Currently plots costs are taken directly from the storage of materials. If there is not enough, it tries to take it from the overproduction if there is any. If there is still not enough, the plot shuts down.
If you are creating enough of the resources the plot needs, in theory there should be no problem - the resource is put into your storage during the daily update, then taken out when the plot needs it. The problem is, between those to things, something else may take that resource out - like a plot upgrade.
I had this issue myself - my farms stopped working, even though I am producing enough cloth to cover their costs. But in between the daily update and the farm plots paying upkeep costs, another plot took that cloth to upgrade, so when the farm looked for the resource, it wasn't there and the farm stopped working.
Instead of having the overproduciton system, when the daily update runs it should store enough resources to cover plot costs in a plot reserve. That way, that resource is not added to the actual storage so it can't be consumed by something else before the plot needs it. When plots look for resources, they look in the plot reserve first. It will then look in the storage only if the reserve does not have enough.
In terms of the code I'm pretty sure it will be relatively straightforward to convert the overproduction system to a plot reserve.
The plot reserve system would be better than the overproduction system in two key ways :
If you are creating enough of the resources the plot needs, in theory there should be no problem - the resource is put into your storage during the daily update, then taken out when the plot needs it. The problem is, between those to things, something else may take that resource out - like a plot upgrade.
I had this issue myself - my farms stopped working, even though I am producing enough cloth to cover their costs. But in between the daily update and the farm plots paying upkeep costs, another plot took that cloth to upgrade, so when the farm looked for the resource, it wasn't there and the farm stopped working.
Instead of having the overproduciton system, when the daily update runs it should store enough resources to cover plot costs in a plot reserve. That way, that resource is not added to the actual storage so it can't be consumed by something else before the plot needs it. When plots look for resources, they look in the plot reserve first. It will then look in the storage only if the reserve does not have enough.
In terms of the code I'm pretty sure it will be relatively straightforward to convert the overproduction system to a plot reserve.
The plot reserve system would be better than the overproduction system in two key ways :
- As noted, it solves the problem of other systems taking resources needed for plot costs, causing those plots to fail even though adequate resources are being produced.
- The overproduction store is currently only checked if there is nothing left in the actual storage. This means when your storage is full you will have certain resource reserves constantly go down even if in theory you are producing enough, since when it comes to produce those resources there is no space. Even though that excess production is recorded, it is not used unless you have none of it left in actual storage. The plot reserve would be checked first, which means actual storage only goes down if there is not enough in the plot reserve (in other words, your actual storage only goes down if you are not producing enough.