i dont recall SDS behaving like this before it was signed...

The Great Stonk · Post by **The Great Stonk** » Wed, 28. Jul 04, 17:19

heres the situation, i have a loop set up in presedents, spp, crys fab, catlle, cahoona, 2xwheat farm, 2x space fuel dist.

each station has at least 1 ship (either a demiter or a hermes) set up with sds.

now, before people tell me i dont know how to use the script, i do, its one i used alot in my past games.

whats happening, specifically happening between the cattle ranch and cahoona bakery, and between the bakery and the crystal fab, the sds ships are just sitting in thier assigned station, the station has more then enough goods in stock to fill the cargo bay of the sds ship, meanwhile, the station that the ship is supposed to deliver those goods to is flashing yellow screaming for those goods... yet the delivery ships is just sitting there, cmd reads' SDS Wait...'

i watched the process for 30 mins or so. it seems that the SDS ships delivering from my ranch, and cahoona bakery are only making a trip when the recieving factory has been flashing yellow for a few minutes.

when this works its way down the chain it just wrecks the whole freaking loop, since after so long my SPP ran out of crystals, and everything started to run low on energy, untill several other stations were flashing yellow...

it was never this inneficient before when i used it... the way its behaving atm is making it practically usless...

funnily enough it seems to be working fine for the ships transporting energy, wheat, space fuel and silicone...

so, is there anything that can be done about this ? (perhapse using a different ship type?) i dont want to have to go and get buy ware best again, since i intended to keep my 1.4 script free....

The Great Stonk · Post by **The Great Stonk** » Wed, 28. Jul 04, 21:20

53 views...

come on people!

Creston · Post by **Creston** » Wed, 28. Jul 04, 21:28

I would suggest killing the signed SDS script, and just going back to the previous one that actually WORKED.

Creston

frymaster · Post by **frymaster** » Wed, 28. Jul 04, 21:41

I am building in trinity sanctum at the moment, hence I'm not using those specific factory types, but for what it's worth my SDS ships start delivering as soon as their target stations drop below full

The Great Stonk · Post by **The Great Stonk** » Wed, 28. Jul 04, 21:48

frymaster wrote:I am building in trinity sanctum at the moment, hence I'm not using those specific factory types, but for what it's worth my SDS ships start delivering as soon as their target stations drop below full

what are the specifics of the set up ? what ships are transporting what wares ? since this is how it used to work for me...

VincentTH · Post by **VincentTH** » Thu, 29. Jul 04, 00:16

I observe this behaviour too for my BoFu SDS freighter. It is a Manta, equipped with SDS. What I observe is that it only do the delivery when there are enough BoFu to make it worthwhile for the trip, despite the receiving factory flashing yellow. I observe that the value is 84 Bofu (or was it BoGas, don't have the game at the moment). There is a different threshold value for diffent types of goods.

Damar Stiehl · Post by **Damar Stiehl** » Thu, 29. Jul 04, 17:14

Confirming this behavior...

Just built a loop in Paranid Prime. There are two SPPs and two Crystal Fabs. Each Crystal Fab has about 100 Crystals in inventory. Both Crystal Fabs have Mantas assigned to them with orders to Deliver to 2, delivery targets being the SPPs.

Both SPPs are out of crystals and flashing yellow. Both delivery Mantas are docked at their respective CFabs with "SDS Wait" command, neither is budging.

I will attempt giving it some time, but it is most bothersome.

My other two loops are working fine.

frymaster · Post by **frymaster** » Thu, 29. Jul 04, 18:34

haven't used SDS with the more "low-volume" goods yet, but my Soy Farms are delivering to my soyeries, my soyeries are delivering to my crystal fabs, and my power plants are delivering to everyone.

not seen a yellow flash in days

The Great Stonk · Post by **The Great Stonk** » Thu, 29. Jul 04, 21:53

seems to be occuring on larger volume goods only, smaller goods are shifted smoothly and swiftly...

Drainy · Post by **Drainy** » Thu, 29. Jul 04, 21:53

I have 2 soyfarms, 2 soyerys, 2 crystal fabs, 2 spps, 2 cattle ranches, 2 cahoona bakeries.
all using sds and never had a problem!

they are all running along one track each
eg, crystal fab alpha trades with spp alpha, which trades only with alpha stations

all the beta fabs trade with eachother.

frymaster · Post by **frymaster** » Thu, 29. Jul 04, 22:19

The Great Stonk wrote:seems to be occuring on larger volume goods only, smaller goods are shifted smoothly and swiftly...

funny, my understanding of their problem was the reverse: the low-volume goods like crystals were the problem and the high-volume goods like energy cells work fine...

anyways, all my high-volume stuff works, and the crystal part of my loops is open to the AI... means I have to work out the credit transfers for SDS but it makes me more money so

The Great Stonk · Post by **The Great Stonk** » Fri, 30. Jul 04, 01:30

by high volume i mean items that take up more room, eg 1 cahoona takes up 4 times as much space as 1 energy cell.

frymaster · Post by **frymaster** » Fri, 30. Jul 04, 02:22

ahhh, I meant the exact opposite, items where you trade in quantity

in any case the most expensive item I deal with in SDS is soja husk and I have no problems anywhere... My SPP is supplying 9 factories of which 6 are >25 yield roids, in a 150% sun sector, and it's still keeping up.

sq_paradox · Post by **sq_paradox** » Sat, 31. Jul 04, 21:36

I believe I know the problem here. SDS ships will only take goods when there home station has a certain amount to deliver (40 for crystals ie 32 is not enough for a delivery, don't remember any others). You can't just start all the factories in a loop all at once, it will completely crash the loop. You won't have any stock built up built up becuase all your stations started at zero stock and they work on a 1 to 1 ratio (with the exception of the SSP), you will run into a shortage for a short time while the ships are in transit, because it is a loop the shortage will grow expanentially untill the loop is ground to a halt. You either have to start you stations at the bottom of the loop first so they build up stock or you have to get the stock manually from AI stations or others you own outside the loop.

I did some of both when building my SSP loop in Siezwell and have had no problems with SDS. All stations have a stock that is healthelly maintained. I could be wrong here but from what I understand this is your problem.

orange acidian · Post by **orange acidian** » Sat, 31. Jul 04, 22:45

i'm not an expert

but from looking through the script it seems:

SDS will wait if:

the actual amount available at the source station is less than 10% of its total capacity. eg crystal fab total capacity = 332, 10% of this = 33 - hence 32 crystals = sds wait

the actual amount to be delivered is less than 10% of the stations capacity for that resource. eg SPP capacity = 332 for crystals - therefore 32 crystals in stock at crystal fab (332/10=33) = no delivery, this may be why 40 crystals seems to be trigger it as they produce in 8's - 8,16,24,32,40.....40 is the first over 33?

does this make sense?

HTH

Damar Stiehl · Post by **Damar Stiehl** » Sun, 1. Aug 04, 00:15

Well that's just bleedin' stupid.

Thanks for the explanation.

Makes me want to scream though.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun, 1. Aug 04, 01:12

Makes perfect sense that there is a minimum to be met before the ship delivers. If not you would see your delivery ship delivery as soon as there was stock, which for a Crystal Fab would be 8 crystals. A ship delivering only 8 crystals is ridiculous and uneconomic. Also would be of no help to your SPP.

frymaster · Post by **frymaster** » Sun, 1. Aug 04, 03:58

that would explain things. My factories were converted from ordinary production over to SDS, so most of them already had healthy resources and produce. Thus I never noticed this behaviour.

It's annoying but understandable

The Great Stonk · Post by **The Great Stonk** » Sun, 1. Aug 04, 23:17

things MIGHT be ok if you 'jump start' a loop, eg, add crystals in the front end, and set of the SDS ships to spread the energy out, wait untill all facts in the loop are fully stocked with energy (this would probably require an injection of about 278 crystals according to my calculations) waiit untill al level one fabs are fully stocked, or there abouts, so you have a large ready supply of silicone/ore/lvel 1 food, you then set off the next set of SDS ships and then wait untill the new facts are stocked, as well as the tier 1 facts, then you wait untill their is a nice stock of crystals in the fab before you complete the loop.

but thats too much babying, i shouldnt have to baby a script around a loop, i should just be able to set it up, let it run, and have it sort itself out over time, like it used to.

Spark · Post by **Spark** » Sun, 1. Aug 04, 23:52

Don't really know which thread to take, because the SDS is quite a bit under fire. So far I agree with the arguments in its defense presented. But the suspicion about this script might be just I'm afraid.
I have my deliverer seen running from home to his target 2 times without cargo.....
It might have something to do with resetting. Just let him "return home" first and then issue a new command. That seems to do the trick. Not a big issue, but it took me quite some time of yellow flashing before I discovered this behaviour.
Also waiting for different reasons gives different messages. One with and one without the place he is waiting, namely at home. For me that's also a reason for suspicion. It might be a sign, that the code has been written a bit unstructured.
I don't mean to shoot the baby dead. It just needs a bit finetuning and then it should be alright. A good effort anyway.
Spark.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

i dont recall SDS behaving like this before it was signed...

i dont recall SDS behaving like this before it was signed...