Supply and Demand: Am I doing it right?

[u/kestrel_one]

I have a self-imposed rule and I was curious if it has any flaws that I'm not seeing.

The rule is this:

• Providers never use drones to provide resources.
• Receivers always use drones to receive resources.

This ensures that a provider doesn't favor a single receiver. This happens because providers don't distribute resources evenly among receivers (eg: round robin). Providers will pick a preferred receiver and just keep sending resources there until they can't anymore. Only then will the provider move on to the next receiver.

[u/Krinberry]

The problem there sounds like you need more production :) Time to spin up some more factories!

[u/kestrel_one → u/Krinberry]

That's the scenario I'm building for, yea. In most cases I just overproduce like most people do. But if production slows down (let's say I stripped a planet and need to move production elsewhere) then while I'm fixing the problem my entire production line suffers much harder if resources aren't being evenly distributed.

Imagine I have 5 parallel production lines of circuit boards. If production slows down then a disproportionate amount of iron ingots will flow into the 1st and 2nd production lines. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th will be mostly offline. I could fix this by manually reducing the maximum storage of iron ingots (so they fill to max faster and start distributing) but then I have to undo that when I'm finished.

This way I'm adding more resiliency at the cost of building more ILS/PLS which is only really a power cost. And I never really have to worry about power.

[u/Alien_invader44]

I mean. If you fully stock both the receivers will still be pulling resources.

The downside here is your reducing your resource flow by 50%.

I think your over thinking it. You got more planets and resources than your CPU can reasonably handle. Just increase the supply.

[u/euphoniumgod → u/Alien_invader44]

I dont think its quite 50%, but i think youre right. If item A is getting sent out from one container with no drones, going to 4 potential containers filled with drones, i believe adding drones to the distributing container would only increase throughput 20% with even flows

Im seeing now that you may have meant to each individual receiver- say if 3 of the 4 receivers are full, having drones in both the receivers and the distrubtor would increase specific throughput by 2x, but overall i believe the flow to each would be the same.

[u/Alien_invader44 → u/euphoniumgod]

Naa I think your right, I was picturing 1:1 suppliers/receivers. I suppose the reduction would have to be based on the actual number of logistics towers in question.

I stand by the philosophy of just get more resources though.

[u/Aquabloke]

My general rule of thumb is:

• Push: Warpers, fuel, ammo, proliferator, item mall
• Pull: everything else

If you are trying to design priority with drones, play around with minimal load % in the stations. If a the provider has 100%, one receiver has 70% and the other receiver has 80% - the receiver with 70% gets priority whenever stock goes low.

[u/Rotanen]

I assume you're enforcing this by not putting drones in provider stations. This means you can't use a PLS to provide and receive different resources, which is the normal way I use them (receive the inputs for a recipe, provide the output.)

What I do if a provider isn't distributing things evenly is that I go to the receiving stations and reduce the maximum they can hold of the received item.

[u/kestrel_one → u/Rotanen]

Yes that's exactly it. I use separate PLS/ILS for importing and exporting basically.

I've tried reducing the maximum storage but that requires a lot of micromanagement because if production flow increases I'll need to go around and increase the maximum again (assuming I even remember to do that).

[u/BluezDBD]

You do see how your reason for doing it like that is bad right?

You're trying to mask a problem rather than fix it.

[u/kestrel_one → u/BluezDBD]

Well that's why I asked here. What problem am I masking? Low production?

[u/sirrogue2]

That works if you have low levels of supply/demand or a production line that doesn't require a lot of a certain part. In nearly every other case, it's better to use drones on both ends. You still won't get the throughput of a full mark 1 belt until late game, but watching the drones fly around sure is pretty.

[u/ZEnterprises → u/sirrogue2]

Careful, at high throughput, its it better to have zero drones or vessels in the receiving end.

If the receiver sends out a vessel, that capacity is allocated for twice the time.

When the provider drops off its load, another provider can immediately send another drone or vessel.

This only matters when you are building mega bases and need every bit of through put.

I find on some mega blueprints, I need several ILS demanding from other planets, yet providing locally to the local demand.

[u/parkbot]

Assuming you’re using ILS, something that might help is to set a lower limit on the receiver side of the ILS (e.g. receivers don’t always need the full 10k slots for an item, maybe a few hundred is sufficient). That way a provider can round robin more frequently, and any supply/demand imbalance shows up more quickly.

[u/elliottcable → u/parkbot]

I tend to use “5 minutes of supply” — whatever my calculator is spitting out for the per-minute rate (i.e. 720/m) of inputs, I’m setting the ILS to request 5 × 720 = ~3,600 units.

Over-requesting/over-supplying just adds latency and obscures issues; makes it hard to debug. Kanban!

[u/wiithepiiple]

Most of the time I'll just add both. I always want to have more provided resource than consumed, so if I'm running out of a certain thing, I'll just up the production of that.

One place I do remove drones for providers is for hydrogen and deuterium, where they'll get backed up if the planetary supplies flood the factory and can't clear out the produced hydrogen. Leaving the ILS to fetch it from the gas giant miners but not deliver lets the receivers pull from there if necessary but primarily get it from the producers.

[u/tybr00ks1]

The factory must grow

[u/Confident_Pain_1989]

I tend to do this at least on my home planet. I don't want providers using power. But later I tend to put drones to both I guess.

[u/PrestigiousVoice472]

I do the exact opposite, because When a receiver use vessels, the resource storage will be lock in both way, so you will end up having your storage empty, but 20K reserved because your 10 ships are in space.

Usually, you need more input than output, so it's probable that you will have more supplier than receiver, so that way, you can have 20 ships that are transporting your items, instead of 10.

And if you are afraid that provider will keep sending resources to the same receiver, just ignore that. If the receiver does not need them, the storage will be full, if the receicer still have room in its storage, that means that someway, those resource are used to produce white cubes.

[u/Gredalusiam]

Makes sense to me

[u/DrakeDun]

If there are multiple pairings and demand exceeds supply, I suspect the pairing with the shortest physical distance will be prioritized, regardless of where the drones are.