Material Income + Production

[darkcyde]

Hi

I'm a little confused about income of material from mining and production rates.

Here's how I see it at the moment...

I am considering time to be one tick of the clock...given how slowly time flows even in warp, I assume a tick to be one game minute. Given that some items take say 80 ticks, this seems a reasonable conclusion.

I have 4 islands on Mining, and 2 on Production giving me a Material Income of 595 per tick and a Production Rate of 2.8.

Next to each item there is a Production Time in Ticks...take an example of a Bomb....Materials Required 4000, Time 64. I assume if my Production Rate was 1, then this item would take 64 ticks. My actual Production Rate is 2.8, therefore I assume 64/2.8=22.85 ticks. However, it seems to be taking many more ticks than even 64.

Also, 4000 materials / 64 ticks = 62.5 materials required per tick....however, my available materials remains at zero during production suggesting that my Income vs Expenditure ratio is off and I'm using more materials per tick than I am creating, however 595 income per tick - 62.5 used in production = 532.5 gain per tick.

I'm currently using the Non-navigational waters Timewarp loophole to sit waiting for a long production queue to run having defeated the enemy carrier and it's taking a loooooooong time. Trying to warp from island to island waiting for supplies to be created was not working because I was using all the warp time to create fuel packs to maintain my continual warping thus leaving no production time for anything else....sitting out of warp waiting for the production queue isn't feasible as it would take literally hours of real-time!

Am I correct in my assumptions here? Anyone got any comments on this?

I have raised a ticket this all these calculations.

EDIT : I have just tried changing a production island to mining, and that's changed my Production Rate to 1.2, and material income to 775. This has effected all values next to the Production Items, and the Bomb now takes 153 ticks and my Material available is increasing with each tick, but still not by the amount I would expect.

However, I've also thought that obviously if the Production Time changes, then this would have an impact on the Materials used per tick? So if my Production Rate is 1.2, 4000 time / 153 ticks = 26.14 materials required per tick * 1.2 = 31.37 actual materials per tick....so a Premium is added to the materials required? Seems a little unbalanced then in my opinion. There's no benefit then to faster production, as your materials income would need to be faster thus putting you in the position of unbalanced income vs expenditure and you end up waiting for materials to complete your production, ergo your actual Production Rate is slowed because of this.

[ScareYa]

You should include the beta condition of CCGM in your calculations.

Right now you can have about six or seven mining islands and one or two production islands at best. The mining rate and production rate is therefore very limited. In the final game you will be able to conquer 30+ islands, which will boost your production and mining rates in the second half of the game beyond your wildest dreams. Right now - based on the beta impressions only - you just can't reliably estimate the production balance. But I am sure Bohemia will put great effort in balancing the final game.

Be also aware that different islands have different mining and production capabilities. Lingard and Vattland are great mining islands, while Beacon and Terminus are probably better suited for Production. Also don't forget that your stockpile island always acts as production island - it might eventually be advisable to use Vattland or Terminus as mining islands AND keep the stockpile there to increase the production rate. Islands with smaller production and mining capabilities are most efficiently being used as defense islands.

[darkcyde]

Please don't get me wrong...I understand it's beta completely....I used to be a software anaylst and tester, so I'm coming from a little knowledge.

My point was that the actual losses and gains of the Production Rates and Material Income rates seem off....not the ratio of mining islands vs production islands.....I understand that the beta represents a very small island chain, thus production would be limited. Even with the limited islands, the losses and gains still seem off.

[ScareYa]

Please don't get me wrong...I understand it's beta completely....I used to be a software anaylst and tester, so I'm coming from a little knowledge.

Cool.

My point was that the actual losses and gains of the Production Rates and Material Income rates seem off....not the ratio of mining islands vs production islands.....I understand that the beta represents a very small island chain, thus production would be limited. Even with the limited islands, the losses and gains still seem off.

Actually I never checked that because I wanted to avoid the math.
Well, you forced me to!

I found that 1 game minute is 6 seconds in real time.

With a PROD. RATE of 3.0 the production of a fuel pack needs therefore 29 "clicks" (aka "game minutes") which is 174 seconds or a little less than 3 minutes of real time. That seems to be correct - I checked it with a stop watch. But this works only if your MAT. INCOME is high enough or you have enough material on stock for that production. The production of a Fuel Pack requires namely 300 MAT to be consumed in those 29 clicks (with the given PROD. RATE of 3.0) - this is a MAT "flow rate" of about 620 MATS per game-hour (60 game minutes). The math: 60/29*300=620. My actual MAT. INCOME was 800 in this situation, so I could produce the Fuel Pack without delay in the given 29 game minutes (I could even save some MATs for later while producing the Fuel Pack). If my MAT. INCOME would have been lower than 620 per game-hour the INDICATED production time would still have been 29 - even if the actual production time would have been higher.

Missiles production needs 64 game minutes or 6.4 real minutes (still with a PROD. RATE of 3.0) and requires 3000 MATs. The MAT flow needed for a continuous production is now 60/64*3000=2815. If your actual MAT. INCOME is lower than 2815 and you don't have 3000 MATs on stock you can't continuously produce the missiles since you have to wait for material. The actual production time will be MUCH longer - in the given case with 800 MAT. INCOME (and no MATs on stock) it should be almost 4 times longer (exactly 2815/800=3.52) - about 25 real minutes.

Basically your calculations were correct. But I think you miscalculated the "material flow rate" for the production and misjudged the MAT. INCOME rate. Those rates are not based on your "clicks" (game minutes) but on game hours (60 "clicks").

Correct me, if I'm wrong...

[Suranis]

MOM! The bad men are making my head hurt!!!

[Tontow]

English? Anyone?

[darkcyde]

Ok, you went a little deeper with the timings than I did....I didn't go quite as far as sitting with a stopwatch! ;-) Only point of note, I was taking the clock icon to mean one game tick/second, whereas you have taken it as two meanings....for Production it refers to one game second, but for Income it refers to one game hour....so there my assumptions were off as I had assumed the clock icon was universal for one second, but it seems to have more meanings.....so if Income is 620 per game hour, and Production was 300 units over 29 game minutes, then that makes more sense.

That all seems sound, so I make another point.....if Income and Production is to be slow with only a few Islands, perhaps for the purpose of Beta it should have been altered to that effect otherwise testers won't realistically get to try out all the advanced items without first sinking the enemy carrier otherwise whilst your waiting for your replacement Mantas and Walrus's to be made he'll be ripping your islands a new one and you'll be completely impotent, as he does seem to be able to conquer islands much, much quicker than we can.

On that note, just how long do others find it is taking them to conquer an enemy island, on average? It took me four hours to take back one of mine once I'd snuck up on him and blasted him to pieces with my plasma cannon (another bug I think....if you find him at one of your islands, sneak up very slowly until you just start seeing his control tower, and then stop and blast away at a distance....he doesn't seem to react unless you get too close)....if he were still out and about during this time, he would have made mince meat of some of my other islands in the time it was taking me to get one back!

[ScareYa]

[...] perhaps for the purpose of Beta it should have been altered to that effect otherwise testers won't realistically get to try out all the advanced items

That might have helped for the beta, but on the other hand you probably will have the same production and mining rates in the first half of the final game. So it's ok for me to test the "real" conditions. I wouldn't mind an additional "Production Factor" slider when creating a new game though...

[...] as he does seem to be able to conquer islands much, much quicker than we can. [...] On that note, just how long do others find it is taking them to conquer an enemy island, on average?

I don't have a general rule. It depends severely upon the type of the Command Center's defenses and on the difficulty level of course. Usually I play with Enemy Strength set two or three notches towards the difficult setting and only one starter island on my side.

The shield generators are quite easily blasted away with rockets from a distance. I always move the carrier close to the shield generators and attack with the Mantas. I use the two basic Mantas (4 and 5) in turn to do that. Occasionally one of my Mantas gets shot down - in this case I usually restart the island to avoid time-consuming re-productions. Sassy island Mantas are being shot down that way by the waiting carrier automatically. After the shield is down I use the Mantas to clear up the way for my Hack Capsule equipped Walrus by shooting down some of the bothersome island's Mantas and Walrus' and their bases. My own Mantas will then hover along the way in "Attack" mode to handle surprises. This usually takes between 20 and 45 minutes depending on the defence level of the island. A higher defence level increases the chance to loose one Manta.

The Scramblers are about the same. Only difference is that you absolutely have to move the carrier to a spot at the coastline where you can reach the scramblers with one of your Mantas. The procedure itself is the same as with the shield generators. Time to conquer should be the same - between 20 and 45 minutes.

The Firewalls are a different matter since you must bring one of your Walrus' to each of the firewall stations. Usually I skip those islands until I can afford to produce a Hook, which makes it a lot easier. But I can't remember to have conquered one of those island in less than an hour - more if the island defenses are capable (STRONG/VERY STRONG). The only thing that might speed up the process is to destroy the Command Center in the first place and rebuilt it later. I usually don't do this, but I am sure time is more precious in the final game and I might use this strategy more often.

[...] sneak up very slowly until you just start seeing his control tower, and then stop and blast away at a distance....he doesn't seem to react unless you get too close)

Yes, that is so. I hope this is a beta thing only. In the final game I expect the enemy carrier to be something between giving no resistance at all and being invincible. *fingerscrossed*

[Suranis]

I haven't timed it but I'd say it takes me about an hour and a half per island, mainly as I'm still figuring things out and I don't know how to use my units effectively. I am overcautious with the use of my mantas though and only started using them aggressively last night.

[Crowe]

I suggest a ratio of 500 Material income per 1 Production. (You can build nice gatlings with that)

Set your stockpile to the island where you have the best production capabilitys (2/3 of capabilities are used) and set all other islands as mining/defense.
If you expand your production take an island where factory < 100 * production.