure out what message to display.

Translation- the only things that will show up as production would be food, water, defense, happiness and scrap components. I do not believe any other items are setup to be displayed. I could be wrong...

Edit- There is another system that could be used to do this, but I do not know if it is implemented.
For the messages, SS2 solves this by having place holder names that the addon author can set up if they want to override the item name or have a formlist of produced items (the name holders are MISC, described in the Industrial tutorial under "Non-Traditional Production & Costs"). I have them set up for the herbs (allegedly) produced by the agricultural wild farms, but not for the Armory (might make sense to add them, though, now that I see the message in game).
 
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