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PI Bug or Intention?
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Nyrak
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2011-11-28 18:30:02 UTC
There is one aspect to planetary interaction that I find annoying is the amount of partial materials that get shifted. If I set the orders to move 3000 units of raw materials to the factory (or any of the higher finished materials in smaller amounts), then why when materials get low does it push an amount under a full cycle to the factory? If I set the routes for this amount of materials, then is it an oversight bug or the intention of design to have the command center or launch pad or storage silo trickle in a lesser amount? Why don't any of the storage facilities hold onto this lesser amount until a full load is reached and thus pushed onward?

Unless there is some action or trick I have been missing all this time and this full order amount is already available.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#2 - 2011-11-28 18:57:14 UTC
Factories operate on a greedy algorithm. When a factory's input buffer is not yet full and it is now its turn to dine, it will attempt to pull material from whatever input storage location that you told it. From what I've seen, this means that a particular factory will usually win most of the time. And over the long-term, it doesn't really affect things at all.

ECU - outputting the following amounts per "tick" (15/30/60 minute ticks depending on the overall duration), feeding (3) BIFs (which need 3000 to start cycling). We'll assume 30 minute ticks to keep things simple, so the following represents about 5 hours of time:

0: 3000
1: 2500
2: 1500
3: 1250
4: 1000
5: 800
6: 700
7: 3200 (ECU gets reset by player)
8: 2800
9: 2900

0: BIF #1 grabs everything and starts a cycle, BIF#2 and #3 sit idle.
1: BIF #1 grabs 2500, but sits idle, #2/#3 get nothing
2: BIF #1 grabs another 500, starts processing, #2 grabs 1000, #3 gets nothing
3: BIF #1 grabs 1250, #2 (has 1000) and #3 get nothing new
4: BIF #1 grabs 1000 (2250 total), #2/#3 unchanged
5: BIF #1 grabs 750 and starts, #2 gets 50 (total of 1050), #3 is empty
6: BIF #1 grabs 700, #2/#3 don't change
7: BIF #1 grabs 2300 and starts, #2 gets 900 (total of 1950), #3 is empty
8: BIF #1 grabs 2800, #2 still has 1950, #3 is empty
9: BIF #1 grabs 200 and starts, #2 grabs 1050 and starts, #3 finally gets something (1650)

Total materials harvested: 19650 (average of 1965/cycle) - which is about 6.55 cycles worth for a single BIF. Of which, 1650 ended up sitting idle in #3 input buffer. Total number of BIF cycles that ran was (6) with output at start of time slots 1,3,6,8,10,10.

In this particular case, it would have been better to run a single BIF rather then 3. But mostly, it doesn't matter. When material comes available, the factories will scoop it up and either wait for more or start processing.
Nyrak
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2011-11-28 19:15:36 UTC
Scrapyard Bob, thank you for that reply.

One thought I had while reading was you never change raw materials but constantly extract the same each and every reset of the ECU with your example. Thus if you're constantly pulling Carbon Compounds from a Barren planet, if a hot spot of Precious Metals appears, retooling your set-up means one factory will have a partial amount and thus idle even longer. Unless again I perform planetary interactions different than the norm as I change extracting of raw materials based upon availability and personal needs, short of shifting materials ahead of time and then pushing expedited transfers, getting a "perfect" amount transfered as routed is not possible with the current build.

Bummer.
Lauren Hellfury
Super Happy Awesome Fun Times
#4 - 2011-11-28 20:49:11 UTC
I thought that the next BIF doesn't get anything until the current BIF is processing and has a full input hopper. (6k mats total)

So the chain would run more like:

0: BIF #1 grabs everything and starts a cycle, BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
1: BIF #1 grabs 2500, but sits idle, #2/#2 get nothing.
2: BIF #1 grabs 500, starts processing, grabs remaining 1000 and stores in input buffer. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
3: BIF #1 grabs 1250 and sits idle at 2250/3000. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
4: BIF #1 grabs 750, starts processing, grabs remaining 250 and stores in input buffer. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
5: BIF #1 grabs 750 and sits idle at 1000/3000. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
6: BIF #1 grabs 700 and sits idle at 1700/3000. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
7: BIF #1 grabs 1300, starts processing, grabs remaining 1900 and stores in input buffer. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
8: BIF #1 grabs 1100, starts processing, grabs remaining 1700 and stores in input buffer. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.
9: BIF #1 grabs 1300, starts processing, grabs reamining 1600 and stores in input buffer. BIF #2 and #3 sit idle.


Or did I just waste a lot of keystrokes?

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